Hi everyone!

It's been ages since I've updated this blog. Not coincidentally, I can be found more on twitter and even facebook these days. It's true, like a lot of people I sometimes get the urge to "tweet". And so I tweeted about my recent tour a little bit but I'll use this "blog" to say a huge thank you to all the folks who came out and made the shows a great time across the country! From Halifax to Victoria - many stops in between. It has been a true pleasure to sing my songs for so many people over the last month. And it 's not over yet. Toronto, I'm saving it up to play for you on Wednesday May 12th at the Mod Club. And I'm bringing a hot band. Then Meaford and London on May 20, 21 - a sendoff to the long weekend. More dates in eastern Canada to follow...

True Believer is getting a great reaction and it feels good! For the first time I'm selling vinyl at shows and it will soon be available to order through maplemusic.com and in finer record stores. It sounds great on the turntable - trust me.

Busy times up ahead - more shows to be announced and Haunted Hillbilly comes to Toronto this August in the Summerworks Theatre Festival! More on this in the coming weeks,,,

Maybe I'll bump into you on some other internet portal. Or at a show?... thank you everyone!

Matthew

Hi folks,
I'm writing from my temporary home here in Montreal, enjoying a strong Quebec beer on a cold December night. I'm in town doing a musical play called Haunted Hillbilly. I wrote the tunes and play in the band, and the show is directed by my good friend Andrew Shaver and written by Graham Cuthbertson, based on the book by Derek McCormack. The theatre company behind this madness is called Sidemart Theatrical Grocery and they do some of Montreal's most exciting english theatre. We're almost half-way through our 14 show run after almost a month of rehearsal. It's a real pleasure to work with all these fine actors and we're having a great time. I would especially like to give a nod to the incredible musicians in the band with me - Julian Brown on upright bass and Joe Grass on pedal steel, mando and dobro. it's a treat night in and night out.

My other big news is that my new album is finished! It's called True Believer and it comes out in February 2010 on Outside Music. It will be available worldwide on iTunes. I'm planning to tour as much as possible, so it'd be great to see you out at a live show. I'm even going to press vinyl this time for all you vinyl lovers.

I did the album with esteemed producer, drummer, singer-songwriter Howie Beck and he did a fine job of making it sound good and classy.

Here's the tracklist:

I Think You're Gonna Feel My Love
Comeback Baby
Revolution of the Sun
Got That Lonesome Feeling On My Mind
The Little Things
True Believer
Insanity or Death
While Away
Hawks on the Highway
Suddenly

There will be some bonus tracks if you get the deluxe version from iTunes (more about that in the coming months).

I hope you all have a nice Holiday season. Bye for now,

Matthew

Happy September everyone! There are lots of good songs about September - Hayden's "In September" comes to mind, as does Big Star's "September Gurls". I believe Matt Mays has an epic tune about the back-to-school month as well. I love September. The first half of September is always sunny, relaxed and an inspiring time of renewal for me which I don't think I can say about any other time of year except perhaps the first days of spring.

This September I have the pleasure of making a new record with Toronto producer/songwriter/drummer Howie Beck. It's going well so far and I think we're going to have a lot of fun over the next few weeks.

At the end of the month I get to go out west to Alberta and BC again for the first time since last November for some shows. I'm looking forwad to these and if you live in those parts I encourage you to come on out to a show- you won't be disappointed.

Everyone who knows me knows that it is often with great trepidation that I embrace new technologies and forms of mass communication. Having said that, I have recently signed up for the the world of Twitter and so far I'm warming up to it. Should you be so inclined, you may follow my periodic tweets (which I assure you will not clog your inbox) at www.twitter.com/mattbarbertweet. "Tweeting" as they call it is intriguing to me as the length limit seems to have put an interesting constraint on writing that takes style in a new direction. Of course 90% of tweets probably don't need to be there (my own included), but that's another story.

Finally, if you're in Montreal this December, or if you're a theatre fan who can get to Montreal this December, I highly recommend seeing the re-staging of The Haunted Hillbilly: The Hyram Woodside Atrocity by Sidemart Theatrical Grocery, featuring the music of yours truly and a very interesting cast of characters. I'll be there in the band again. How will it end this time? For clues, check out the book on which it is based by Toronto author Derek McCormack entitled The Haunted Hillbilly.

Have a good harvest!

Matthew

Two songs filmed live on location at an old railyard outside Athens, Georgia on a sunny day in May after a 7 hour drive.

It's spring in Toronto, and the lilac bush in front of our house is the only one on the street not blooming. Everything else about this season is coming together, though. It was cold outside, but we got the month of May.

I just returned from Georgia (and points in between) where it is like the middle of summer in Toronto: hot, humid, lush and prone to thunderstorms. I had the good fortune of making a run down the east coast of America in my newly refurbished civic, performing a like a classy veteran coming back from obscurity for a clutch playoff run. Speaking of which, there has been some dynamite hockey as of late, but this is not a sports website.

I met some fantastic people along the way - you know who you are. Thank you for all of your hospitality and inspiration. I hope to be back soon - that was just a teaser.

And here's a video of Easily Bruised from a Brooklyn show opening for the lovely Jill Sobule... Time to get those veggies in the ground!

Each year St. Patrick's day seems to highlight the fact that spring is on it's way, and this year was was no different. I always enjoy St. Patrick's day. I'm not Irish, nor do I have a day-job that I get to ditch early for one day a year in favour of teambuildng pints. I never go out of my way to make special plans for St. Patrick's day, yet I often manage to find myself in a bar on March 17th enjoying a tasty Guinness and thinking fondly of my dear friends on the emerald isle. My memories of St. Patrick's days past often include sunshine and a shedding of layers; it seems the day is well-situated on the calender, coming at a time when Canadians are treated to the odd day of temperatures above 10 degrees celcius before the inevitable last gasp of winter that usually ends the month of March. I remember one particular St. Patrick's day in Kingston, Ontario well because I played my first "gig" at a bar. I forget the name of the place (it might have been Kirkpatrick's) but it was a basement dive Irish pub on Princess St. and they were supposedly hosting a day-long music event. It had been arranged ahead of time that I would perform, through my friend and long-time Kingston musician Dan Curtis who was "curating" the show. I showed up for my matinee set in the afternoon with my friend Andrew Shaver, and it was one of those beautiful, sunny 15 degree St. Paddy's days that I was talking about. It seemd unlikely that throngs of revellers would want to head downstairs to a windowless basement pub on a day like this, and sure enough they did not. But I was on stage, nonetheless, pumping through a PA, enjoying my one free beer and singing my tunes for my audience of three.

I've had a lot of gigs since then, and some have even fallen on St. Patrick's day. I remember a great one a few years ago at Zaphod's in Ottawa, where the band and I managed to pull out U2's "Bullet The Blue Sky" (the ONLY time I've ever covered U2) as well as Van Morrisson's "And It Stoned Me'. This year I had the night off and I saw the hilarious Chelsea P. Manders do her wacky musical comedy act at The Free Times Cafe (where I had not been in YEARS). The Guinness was from a can but it still hit the spot.

So you may have noticed that I have a fancy new website. Thank you to Sean Odell for his hard work in putting it all together. This is my first official "blog" (I'm so old-fashioned that I still find that word funny), and I promise not to abuse it. I'll write when I have something to say, and I'll write about things that I want other people to know about. I'll probably end up writing about myself a bit, but I'll spare you the inane details. It should be an interesting experiment, so I urge you to check-in, check it out and give me feedback if you are so moved. So long,

Matt