Matt Cox: Press/Reviews

Meeting the Band: Matt Cox
Romantic Old West alive inside Matt Cox

By: Will Simons
Issue: July 29, 2009


Photo by Dale Heise
Certain people are drawn to certain types of places. For some, traveling always revolves around the East Coast and its web of cities that constrict until everything ends up stuck and jammed together in New York City. Others opt to get lost in the expansive wilderness of the Pacific Northwest and its abundance of unmanned coastlines that toss the masses of people inland into major cities like Portland, Seattle and Vancouver.

But singer-songwriter Matt Cox has an affinity for the southwestern United States. Born and raised in Shenandoah, Iowa, a little town about an hour south of Omaha, Cox has adopted the mindset of the traveling folk singer. Although he’s currently rooted in Omaha and tied closely to the Benson songwriter scene (which includes Kyle Harvey, Brad Hoshaw and Justin Lamoureux), Cox didn’t initiate his musical bearings until he returned from a month and a half of self-imposed isolation where he drove into the West playing show after show, just him and his guitar. He careened through California before eventually returning to Nebraska. “The West I’ve always been drawn to,” he said recently over lunch at a Hartland Barbeque with his band mates Ben Zinn and Seth Ondracek. “Even like Western movies, I always loved the whole openness of it all and the wide open spaces that are still actually there.”

Singing with a grizzled voice that’s met a few cigarettes and whiskey bottles in its 28 years, Cox doesn’t take a modern approach to his craft. Rather, he holds close to the traditions fortified by the masters of the 20th century – Robert Johnson, Lead Belly, Jack Elliott, Guthrie and Dylan. He spins tales of hardship and heartbreak, wanderlust blues ballads full of lonesome train whistles and sleepless campfire nights. If his songs were photographs, they’d be dusty and sepia-toned and show only scenes of a bygone era where instant gratification meant receiving a letter from a man two counties over confirming your wish to marry his daughter.

Cox’s songs also perked the ears of some of the most active and accomplished musicians in Omaha. Last year, Ondracek, bassist of Omaha staple the Jazzwholes, approached Cox after a set at a downtown bar about possibly playing bass along with his songs. Cox couldn’t refuse that offer and soon other members of the ’Wholes were on board – including Zinn on guitar, Nick Semrad on keyboards and Matt Arbeiter on drums. Along with Cox, these make up the five members of the Matt Cox Band.

Even with all that Cox has to look forward to (he’s already well into the process of recording a stripped down folk blues record to follow up his first full band effort “My Last Dollar,” released last spring), he comes across as someone who has just begun his musical career. In other words, his world is like the Wild West: untamed and full of opportunity, not that of someone with a hardened shell jaded by disappointment and defeat.

How did you get from Shenandoah, Iowa to where you are now?
Matt: I went to Shenandoah, and graduated there in ’99. Spent some time in Ames after that. I was kind of going to school at a community college there in Des Moines and shortly after I graduated from Shenandoah, my parents moved to Omaha, bought a house here. Before too long after that, my brother and I kind of both ended up coming to Omaha and seeing their house and kind of relocating here. I spent a few years in Omaha, then I kind of followed (my brother) down to Arizona. He had some friends that were playing in a band called Junk Ditch Road in Tempe.

I went down for the summer to check that out, ended up filling in playing drums for them for a summer. It was 2002, that’s kind of when I first started playing live with people. I never really experienced that before. I’d grown up playing through band and stuff like that in high school; that was more of my forte at the time was playing percussion. But I was starting to play guitar and sometimes for set breaks I’d sing some solo stuff on my own and when I moved back to Omaha, kind of just took it from there.

Where did you play at in Omaha?
Matt: Mick’s – that was a place I tried to get into for probably a year. I played McFoster’s and some coffee shops around the town, but Mick’s was establishing itself as the singer-songwriter spot. Eventually, I did a lot of open mikes there and Michael (Campbell, former owner of Mick’s) started putting me in front of a couple other acts opening up for people.

I ended up recording an EP there, actually, on an open mike night. I had a guy come in, do a recording for me and I released a couple hundred albums of the EP “Stick Your Neck Out.” I took that and basically left town for about a month and a half and traveled all over the West; Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and then all the up the coast of California just hitting every little club and café to just kind of get out of town and get some experience. Just playing with whoever I could, whenever I could, sleeping wherever I could. It was a lot of experience. It gave me a lot of confidence when I came down.

