Matty Powell

If it were up to me, this Bio would be one paragraph long: Matty Powell’s music speaks for and about Matty Powell. Listen, and you will learn all about him. There. That is all you need to know. You can put this down and get back to whatever it was you were doing, letting Matty’s music play in the background until it screws itself into your head like the earworm it is. Passionate and melodic, and brimming with questions and answers, insight and awe, personal yet universal, Matty’s music will reach you and touch you…all you have to do is listen to it and let it weave its magic. But the Artist wants what the Artist wants, and this Artist, Mr. Matty Powell, (a personable young man who tends bar when he’s not writing and performing), just wants you to get to know him better. Consider this a first date, if you will. He says he was born on a hide-a-bed in a small bungalow called Funky Kingston in Saskatoon, SK, started a career in theatre, acting in numerous plays and movies in Winnipeg, MB, got his first (blue) acoustic guitar at a pawn shop, sang lead in a punk band during high school, moved to Toronto at the tender age of 19 to pursue a career in film and television, got tired of auditioning for Herbal Essences and Dentyne commercials very quickly, and started writing songs and playing around Toronto in venues like the Free Times, Clinton's, The Cameron House, and other well-known local venues where many young singer/songwriters had plied the stage before him. Not one to be satisfied with just playing live, young Mr. Powell recorded an E.P. What We Could Be in Toronto in 2002 but wasn't really happy with it, citing “too many cooks in the kitchen” and ending up disappointed with an effort that didn't even sound like him. Not everything was a disappointment in Toronto. Matty now had a beautiful daughter, Freja, and the two of them moved back to Saskatoon in 2007 and Matty joined the board of The Ness Creek Music Festival, a festival in Northern Saskatchewan where he had spent his summers growing up along with all the other sons and daughters of hippies who had migrated there. Of this period in his life, Matty says; “Playing around bonfires and smoking pot for the first time, I started playing in Saskatoon and recorded my second E.P. The Ness Creek Sessions way up in a secluded cabin in Northern Saskatchewan over a cold weekend in May. No power, no running water, but lots of beer and a bunch of great players.” Now we’re talking. Matty’s second record achieved local success and was released to a sold out audience at The Broadway Theatre in Saskatoon. Now fired up and rarin’ to go, he created a project called The Great Train Reverie, which took a band from Saskatoon to Halifax by train, playing music in the trains and cities the whole way across Canada. Having accomplished all he could on the Prairies, Matty, in a fit of creative and adventurous abandon, loaded his now 2 daughters, Freja and Eir, into a 1980 VW bus and drove from Saskatoon to Nicaragua to help build a sustainable house called an Earthship. “ I ended up being a founding member of The Earthship Pitaya Music Festival in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua, a music festival to support the local community, spent a year living in Nicaragua.” After absorbing the sights and sounds of his Central American sojourn, Matty moved back to Toronto and started playing around the city again, his music (and his life) enriched by all that he had seen and heard, and experienced south of two borders. One night, playing in the back of The Local, a wonderful, down to Earth bar/restaurant venue owned by brother and sister Ru and Melissa Sexton and located in Toronto’s burgeoning Roncesvalles Village, Matty was heard by veteran bass player/producer Alec Fraser. Fraser was immediately taken by Matty’s songs, and the man himself. Alec, a multiple award winner both as a musician and a producer, and instrumental in both capacities in the success of the legendary guitarist, Jeff Healey, suggested they enter the studio and record a full length album. In January of 2012 they did exactly that. The full length CD, Kiss the City, is now available. In Matty’s own words, “I am now ready to take on the world with my songs.” He is, indeed. Bob Segarini Toronto Ontario An unwavering, powerful voice matched only by his potent lyrics and beautiful, simple melodies. Matty Powell's songs speak directly to the heart, watching him perform is an intimate and interactive experience that has left many fans wanting more.