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My wife, Abby and I live in Portland, Oregon with our son, Rowan who was
born in late 2006. I work as the Executive Director of a small environmental
non-profit. Aside from singing, playing guitar and writing songs, I enjoy hiking,
bird watching, and traveling. Other tidbits about me: I was a Peace Corps
Volunteer in Honduras in the 1990s, and in high school, I won a pair of
skis in a pie-eating contest. |
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I’ve been playing music off and on for years, starting in second grade
with four years of indentured servitude to the piano. At twelve, I began the guitar. My guitar teacher taught me the chords to “Go Tell Aunt Rhody” (my first song), and I taught myself the five opening notes to “Stairway to Heaven,” which turned out to be wrong. I played bass guitar in a jazz band in high school, and in a punk band in college. I was a better punk bassist than a jazz bassist. Since college, I’ve stuck with the guitar, more or less.
I hadn’t done too much songwriting before “Funny Little Fella”. I co-wrote a few songs with my high school friend, Erik (I like to think of him as the St. Hubbins to my Tuffnell). My band mates and I in Jonestown Koolaid (college band) wrote some songs with cryptic lyrics (R.E.M. influence) and raging guitar solos (Sonic Youth influence). When I started writing songs shortly before Rowan was born, it really just ran away with me. Still, it wasn’t until I’d written at least ten songs for Rowan that I started thinking about making an album, and I probably wouldn’t have done it without feedback and encouragement from a couple of children’s music artists, Paul Austin Kelly and Splash N’ Boots. It may seem like a small thing to them, but it meant a lot to me that they took time to listen to songs sent by a total stranger.
So I decided I was going to make an album. I posted Craig’s List ads for a sound engineer and graphic design artist. Sean Flora and Kelli Caldwell responded (among numerous others). Sean and I recorded four hours every weekend for about two months, which is really the only way I think you can do it if you have a one-year-old and a full-time job. I took a picture of some of Rowan’s toys draped on my ukulele and showed it to Kelli as a cover design concept. I said I wanted it to look like the illustration on the cover of “Huevos” by the Meat Puppets. And with Sean and Kelli contributing their talents, the album turned out better than I had ever dreamed it would.
That’s the story, at least so far.
-Matt |
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