What inspired you to up and leave?
Matt: Some other musicians. Like I said, I’d been playing at Mick’s a lot at that time and met so many other traveling musicians, you know, singer-songwriters that were coming through town and knew about Mick’s and people my age and younger than me that had obviously some experience doing it already and had some success as far as traveling and seeing the country. I took those 200 copies of the CD and saw it as a chance to maybe hit the road and make some gas money along the way.

So how did the band eventually come together?
Matt: Last summer at Benson Days. We probably only met a week or two prior to that, really, or talked about doing anything. I’d been playing at the Goofy Foot where Seth was working. He mentioned getting together with the possibility of us all playing together sometime. I had that Benson Day gig booked, I think, in front of a bunch of other bands, which was gonna be kind of weird I thought. So I kind of asked these guys to join me and we got together and practiced for 20, 30 minutes that day and went on and played. And it just kind of stuck.

Later in October Matt (Arbeiter) decided he wanted to drum and eventually Nick (Semrad) joined.

Why’d you guys want to play Matt’s songs?
Seth: Well, I was a fan of his. I saw him do his solo stuff and I was starting to get into country music and I kind of heard the influence by him and I asked him if he wanted a bass player and there it went. And I was talking to Ben, and we were doing the Jazzwholes, and I told him I was going to go play with Matt Cox.
Ben: We just kind of went for it. I’d seen Matt play, I don’t know if we’ve talked about this, but there was a New Year’s Eve show – at the Anchor Inn, remember? I think that was one of the first times I had seen you play and I was really impressed and he sounded so good just on his own, but in the back of my mind I wondered how this guy would sound like with a band.

Can you tell me about you latest CD (“My Last Dollar”)?
Matt: I did it kind of in spurts. I recorded about half of it the winter before, mostly just on my own. And then somewhere in that summer, we all met and I was kind of sitting on these recordings, wondering what the heck to do with them and wondering if they were good enough to release or whatever. And once I got to playing with these guys quite a bit, I definitely heard some things on there that could be done better, bringing in the band live and tracking the stuff live together and I had a couple of new songs as well that I needed to lay down.

So really, there’re three tracks on the CD that are essentially the band. Then there are a couple tracks that I also had Ben play some lead guitar stuff over. There’re tracks I’ve done drums and bass on to as well.

What studio did you go to?
Matt: A place in Griswold, Iowa, called Prairie Wind Studios, which a friend of mine runs. It’s a little tucked away spot in the middle of nowhere in this room that a guy attached to his garage. Kind of a hundred-year-old barn next to it. That’s just my spot where I know to go and it’s affordable. I’m actually still going out there and working on another album right now. It’s going to be more of a stripped down blues, roots album with a couple different people.

Seth and Ben, what all are you involved with musically?
Ben: I’m doing a lot with Matt. As much as I can play with him, I do. Then I also have Little Black Stereo that I’m playing with and Satchel Grande, too. And sometimes I’ll go out and play keys for (local songwriter) John Klemmensen.
Seth: Right now I’m doing obviously the Matt Cox thing and Lizard King – a Doors tribute band. And I play with jazz/gospel singer Heidi Joy. I’m doing an album with (local musician/astrologer) MoJo Po. It’s about the Zodiac signs. He wrote a song for each sign. It’s very eclectic.

You all seem really busy with music. Do you have other jobs?
Matt: I spend half the week at the Pizza Shoppe cooking pizzas during the day. I’ve been there for a few years and they’re good to me.
Seth: I have a couple students and sometimes I do construction, but mostly I just live off my gigging.
Ben: I have a pretty good collection of students up at Russo’s and I try and gig as much as I can, too.

Local Tunes
Songs For a Cure

By: Marq Manner
Issue: July 8, 2009


Omaha photographer Steve Loftus will be hosting a benefit show for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Fund this Sunday at the Waiting Room. The benefit is titled Songs For A Cure and features three of Omaha’s best songwriter based acts, Brad Hoshaw & the Seven Deadlies, It’s True and McCarthy Trenching. The event will also feature Raven Carousel, the new project from longtime Omaha musicians Ben Sieff, Cass Brostad and Jerry Kuhn. The Juvenile Diabetes Research Fund is set up to help find a cure for children suffering from Type 1 diabetes. Children with this disease endure blindness, kidney failure, heart disease, amputations and much more. This show will have an early 8 p.m. start time and will only run you $5 for admission. The organizers of course will not be turning down any donations above and beyond the admission.

