Bob Matthews

The first time I saw Matt in concert, I volunteered to work the merch booth at Jammin Java in Vienna, VA. I arrived early that evening and was met by Aaron Bishop, who I knew was the bass player touring with Matt. Aaron is a sweetheart who thanked me profusely for helping them out, and he showed me where everything was, and how much to charge, etc.

As I waited in the booth for the action to start, I decided to go up to the bar for a beer and a hot dog. After placing my order, a good looking, tall, and bearded man slid up next to me. I said “Hi” like I knew him because I thought maybe I did…he looked familiar. He said HI! very enthusiastically and when I said I would be working the merch booth, he offered to buy my beer.

The beer never made it back to the merch booth. When went back up to the bar, Bob was standing there with my friend (and co-Edge blogger) Liz Lemon. I asked where my beer was and he told me I was demanding and laughed, explaining that he got distracted and forgot.

Come to find out, this friendly, if forgetful fellow is actually Bob Matthews, a talented drummer playing and touring with Matt. Bob is charismatic, a flirt, a clown, sometimes a cynic, has a killer smile and a devilish grin. He’s so much fun

Bob and the Tour Monkey after a long night

to interact with and I love watching him play the drums. He’s someone who obviously loves life and likes people. I look forward to hearing from him on Facebook and Twitter because he is both outrageous and silly.

So here’s to you, Bob Matthews. I hope your birthday is filled with awesome surprises and much happiness!

Thanks to kaleidascoptic for recording video of last night’s show in Tampa.

State Lines:

Honey, Let Me Sing You a Song:

Related show

• Artist: Matt Hires
• Date: Friday, January 13th 2012
• Time: 8:00am
• City: Matt Hires in Tampa
• Venue: Micro Groove
• Address: 4906 N. Florida Ave
• Venue phone: 813-667-7089
• Country: United States
• Admission: Free
• Age restrictions: All Ages
• Add to Google Calendar | Download iCal

Here are Matt’s favorite songs of 2011,in no particular order.

(Some of them are my favorites too – can you guess which ones? lol)

Helplessness Blues – Fleet Foxes

Losers – The Belle Brigade
The Valley – Okkervil River
White Fences – Needtobreathe
Holocene – Bon Iver
Come Talk To Me – Bon Iver
Holdin’ On To Black Metal – My Morning Jacket
Lost In My Mind – The Head and The Heart
Down In The Valley – The Head and The Heart

So American – Portugal. The Man
Time Spent In Los Angeles – Dawes
Blue Eyes – Middle Brother
Lucky Now – Ryan Adams
No One Listens To The Band Anymore – The Damnwells
Born Alone-Wilco

I posted a link to Dave Lapham’s blog a year back when he put up a bunch of great pictures. But through dogged detective work, I recently discovered one of his best pictures hiding out on flickr. This picture captures Bob, Aaron, Matt and Chris so perfectly. This needs to be framed….

Jeremy Brinling at Fairview High School in Erie, PA got this interview with Matt prior to the Akron show. You can read his review of the show here.

Here’s just one of the questions Matt answered in this interview:

What are your plans for the future?
Keep on making music and after this tour I’m going into the studio to start recording album number two and hopefully put that out summer of next year.

Matt performed a song for his mom at the Orlando show last night… So sweet. And also SWEET! New stuff for us who have not heard it… I do not know the name of this one. I don’t know if it’s a new new song, or just a new to me song. I’m going to call it either Lovers in Broke Down Cars* until I learn otherwise. (Hey, I was right about Rock n Roll Heart so I’m batting 1000 so far.) What do you think it should be called?

*UPDATE: I went straight to the source and found out the name of this song is “Wishing on Dead Stars”. Awesome! But now I’m batting 500.

Check out the rest of these great videos from Orlando on JcatJSusan’s channel.

Btw – this makes 3 new songs we got this tour along with I Say Hello and The Sound of Falling In Love.

I’m not really sure how to categorize this except as: one part weird and two parts completely random, with a splash of awesome. I’m pretty sure the drink of choice when listening to Matt would be beer, but then there’s this.

Last week, The Sights and the Sounds posted this interview with Matt from Schuba’s.

Here’s one of the questions, one that I’ve always meant to ask Matt, but keep forgetting to:

The Sights and Sounds: Where do you prefer playing more? Do you prefer the studio or live shows?

Matt Hires: I don’t know, they’re two different things. I like getting into the studio and really thinking about the songs and figuring out how it’s supposed to sound and all that. But then there’s nothing like a good live show either. Just playing in front of fans and just doing what I love to do every night.

And I’m sure everyone has wondered this:

The Sights and Sounds: Now a fun question for you. If you could be any spirit animal, what would you be?

Matt Hires: [Without hesitation] A platypus.

3 different tweeters posted pics from tonight’s show and they were all pretty great. I have also found some nice pics from Durham and Atlanta and I’m putting them in the Concert gallery.

From @kylecox:

From @snixafied:

From @LittleLadyLaura: