Who: Matt Andersen & Don Alder
When: Wednesday, Oct. 29, 8 p.m.
Where: MY Millennium Place
Tickets: $22
Originally from Perth Andover, New Brunswick, Matt Andersen still calls the East Coast home, but this musician spends a considerable amount of time on the road, traveling from gig to gig.
“I love being on the road,” Andersen said. “The last couple years, I’ve done pretty close to 200 shows, which is pretty much being out steady, between driving home and doing laundry and going out again.”
It doesn’t seem to matter the size of the venue, either. Whether it’s a small, 50-person club or an amphitheatre, the good-natured musician’s rich, deep vocals could fill just about any room. You don’t have to look very hard to find a touch of East Coast influence in Andersen’s style and sound.
“I guess my style of playing comes a lot from the kitchen party kind of vibe,” he said, adding that he’s self-taught, with a laidback style of performance.
And next week, Andersen will join the international fingerstyle champion, Don Alder, for a double bill show at MY Millennium Place as part of the Whistler Arts Council’s annual performance series. This isn’t Andersen’s first trip to Whistler — his performance with Jim Byrnes last year was so well received, that he’s back for another grassroots-inspired show.
It’s pretty easy to see how he was drawn into the world of music; he was surrounded by it. He was raised on a steady musical diet of country, rock and gospel; his mother played organ, his grandfather played fiddle, and his brothers played guitar.
“So there was always music whenever the family got together, that’s for sure,” he said. The only real mysterious element of his bluesy, rootsy rock seems to be, well, the blues.
“When I lived in London, Ontario, it was the first time I really got to hear live blues music, and that really caught my attention,” Andersen explained.
“Old blues and country are pretty much hand-in-hand,” he added. “There wasn’t the huge difference that there is today.”
After studying recording, Andersen returned home to work for McCain’s and start paying off his student loans.
“Making pizza pockets and that kind of stuff,” he said with a chuckle.
He soon teamed up with another musician during an open mic night, and got to a point where he was playing four nights a week and working seven days, so he had to choose between music and his day job.
“It wasn’t a hard decision, really,” he recalled.
Though he eventually started another band, Andersen was the only member interested in making music a full-time endeavour, so he decided to strike out on his own back in 2003 — a scary and exciting decision for any musician.
“I was lucky to have lots of support from family and friends that were all rooting for me, lots of folks helped me out getting started, for sure,” he said.
But it’s five years later, and Andersen hasn’t looked back. He’s had the chance to play alongside some legendary performers — Bo Diddley, Little Feat, and Randy Bachman, just to name a few. And recently, he toured the UK, where he had the chance to perform with the 96-year-old Mississippi delta blues icon, “HoneyBoy” Edwards.
“It was very cool because I listen to those guys, they’re in my tape collection,” he said. Another benefit of playing with such legends is that he gets to play to sold-out crowds.
Andersen’s music clearly speaks to the East Coast crowd, but how does it translate internationally?
Apparently, pretty well.
“I find every place reacts to music differently. The people in Scotland, its just like playing Cape Breton for me, really,” Andersen said. “I knew how to handle them. England is a little bit different — I’m still figuring them out.”
Now, he finds himself listening more to the music of fellow musicians he encounters while touring, rather than scouring the Internet, TV or radio for the latest mainstream hits.
“I’ve been lucky enough to be in the industry the last four or five years, and met lots of different people, so I guess I don’t listen to the radio a whole lot to hear something new, because a lot of the good stuff I’m finding at festivals and stuff,” he said.
In fact, Andersen has been so focused on his many live performances that he’s only recently found the time to create and release his first full-length studio CD, entitled Something in Between.
He finally decided it was time to get into a studio, so he headed over to the UK and set up shop in the basement of an old church in a tiny town, where he teamed up with back-up players who had worked with the likes of Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney, and Frank Sinatra.
“So that was pretty amazing,” Andersen said. “…We did 12 tunes in three days, I think.”
And he’s more than a stunning voice — Andersen writes almost all of his own music. The creative process isn’t exactly natural or constant.
“It kind of comes in waves. For this last album, I hadn’t written anything for months, pretty close to a year, then two weeks before going into the studio, I went to… a cottage in PEI and just locked myself in there for a week and I think I wrote 10 tunes,” he said, adding that he needs to sit down without distraction to put his thoughts, ideas and tunes down on paper.
Andersen is heading back to the UK in February, but before going overseas again, he’ll be where he loves to be: on the road.