The artist that seems to be playing the most around Omaha and the region right now is Matt Cox. Whether it be with his band or as a solo artist he has been hitting every nook and cranny in the area over the past couple of months promoting his current album, “My Last Dollar.” Cox might have made the biggest impact this past Monday as he and his band opened up for super popular alt-country artists Son Volt at the Slowdown. Cox and his band played the big stage at the Slowdown like they had done it a dozen times before. The band played a perfectly chosen set of some of Cox’s strongest songs, mixing upbeat folk country romps, songs that allowed for some inspired jamming from the rest of the musicians, and many that feature Cox’s signature old-timey vocals and songwriting style. The band looked and sounded like they might have been heading out to play the Austin City Limits stage the next night. Cox has been backing himself with many of Omaha’s heavies for a while now, and they have put on some great sets. But nothing has compared thus far to the punch they packed this past Monday.

When listening to Omaha singer-songwriter Matt Cox’s latest disc, “My Last Dollar,” one could envision a delta blues musician, a road-worn folk singer, a Tom Waits eclectic, a Dylan or the Dead Disciple, or an old soul junkie bringing those influences to new life. Cox is a unique songwriter in town with a voice and soul to his music that is well beyond his 28 years. “My Last Dollar” is a record as good as anything that current national artists of a similar style Ray Lamontagne or Amos Lee have done. This is one of those albums that roots songwriter fans scour music blogs and MySpace sites looking for on a Sunday morning with a cup coffee. Cox has recently added an arsenal of musicians to his stage show including such well-known and respected players as Benn Zinn, Seth Ondracek, Matt Arbeiter and Nick Semrad. These additions make him and his band one of the potential breakouts on the live stages this year. Matt Cox and his band will be celebrating the release of “My Last Dollar” on Friday, March 27 at the Waiting Room Lounge with the Filter Kings and the Black Squirrels. I caught up with Cox this past week to talk about the album, his roots and his influences.

Matt Cox has been playing music all of his life, but it wasn’t until his 20s that he took it to the stage and started performing for others. He says, “I took piano as a young kid at 6. Was a drummer all through high school. Did my first gig at the age of 22 in Arizona and then came back to Omaha in 2002 to focus on being a songwriter. I loved it when I got back and it took me a year of playing with buddies before they nudged me to do it on my own. Michael Campbell then let me do my thing at Mick’s and Amy Ryan at the P.S. Collective has been really supportive as well.”

Other young singer-songwriters with a voice like Cox’s many times sound forced or like they are trying too much to sound like their heroes. Cox sounds natural on record and on stage and his voice and songs draw in the listener quickly. I asked him if he has always sounded the way he does. “Not in front of people,” he stated, “It took a long time for me to really get up in front of people and really sing and project. I was always drawn to those soulful voices like Otis Redding and Chris Robinson. I can even hear that stuff in old Hank Williams songs. It helped a lot when I stopped trying to sing like other people and I started to record my own songs and I found my own voice.”

There is an authentic roots quality to “My Last Dollar,” which may be a result of not recording in one of the big Omaha studios, but instead making frequent treks to the area he grew up in and recording in a 100-year-old barn-turned-studio outside of Griswold, Iowa. Prairie Winds Studio is run by his friend Kirk Webb, who also serves as co-producer on the album. I asked Cox why he put in that much time to travel back and forth to Griswold to record: “Kirk did my last album and I have been recording with him for a few years. I do it for the atmosphere and the environment. It’s the whole drive there and yeah, when I get to the mixing part of the album, the drive gets a little old. It feels like home, because it is near where I grew up and also Kirk does a great job.”

Upon first listening to Cox his music has a storytelling quality to it, but when getting deeper into the songs one will find a lot more introspection and personal touches. I asked Cox if he considers himself a storyteller or someone that writes about his own experiences. “I would say both,” he said. “I would say that I lean more towards the storytelling but I don’t know how good the story is. There is stuff on this album that I thought up while I was driving to the studio and putting a lot of miles on the car. I had a notebook handy and when you are dead armed on a long stretch of highway I could write lines here and there. I write about the monotony of it all and doing the same thing day to day and wanting to do more.” I also asked him if there was a theme running through “My Last Dollar.” “There is a lot of realization,“ he said. “As a whole there is a lot of coping there and realizing that the way things are, are not always going to be the way you want them to be. I think it is a pretty universal album and I think a lot of people could relate the simplicity of the album. That is how I think about a lot of the traditional music that I listen to.”

Finger Pickin' Good - Matt Cox's latest makes listeners pine for country drives and campfires.

You just can’t find a studio housed in a 100-year-old barn in Omaha. Although they had to wait for space heaters before recording, Matt Cox and a cast of other notable Omaha musicians made multiple trips to Prairie Wind Studios in Griswold, Iowa this winter to cut an album. The secluded, peaceful atmosphere was exactly what Cox wanted. The resulting 12 songs on My Last Dollar, are a sprawling sonic landscape that embraces tradition and a simpler life.

