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Despite the name, Matt the Electrician is no longer an electrician, focusing instead on a music career that has spanned the course of two decades, a dozen records, and thousands of shows. His music, however, remains rooted in his blue collar beginnings, with lyricism that embraces the day-to-day, the mundane, the beauty of the ordinary.
Before moving to Austin, TX and launching his career as a working-class folk musician, Matt Sever grew up on the West Coast. His parents played John Denver and Pete Seeger songs on the family record player, and Matt spent his earliest years surrounded by the things that would later fill his own music: acoustic guitars, timeless melodies, lyrics that celebrated the joys and heartaches of everyday life, and — above all else — a strong work ethic.
That work ethic served him well in the mid-1990s, when he moved to Austin in search of new horizons and better opportunities. Matt was already playing music by then, and in need of a steady day job, he began working as an electrician, spending his days wiring houses in the Texas heat. Once quitting time came, he'd grab his guitar and drive himself to an evening show, usually taking the stage in his work boots and sweaty clothes. "Hi; I'm Matt the Electrician," he'd tell the crowd, hoping his occupation would help explain his appearance. The name stuck, even after his growing fan base at home, as well as abroad, allowed him to hang up his pliers for good.
Matt’s most recent release, a double CD called The Doubles, is the culmination of a 2-year vinyl 45 collaborative project.
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Stephanie Macias is a musician, writer, and artist based in Austin, TX. She has been performing since 2000. From 2011 to 2018 she performed under the name Little Brave. She’s recorded five albums and illustrated the artwork for all of them. Over the past three years she has been studying creative writing in the MFA program at UT Austin. Her short stories have been published in Crazyhorse, Southern Humanities Review, and other literary magazines. She is currently working on a novel and a collection of short stories.
"Little Brave's music exhibits some form of intensity that you don't hear all over the place... It's intense because it's so individual. It's so personal and it really seems to be coming from a place that people just don't let other people see all that often. It's emotional. It's naked... It's calling for blood...." - Daytrotter.com
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“Tom Freund is indeed one of the great singer- songwriters. He constructs a unique world, defines it, and then burns it to the ground. Truly unique and absolutely brilliant.” –All Music Guide
It’s the ease with which he delivers conversational lyrics and honeyed melodies, a natural magic that is the soul of Tom Freund’s music. Though he’s widely-traveled in a variety of genres– from hearftelt folk to buoyant pop to boho jazz to straightforward rock ’n’ roll, and beyond –Freund is, simply put, a singer-songwriter with a defined and captivating presence.
“Freund clearly delights in enigma. His vocals could go from laconic to impassioned without such obvious trickery as cranking up the volume. His lyrics are full of curveballs.” –Washington Post
Freund’s latest disc “Two Moons” on Surf Road Records draws roots sources for an urbane Americana sound, melding nostalgia with a raw and sharp-eyed views of life today. “If Two Moons, with its underlying message of hope in this messy world of ours, serves as an inspiring, encouraging soundtrack for listeners, then I can say to myself, ‘ok, you’re doing something right for the people out there”, Freund says. He delivers this CD’s main message in the standout track “Lemme Be Who I Wanna Be,” in which he declares: “I’m basically hooked on this life/it’s got a lot of problems/but it treats me real right/and you don’t have to agree with me/but let me fly my freak flag.” This oddly upbeat anthem of personal empowerment so impressed Canadian rock star Serena Ryder that she asked to sing on it. The opening track “Angel Eyes,” featuring vocals by Ben Harper, serves as Freund’s take on Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.” motif, expresses his appreciation to his Southern California friends for always having his back. Notes of nostalgia play into Tom’s self-declared favorite track “Mind of Your Own” which delves into a deeply personal memory of the New York native’s childhood home.
“If you want to hear what California feels like, Tom Freund’s new album is a good place to start…” – Acoustic Guitar
Freund spent the mid-’90s touring with the indie rock cult faves THE SILOS and has been releasing solo albums since 1998. Tom has alternated between recording and touring behind his own discs, playing upright bass, electric bass guitar, and mandolin with the likes of British pub-rock great Graham Parker (who hailed Freund as one of the best singer-songwriters operating today), pop star Mandy Moore, groove-soul sensation Brett Dennen, Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Famer Jackson Browne, and three-time Grammy winner Ben Harper. “What really brought me to wanting to work with Tom in the studio is his songs,” Harper concludes. “It doesn’t have to even go any further than that. As far as I’m concerned, who wouldn’t wanna work with him in the studio? Because the songs are there.”
“Every year the mounting landfill of new releases that threatens to bury the working music journalists yields a few unexpected gems, and Tom Freund is one of them.”
–New York Times
More recently, you can spot Freund playing with Parker in the Judd Apatow film, “This Is 40” and featured on the hit TV shows “Parenthood”, “American Gothic” and the recently premiered Pamela Adlon show “Better Things”. He continues to tour North America, Europe and Japan playing with his band or doing solo shows.
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Kelley Mickwee and her voice are one of the most recognizable talents making music in her home state of Texas at the moment -- even if you may not immediately know it.
