User:Matt Zarb

Writing a biography is sometimes hard when you are trying to describe a lifetime of music and performances in a few paragraphs, but here is a few to give you some idea of Matt’s career to date. As said in the introduction, Matt lives and tours out of Tamworth N.S.W but his musical life has taken him from the west of Sydney to countless cities and towns all over the world. Matt’s unique style of guitar playing and songwriting has landed him on stages with everyone from Tommy Emmanuel to Willie Nelson and many more. Matt recently spent three and a half years living in Kentucky in the United States. During that time he performed at many festivals and events across the country from Nashville to LA performing on the college circuit, countless radio and TV shows with his younger brother Pauly. Matt’s major achievement during his time in the States was performances on the now world renowned “Acoustic Guitar  Masters” series of concerts in Kentucky. This concert series features the world’s finest acoustic guitarists from all over the world our own Tommy Emmanuel being the biggest name on the series but it has a long list of well known artists to step the stage. A Matt Zarb performance is full of exciting kicking, stomping, guitar, harmonica, mandolin playing and songs of his life and times. His honesty in writing his songs leave you feeling you can relate to the real life issues that come up in his lyrics and storytelling. If he sings or plays a song or instrumental he has not written be sure it will have a flavor only he can stamp on it for example his version of “The Devil Went Down To Krambach/Georgia” or the famous Mason Williams ‘‘Classical Gas”. You can view these versions via You Tube on the front page of his website. These versions of songs and instrumentals have a self titled style “The Barefoot Bushbilly Bastard Version”. Matt never performs with shoes and stomps on his ten and a half year old home made stomp box and plays all his music live with no safety net. Matt just loves to play guitar and sing, from his kitchen to the Manly Ferry to a huge festival stage it makes no difference to him it’s all about the music. Matt’s latest recording “Rose Matilda” is a compilation of three different projects and will give you a broad overview of his songwriting, musicianship and arranging. ‘’Rose Matilda’’ is a song about his grandmother and grandfather and is getting airplay all over the Australia on country music stations. From the funky “What do you think about that” to the beautiful ‘’Saturday Night In The Hall” the recording is a great example of his live show in that it will take you on a journey as colorful as his life has been to date. Matt has a great fan base all over Australia and is a sure bet on any festival stage. Matt is currently working on a new fully instrumental CD which will be out later this year along with a new CD with all new songs. Thanks for taking the time to read about Matt and his music.