Matt Woosey
Desiderata
Released April 1st on RoBar Music Records
Keep moving. Keep growing. Never repeat. Never look back. It’s a bold ethos, at a time when most artists are flogged for more-of-the-same by their record labels. But from his arrival on the post-millennial British music scene to this year’s eighth studio album, Desiderata, Matt Woosey has always been a man in motion. “You have to keep pushing forward,” says the Malvern-based songwriter. “And if you’re not doing that, I think you’re doing it wrong.”
	Released April 1st on RoBar Music Records, Desiderata is an album for modern times, by an award-winning singer-songwriter reaching unstoppable momentum. The title might be borrowed from Max Ehrmann’s deathless 1927 prose-poem, but this Desiderata is unmistakably Matt’s own worldview: the sound of a man slipping between life stages and expressing that transition in song. “The new album represents changes in my life,” he explains. “Y’know, getting married, having a baby, turning thirty. I guess the music is a musical interpretation of those things. To me, it doesn’t really sound like anyone else.”

06 One Love(Taster)

Matt Woosey’s time is now. His eighth studio album, Desiderata, captures the most daring and progressive music of his career. His acclaimed solo shows dart between folk, roots, ambient and electronica. He’s an artist who slips the creative straightjacket of the modern industry, a trailblazer with no reverse gear, a performer who drags the acoustic guitar kicking and screaming into fresh relevance. “You’ve got to keep progressing,” says the Malvern-based singer-songwriter. “Like John Martyn. Like Robert Plant. Like Radiohead…”
Tipped by tastemakers from BBC Radio to Classic Rock, and braced for a headline tour across Britain and beyond, 2016 finds Matt looking to the future. Yet all the best artists come with a backstory, and it’s fair to say that Desiderata could never have been made were it not for a formative early career that took in passion, hardship and redemption. “If I’d become an overnight success,” notes Matt, “I’d probably be addicted to some horrible drugs by now. It’s like anything. You have to do an apprenticeship. You have to grow.”  
Rewind to the late-’90s, then, and as the son of forces parents stationed in Germany, Matt found himself packed off to a Bristol boarding school with a rudimentary cassette player and a stack of dubious tapes. He had little use for ABBA and Simply Red, but was spellbound by the souped-up, shape-shifting power-blues of Led Zeppelin’s debut album and II. “That’s when I fell in love with music,” he says. “When I knew it would be part of my life.”
That early taste for Led Zeppelin quickly spilled over into blues-rock heavyweights like Rory Gallagher, Paul Kossoff and Peter Green, with Tim Buckley and John Martyn also mixed into the palette (“I always loved the way they used their voices as an instrument”). Soon, passive enjoyment alone no longer enough scratched the itch, and Matt duly pinballed through a string of local bands that included a Thin Lizzy covers outfit. “I had guitar lessons at school on nylon-string acoustic,” he recalls. “I played electric guitar in other people’s bands, and did a few backing vocals. Then I started writing my own material and singing, going out on my own to open-mics and folk clubs.”
Out of the blocks, Matt created alchemy with the bare minimum of equipment, needing little more than his neck-tingling voicebox and fluid acoustic guitar chops to tame a drunk mob or command a transient crowd. “When I listen to Stevie Ray Vaughan, Rory Gallagher or Roy Buchanan play electric,” he reasons, “I just can’t add anything to that, y’know? For me, playing acoustic guitar in an inventive way that’s different to anyone else is the most powerful thing I can do. I like to do things that turn heads, but at the end of the day, it’s all about the songs.” 
Indeed, by the time he came to record his solo debut in 2008 – an album released independently and flogged at gigs – Matt had established his ethos of all-original songs, whatever the cost. “I’ve never performed many covers live,” he says, “and my studio albums have all been my own material. As a gigging musician, that’s made my life ten times harder. I don’t earn anywhere near as much as if I was just going out doing covers.”
With integrity came uphill struggle. In past interviews, Matt has spoken openly of the solitude of the travelling musician, and the panic attacks sparked by the apathy and grind of a British pub circuit more receptive to Sky Sports and karaoke. Through it all, he endured. “I’ve played in golf clubs. I’ve played on boats. I’ve played with an Ann Summers party in the corner. I’ve played to the barman. I’ve done the toilet tour of the UK a hundred times. If there’s a five-square-mile radius I haven’t played in Britain, I’d be shocked. I’ve had the worst possible gigs, and I’ve had the most amazing ones.”  
Personally and professionally, however, there’s no mistaking Matt’s upward trajectory in recent times. 



 




