Album Notes

The Mostly True Bio of Matt the Electrician

Mussed hair and work clothes be damned, Matt Sever's been known to schlep directly to gigs disheveled from his real-life day-job: keeping people wired and lit. Yet the moniker is more than just a humorous takeoff on life's realities...

Born Matt the Electrician on a frosty San Francisco morn, Matt and his family soon moved to Oregon in search of culture, nice weather and vineyards. Once there, Matt spent much of his youth obsessed with Woody Guthrie, The Hollies and the soundtrack to Godspell. The Electrician's were a musical, yet thrifty family, so they found a swell garage-sale trumpet to encourage this musical interest.

The Electricians moved back to California in the early eighties. And while the trumpet was discarded, the expensive private lessons were not a complete waste, as it was here that Matt met and fell in love with the guitar.

Unfortunately, because of the elder Electrician's spiraling origami habit, money was not only extremely tight but intricately folded and beautifully hung all around the Electrician household, so Matt was limited to the only three chords his parents could afford. His dad assured him this was plenty, that kids in China only get one or two.

And strangely it all worked out, Matt headed to Austin, a serious music town, with aspirations to become a serious musician.

Mission accomplished. After years of a steadily built, devoted fan base, some would say that Sever's unassuming baby-faced slacker image and "nice guy" blue-collar charm belie a very complex and intoxicating energy that is equal parts gritty neo-folk, frenetic boyish pulse, and tangled life experience - all held cohesive by his deft guitar skills and liquid vocals reminiscent of a young Paul Simon wrapped around a Tom Waits heart. Some wouldn't be able to say that. Some would rather type it. Others might yodel.

Matt's first record, Baseball Song, was an impressive first showing by a young talent, capturing youthful emotions yet showing the direction of new found maturity. Landing him firmly on the map, No Depression called it "an impressive debut that makes Matt The Electrician a songwriter to watch."

Sever's second record Home. continued to radiate with the heat and grapple of youth: the unbridled eruptive green energy, the wry optimism, the epiphanies of burgeoning love and the booze-soaked nights and vinyl booth mornings of life on the road; a record The Austin Chronicle calls "an acoustically amusing postcard of life in Slacker Central."

Made For Working, Sever's new record, offers a slight departure from the real or imagined boundaries of home... to a place where love evolves and grows comfortable, where new families and priorities are built, and where life reduces to a concentrated clarity. Where people grow up.

Sever lives and works with his family in Austin, Texas.