Sinner-songster, guttural gospeller & pop-poet-priest, the Rev’d Matt Simpkins’s music is an unholy brew of bruising freak blues, string-snapping finger-twanged folk, and sanctified psychedelia. Shades of Captain Beefheart, Pavement, and the Kinks meld with Evensong choirs and pipe organs, pre-war Gospel Blues, string orchestras, brass bands, and Bert Jansch style finger-picking. 

Before he became the fourth generation of his family to be ordained as an Anglican priest, Matt came to musical notoriety through his raucous exploits in Fuzzface, Gospel-fiddle duo Sons of Joy, as a solo artist performing as Rev Simpkins & the Phantom Notes, and by collaborating with the remaining members of the Small Faces to reconstruct their LP Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake.

“Deep, dark…makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up” Maverick Magazine

“Raw, authentic and always riveting” Acoustic Magazine

‘High octane stuff…unique musical style and literate words performed with energy and passion. He must be a gas live.’ fROOTS

“skewed blues and rot-gut jugband swagger…a heady mix” Rock ‘n’ Reel

“I wonder what goes on inside his head” Blues Matters

“…he might just scoop a Mercury Prize…”, East Anglian Daily Times

Rev Simpkins is following