Matt Burt by Matt Burt

Bands in Junior High and High School led to the eclectic country rock band Allis Chalmers while at Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York in the early seventies. When Matt moved to Boulder, Colorado in 1973 the heavy lifting began. Fronting the folk/rock band Sky Blue, then moving on to straight-ahead rock with Capa City . Over the next several years he and his cohorts toured throughout the West and Midwest. And after an extended tour through Vancouver, Seattle and San Francisco in late 1981 he closed out that chapter and headed back to Boulder. There he hooked up with an old pal from the Southern Tier of New York: Dave Race on bass. Dave brought along the rock steady Marty Stinger on drums. Dave had been touring out of Nashville and Marty had just finished up two years of touring and recording with Warren Zevon. They formed a quirky but short-lived trio dubbed The Bush Boys.

Matt then relocated to the Southern Tier of New York where he devoted himself to the family business and writing until 1999, when after performing at a Memorial concert for an old dear friend, Margaret McGlinn, a mainstay of the clubs around Westchester County, New York, he realized that he just wanted to play again. This kicked off a period of wood shedding and writing, writing ,writing. All of the songs on the self-titled cd released in 2007 were written between 2000 and the initial recording in 2005.

What has always distinguished Matt’s song craft and singing from the rest is his commitment to the honesty of the song. In the film, Walk the Line Sam Phillips asks Johnny Cash to sing the song that he would sing if he only had two minutes left to live. That line in the film became the bar that Matt aspires to in his songwriting. He has said, “I’ve shelved more than a few songs because, when it was over and done, they were just cute. They didn’t really express any truth about the characters in the song and just seemed kind of frivolous.”

Matt is currently performing with his band, Matt Burt and the Casual Acquantances with Tim Reilly on guitar and mandolin, and Jack McKissick on bass throuhout the Southern Tier of New York. He recently appeared on Channel 34 in Binghamton and is doing promotional performances to showcase the self titled cd: Matt Burt.

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