Matt Cox grew up in Shenandoah, Iowa, a small town near the Nishnabotna River. The family farm was lined by 30 acres of woods and a river. The young Cox, his brother and father would camp, fish and hunt in that wilderness.

Cox began playing piano at age six. Ever since he first played in an original band to live audiences in Arizona, he has been dedicated to writing and playing, and over the last six years he has settled into his own as an artist.

Influences such as Neil Young, Bob Dylan and Townes Van Zandt permeate Cox’s rambling country and blues. He said that Greg Brown of Iowa is one of his biggest influences. Though not widely known, he regularly plays to packed crowds.

“The way he writes, I can picture the farm,” Cox said. “His songs, they feel like me.”

Cox, with his finger-picking and slide guitar work, to breezy harmonica and smoky, soulful vocals, writes the kind of music that prompts thoughts of open spaces, and not the chaotic hum of the modern world.

“I stopped feeling short-changed by growing up in a small town, and I embraced it,” he said.

When he can, Cox makes the 45-minute drive to his family’s land to get away from the traffic and noise of the city he’s called home since 2001.

“I like to trade TV for a campfire,” he said.

Getting his start as a musician in Omaha was tough for Cox, and he said he was lucky to have fallen into the Benson singer-songwriter community. Befriending artists such as Sarah Benck, Brad Hoshaw, Kyle Harvey and Justin Lamoureux gave Cox that small-town feel he was accustomed to, being active in helping each other improve as musicians. In playing his music from Oakland, Calif., to Nashville Tenn., Cox has seen that sense of community amongst musicians all over the country.

“There are so many good-hearted people out there helping one another,” he said.

Although Cox knows that traveling musicians have a tough road ahead of them, there is nothing else he feels he should be doing. It is his goal to write songs that worth playing and hearing.

“It [the songwriting process] is a mystery,” he said. “It unfolds from nowhere, from the subconscious.”

It keeps him coming back for more. Every time he picks up the guitar to write, he is unsure of what will happen, he said.

“Nine out of ten times it may be trash, but I keep trying,” he said.

On My Last Dollar, there isn’t one track that fits into the trash category. There are whiskey-drenched country ballads, rambling country foot-stompers with great finger-picking, spacious and beautiful love songs, a murder ballad and a great solo instrumental that is simultaneously dark and hopeful. The songs breathe flawlessly from one track to the next unveiling the cool demeanor of Cox himself: Flannel-shirt, old hat, a cigarette and an open road kind of cool.

Cox played many of the instruments on the album, but he says he is proud of himself for realizing what could be improved by enlisting some of Omaha’s finest musicians. Benn Zinn, Matt Arbeiter, Seth Ondracek, Nick Semrad, Josh Krohn, Kat Smith and Kirk Webb all played on the album.

Although Cox said the album is about facing reality and letting go, there is an optimism that shines through. He hopes this album and others that follow will embrace the timeless values of Woody Guthrie and other folk musicians. It’s simple, but there’s a lot going on underneath.

“There’s a lot more to this music than banjos and fiddles and hootin’ and hollerin’,” he said.

Acoustic music seems to be underappreciated by too many who go out to see local live music. Acoustic blues music seems even less popular. Consequently, Matt Cox's new CD, Folker's Travels, is a bright spot for Omaha on both counts. Cox's original music is rooted in deep country blues and his original songs show his respect for traditional music as well as more contemporary folk-blues-Americana artists like Bob Dylan, John Prine, Townes Van Zandt, Harry Manx and Greg Brown. If you're looking for a heartfelt take on the genre, Cox's music has the feel of a fresh breeze coming through grandma's screen porch after a long overdue rain.

From Omaha, Matt Cox is the first out of town musician that syntax has covered. But rightly so. Because on September 20th Cox will make his Denver debut as part of A Moveable Feast III. For this and more, we are blessed to have this gifted gold mine of a guitar slinger visit the Queen City of the Plains.

Cox is younger than me. But he sounds like he's twice my age. In timbre and content his voice portrays a worn soul, one that is speaking from the sepia days of the past through a tin can and a string.

The way Cox plays his guitar, sings and records is how it's supposed to be done in my book. While he may be young, Matt Cox understands space and volume and when to kick it into fifth gear – with his guitar and with his voice. In this he has a tremendous aptitude – one that is not learned, but rather, known – a priori.

