Matt and I met while attending classes at PSU Hazleton. He was working on his BA right out of high school. I was there in a two-year Associate program for business, after taking a year off from high school to work. I was still very much exploring the completely acoustic, folk singer-songwriter path, while Matt was (and still is) into funk, various world musics and ambient. In many ways we could not have been much different. Before long we met in an honors writing class, which encouraged group discussion and debate. Through that class we learned that we had a lot in common philosophically. Soon we began to talk music and, we’ll… that was it.
Matt is largely responsible for my expanded listening via artists like Dan Lanois, Jai Uttal, and Bill Laswell. We had a couple short-lived projects in NEPA, including some live shows and clandestine recording sessions both at home and at Lebanon Valley College. Matt played two tracks on my first album, Mandala, but before long our respective personal lives and careers took us into separate directions. For most of the 2000s, we remained out of touch.
Now based in Pittsburgh, and recently graduated from University of Phoenix with a multimedia degree, Matt plays with the Sun Kings on weekends, and occasionally other groups. We reconnected online a little while back when he was still taking classes, working and playing in a band. Based on those discussions, and some brief meetings since, we recognized it was far too long since we had done music together. So we’re slowly putting together some tracks via DropBox and our respective home studios. Watch this space!
