Matt Flinner

We’re starting a regular Thursday video series this week.  Every Thursday a new video will be posted on the Matt Flinner Trio YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/mattflinnertrio), featuring performances by the Matt Flinner Trio, other groups Matt is involved in, and the occasional instructional video or other arcana.

Our first video is a tune from the new Matt Flinner Trio CD, “Winter Harvest.”  This tune, “Wheels,” was written by Eric Thorin on March 20, 2009 at The Rail concert series in Lafayette, CO.  “Wheels” refers to a friend of Eric’s who is always on the move—and this tune is a tribute to him!

This performance is from a show in Putney, VT at the Next Stage Theater on March 25, 2012.  Thanks to Barry Stockwell for hosting the show.

To order a copy of “Winter Harvest,” visit our online store.

As you surely know by now, Earl Scruggs passed away last week.  He was 88 years old and was out touring and performing just about to the end.
His legacy will be talked about for a long time to come, but what has always struck me about Earl Scruggs was the fact that he seemingly came out of nowhere in the mid 1940s and forever transformed the way an instrument is played as well as the way we hear American string band music.  There are always innovators who come along, but Earl’s innovations were a huge quantum leap for the banjo—a leap that took the instrument from old-time string band music into bluegrass and beyond.  And though Bill Monroe is considered the father of bluegrass music, it was Scruggs’ incredible, driving, syncopated banjo style that really defined bluegrass as a distinct new form (my favorite early description is “folk music in overdrive”) that took off in the late 40s.  And Earl did all this while he was still in his early 20s.  I can’t think of any other musician that completely transformed an instrument to the extent that he did, and to me that kind of genius is absolutely magical.  Scruggs truly wrote the book on the 5-string banjo (literally and figuratively), and it took several decades before any more really major innovations came along—and even those were essentially extensions that grew from Earl’s foundation.

There’s a lot of Scruggs’ music out there, but if you’re looking for the best stuff to listen to to get a sense of his style and his genius, check out the classic recordings of Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs.  Listening to the classic Flatt and Scruggs recordings from the early 50s, you get a sense of the full spectrum of style that Scruggs created.  There’s the drive of “Down the Road” or “Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms,” the swing and boogie-woogie feel of “Foggy Mountain Special” and “Six White Horses,” the use of “Scruggs” tuners on “Earl’s Breakdown” and “Foggy Mountain Chimes,” and the alternate tunings on “Reuben” or “Farewell Blues.”  And then you get his occasional lead guitar playing, using the same three-finger style (though with different roll patterns) on songs like “You Are My Flower” and “God Loves His Children.”  And then you have the fact that his playing was a great influence on Josh Graves, his eventual bandmate who helped the Dobro get off the ground to become a legitimate bluegrass instrument.  Pretty wide-ranging influence indeed.

Though Foggy Mountain Breakdown is surely the most famous tune in Earl Scruggs’ music, here’s one of my favorite tunes he played; he didn’t write this one, but he absolutely made it a banjo classic and a bluegrass standard.  His musical sense, his way of varying the melody, the way he phrased—it was always impeccable.

And here’s a pretty cool one with Earl Scruggs and Doc Watson from a little later in Earl’s life:

There are many other great Earl Scruggs You Tube videos out there.  I hope you enjoy these and hope that they may lead you onward to explore more great music by this American legend as well as other banjo innovators who came after him, like J.D. Crowe, Bill Keith, Alan Munde, Tony Trischka, Bela Fleck, and on and on and on.  I think I speak for all of us when I say thank you, Earl!

Mike Compton & Matt Flinner at Fiddle & Pick, Pegram, TN, 1/28/12

I’ve been an admirer of Mike Compton’s playing for a long time, so it was a thrill to get to play a duo show with him at Fiddle & Pick in Nashville, Tennessee the other night.  If you’re familiar with Mike’s music, you know he’s one of the great bluegrass players today (or any day).  He’s a great interpreter of Bill Monroe’s style, but he also goes deeper into the roots: down into old-time Appalachian music and Mississippi blues to get to much of the grit of what bluegrass grew out of.  We figured out an hour or so’s worth of tunes we could play together—I’ll have to go back and listen to a recording of it (which I think someone made at the show), but I think some pretty primal stuff happened that was really unique and wonderful.  And it was a blast!

Thanks to all who came to the show as well as the mandolin workshops that Mike and I gave earlier in the day at Fiddle & Pick.  It was a full day of mandolin nerdiness that Mike and I both enjoyed very much, and we hope all of you who attended got a good bit of nerdiness out of it as well.  We’re hoping the Mega Mini Mandolin Camp with Mike and Matt will happen again—stay tuned!

The new Matt Flinner Trio CD, “Winter Harvest,” will be released on Compass Records on January 31, 2012.  We’re very excited about it!  If you’d like to hear sample tracks, visit the Compass Records website.

“Winter Harvest” is a continuation of our “Music du Jour” project, which we started in 2006.  On most of our live gigs, each member of the trio (Ross Martin, Eric Thorin and Matt Flinner) writes one new piece of music the day of the show, and all three new compositions are debuted on that night’s concert.  After the first few of these tours we recorded our “Music du Jour” CD for Compass Records.  Now, after about another 50 “du Jour” shows and about another 160 new tunes, we’ve recorded “Winter Harvest.”  As on the “Music du Jour” CD, we’ve selected 12 tunes (after a long and torturous process of narrowing the tunes down to that many) that we feel represent a wide spectrum of what is possible in a bluegrass trio.  And if you order a physical copy of the CD (you can pre-order at Compass or you can get it here starting Jan 31), you’ll get three bonus tracks that are not included in the digital download (we see this as part of the beauty of having too much material to choose from!).  Or you can come to one of our many upcoming live shows and buy a copy in person.

We’ll be continuing our Music du Jour project on into 2012 and are excited to see where it takes us, both musically and geographically.  We hope to see you out there in the big wide world!

Click here to see upcoming tour dates.

Welcome to the new Matt Flinner website! Here you’ll find info about the Matt Flinner Trio, upcoming trio shows as well as other Matt Flinner concerts, videos of live performances, info about mandolin lessons on the internet, and much much more. You can also find some of the finest “Deeply Rooted New Acoustic Music” in our CD store. Feel free to look around, and let us know if you have any questions (via our contact page). Stay tuned—we’ll have some exciting new music and new features over the coming months!