Mickwee has been a mainstay in the Texas-based music scene for years: currently, as part of Kevin Russell’s Shinyribs’ Shiny Soul Sisters, singing harmony and background vocals at his live shows and recordings; as one-fourth of the acclaimed Americana group The Trishas, with Jamie Lin Wilson, Savannah Welch and Liz Foster; and before then as one-half of a Memphis, TN-based duo Jed and Kelley. But sometimes what gets lost in the shuffle of all the well-deserved acclaim for what she adds to other artist’s projects is the music she makes in her own right.
“It's been way too long since I have released music that is all mine,” she says. “I’m so proud of how these songs turned out, and it just felt like the right time to put new music out and see if people are still interested in what I’m doing on my own.”
It’s a comment bathed in humility, and the kind of thing an artist only says if they’re really in it because no other career path would ever really make sense for them. What else is there to do but to keep doing it? Her comments are referring to a new two-song project called Boomtown to Bust, an A-side and B-side single that she’s taking the extra mile and releasing on vinyl. “I love the good old-fashioned singles releases: a taste of what the artist is currently creating, without ingesting an entire album,” she says.
Both songs were written with Ben Jones as part of a yet-to-be-released duets album with Dan Dyer, and recorded with Jonathan Tyler at his home studio, Clyde’s VIP Room. “Jonathan Tyler and I have known each other for years and I have always been a big fan of his music, his work ethic and his vibe in general,” Mickwee says. “I was driving and heard his tune ‘Old Friend’ come on the radio and thought, that’s it, I need to make some music with this guy. So, I sent him a demo of these two tunes and asked if he’d help give them life.”
“We wanted a ‘Red Headed Stranger’ kind of feel but with a ‘mining’ or ‘gold’ metaphor,” she says about Side A, “Boomtown to Bust.”
“Once we got it into the studio with the band, it was just undeniable that it wanted to be a waltz. I love Dan [Dyer]’s harmony vocals on this one. Cody Braun’s fiddle sits perfectly with the mood of the song and Marty Muse glues it all together with his dreamy pedal steel. It's a reflection on what comes when that love loses its glitter and shine.”
Side B, “Let’s Just Pretend (We’re Holding Hands),” is a story of unrequited love, with a little tinge of hope weaved in. “Speaking of love, I love what Jonathan Tyler played on the electric guitar on this one,” Kelley says. “That, and the accordion, really give it that extra little push into that juicy Texas ‘The Mavericks’ kinda sound, which was completely unintentional but welcomed.”
Boomtown to Bust is Kelley’s first original release since 2014’s You Used to Live Here, her debut solo record. Within the past year, she’s re-focused her efforts on her solo work, beginning with a set of four singles in 2021 recorded with singer-songwriter Jonathan Tyler and culminating with her latest “Gold Standard,” out now. Although she was already a seasoned artist at that point with a decade’s worth of experience under her belt, up until then all of her performing and recording experience had been as part of a unit: first as half of the Memphis-based duo Jed and Kelley, and then as one-fourth of Texas’ acclaimed all-woman Americana group, the Trishas.
When the Trishas, all living in different parts of the state or as far away as Tennessee, collectively decided to slow their roll a few years back, Mickwee realized that in order to keep living the dream of playing music for a living, she was going to have to strike out on her own.
Three years later she took a different leap, one that was not so much a matter of “starting over from scratch” so much as just learning how to take her hands off the wheel and have fun as a proud member of one of the hottest acts in Texas: Shinyribs.
Launched in 2007 by Gourds co-founder Kevin Russell as a “solo” vehicle, Shinyribs has since evolved into arguably the most explosively entertaining band to spring from Austin in decades. Mickwee joined the family in September 2017, claiming her spot onstage next to Alice Spencer as one of the band’s two harmony and backup-singing “Shiny Soul Sisters.” She had to hit the ground running and learn the ropes fast (knowing that Shinyribs would be taping its debut appearance on TV’s Austin City Limits the following month), but from the start she felt not just right at home, but exactly where she needed to be.
The Trishas never did exactly breakup, though, meaning that Mickwee and her other song sisters Jamie Lin Wilson, Liz Foster and Savannah Welch still happily reassemble every once in a blue moon when their schedules line up or a favorite gig comes around — like the annual MusicFest in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where they all played their very first show together as part of a 2009 salute to Savannah’s father, renowned songwriter Kevin Welch. Mickwee is also still an active partner (alongside co-founders Susan Gibson, Walt Wilkins, Drew Kennedy, and Josh Grider) in the Red River Songwriters Festival, which will celebrate its 10th anniversary in 2022. “That's our little baby, and it’s doing pretty well — the last few years have sold out!” Mickwee says proudly of the event, which is held every year in Red River, New Mexico and preceded by a short “Traveling Red River Songwriters” tour.
And then there’s Mickwee’s weekly on-air gig she hosted for five-and-a-half years until she had to step away in 2021, the “River Girl Radio” on Austin’s “Sun Radio” (www.sunradio.com). “The format was pretty much whatever I was feeling,” she says. “I was given a lot of freedom to play whatever moved me within that hour each week. It was so rewarding to get to stretch that creative muscle and learn about a ton of music I wasn’t familiar with in the process.” (Mickwee can still be heard all day, every day as “The Voice” of Sun Radio.)
With all of the above currently on her plate, one wouldn’t think Mickwee would have any time at all left over to devote to her own performing songwriter career. Even though scaling back was part of her plan all along, it’s still very much a part of her bigger picture.