The same can be said for his content and lyrical aptitude. Cox talks about everything Middle America. He talks about county jails, the sheriff, honest pay, and a life of drinking heavy. But he's not some country bumpkin – no, Cox's content - musically, compositionally and lyrically are laced with that rare kind of complex simplicity. Because while everything may feel like Middle America – in the end, his work is about the human spirit and it's ghostly, cosmic condition. An example of this is to be found in a lyric that, if you blink, you may miss:

Deep in the heart of Iowa/Deep in the heart

So obvious is his talent and humanity that, after hearing his work, the Late Jack Redell drove all the way to Omaha just to meet Cox. "Matt Cox's songs swagger with visions of an America that I haven't convincingly heard since the Band took their collective last breath…" Redell said, "I find him impossible."

Cox plays with an earnest pace, with songs that feel so far away from city lights that I am lead to question my own urban existence. It's people like Matt Cox that make me feel ridiculous for living a city life. It's people like Cox that lure me into disappearing for a more virtuous life in the cornfields. In the hills. In a small town. Forevermore I want to sit on a dusty front porch on a creaky swinging chair and watch the sun set to the west. That's the kind of life I want to lead: simple and with the dirt of the land on my trousers; driving home from work in a beat-up old pick-up truck, with a bottle of whiskey. It's as Cox says:

Just a fishing pole and an apple/No more material things

While life can beautiful, there is always a sense of torture – one that resonates in Cox's words and mostly, his voice. Redell said, "Cox sings from the hardest place I know… it's hell there."

His work is conversational. Even within his sparse and haunting arrangements it is conversational - where banjos and violins creep around him like ethereal ghosts in an empty farm house – there is always an element of connection. Whether that be in his rich storytelling aptitude or within the fact that he lacks pretension. For your whole ride through his musical landscape, Cox drops the wall between himself and the listener. He says things like:

There's more beneath the surface/More than what you think you hear

Living in Omaha, Cox is in the middle of a cultivated scene created by singers and songwriters and folks like Saddle Creek Records. But that's not to say that this monster of an undiscovered talent is not being recognized. Jess Stanek wrote that Cox's work is composed of "...timeless songs, hymns full of lonely highways, distillery lunch breaks, longing and realization." Still, at this point, Cox is flying under the radar – even more reason why it is a tremendous treat to have somebody of his caliber playing Denver in September.

Even when Cox leaves the Queen City, stay in touch with his sure fire rise: www.myspace.com/crookedroadblues and www.mattcoxmusic.net.

So Much Music

by B.J. Huchtemann

If you are reading this on Thursday, Jan. 10, two big shows to remember: Chicago’s Nick Moss & The Flip Tops at Murphy’s, 5:30-8:30 p.m. and a collaborative “Songwriters in the Round” show at Mick’s after 9 p.m.
Nick Moss has roots in old-school Chicago blues and jump-blues and his guitar fireworks will impress.
Mick’s Songwriters show features owner Michael Campbell teaming with Chris Saub and Matt Cox. All three have considerable songwriting and performing chops. Cover is $5.

Spotlight on Cox
Blues fans should check out Omahan Cox, if not at Mick’s, then soon. Cox’s acoustic sound is rooted in country blues and his vocals remind me of Harry Manx with overtones of Bob Dylan and John Prine in his cadence and delivery.
Cox released Folker’s Travels (Uncle Larry Records) in late 2007. The disc is very good, packed with engaging, all-original songs, fine playing and spare but thoughtful production. Cox can be heard at the Barley Street Tavern in Benson on Friday, Jan. 11, at 9 p.m. Admission is free. Opener Chris Logeman (of the Whiskey Pistols) will play a solo set.
Cox also wants folks to know about a Friday, Jan. 25, show he’s planning at P.S. Collective with Jalan Crossland from Wyoming.
“He's AMAZING,” Cox said of Crossland. “I put him up there with John Fahey, Leo Kottke, Michael Hedges, etc. " And that, music lovers, is quite a testimonial. See mattcoxmusic.net or Cox’s MySpace for music samples.

After firmly establishing himself as one of Omaha’s better barroom bards, Cox has recently reached new fan bases in towns like Denver, where he played an integral part of A Moveable Feast, a songwriters co-op, and Austin, TX where he has been invited two years in a row to perform at their prodigious SXSW festival. Already hard at work on his next studio effort, Cox has plans to tour the Midwest over the summer of ’08. If you’ve ever felt betrayed by the gloss on the radio or the shine on music videos, Cox offers a bit of good ‘ole honest-to-goodness, hollering music for the new generation.