- Matt Duke (musician)
-
Matt Duke 
Background information Birth name Matthew Thomas Duke Born January 20, 1985
Reston, VirginiaOrigin Mount Laurel Township, New Jersey Genres Alternative rock, acoustic, singer-songwriter Occupations Musician, singer-songwriter Instruments Vocals, guitar Years active 2003–present Labels Mad Dragon, Rykodisc Associated acts TFDI Website mattdukemusic.net Matthew Thomas Duke (born January 20, 1985) is an American musician and singer-songwriter who was born in Reston, Virginia[1] and raised in Mount Laurel Township, New Jersey.[2] He released an independent album, Winter Child, through the student-run Mad Dragon Records at Drexel University[3] in Philadelphia. Later he signed to the major label Rykodisc and has since released multiple albums: two full-length albums, Kingdom Underground and One Day Die, and two EPs.[4]
Contents
Early life
Duke was born in Reston, Virginia to Angela, a teacher, and Thomas, a contracts negotiator.[1] He is of Irish, Italian and Polish descent,[1] and grew up with a religious Irish Catholic[5] upbringing. He lived in Reston until the age of 5, when his family moved to Mt. Laurel, New Jersey, where he lived until adulthood.[1] Growing up in South Jersey[6][7] he attended the Our Lady of Good Counsel parish grade school until 8th grade, and then the all-male, private Jesuit St. Joe's Prep in Philadelphia for high school. As a child and teenager, he performed in local theatre productions through school and community programs.[1] In his late teens and early 20s he worked a variety of jobs including: sandwich maker,[8] framer, gardener and construction worker.[1]
Career
Early career
As a child Duke played the piano at the behest of his mother.[1] He then quit playing and picked up guitar at the age of 13.[5][9][10] The guitar was his mother's '70s Penco and she left him to teach himself, after he had quit playing piano she said she would not pay for lessons lest he quit again.[10] The next three years Duke spent learning to play the guitar,[7] from internet tablature[8] and playing along with the radio to bands like Alice in Chains and Nirvana.[8] By the time that he was sixteen he started to play live shows at a local coffeehouse in Collingswood, New Jersey called the The Living Room,[5] doing a mixture of original material and cover songs. He also performed at open-mic nights at The Point in Philadelphia.[1] For his 18th birthday his family gave him a present of recording time[5] to record the songs he had written for prosperity. Duke and a friend recorded six songs in two hours at his church, and CD copies ended up being passed around to friends and family.[5]
Mad Dragon: XYX & Winter Child
One of the CDs ended up in the hands of his friend[11] who was a student at the newly-formed Mad Dragon Records,[8][9] which is a student-run record label[3][12] operating out of Drexel University.[4] The CD was played in an A&R class at Mad Dragon, which then lead to Mad Dragon asking Duke to sign a one-year promotional deal with them, with the intent of using students for all aspects of the process like recording and promotion. Duke, along with two other artists, Julia Othmer and Trisha O'Keefe,[3] were asked to contribute songs to a compilation record, which became XYX. XYX was the first CD released by Mad Dragon and featured four songs from each artist, with O'Keefe and Duke using the Drexel recording studios in the fall of 2004. Jim Klein, a professor at Drexel and part of the Mad Dragon program, handled production for Duke's part of the album. Duke, O'Keefe and Othmer supported the album with a small tour around Northeast.[1]
After the tour was over, Mad Dragon wanted Duke to sign a deal to produce a full-length album. Winter Child, the next album released by Duke, was recorded on-and-off over the next year.[3] Half was recorded in Drexel with Jim Klein, and it was finished in a New York studio with Stewart Lerman and Steuart Smith.[1] During the making of Winter Child, Ryko became interested in using their distribution company, Ryko Distribution, to handle distribution of content from Mad Dragon and other student-run record labels. This deal lead to Ryko Distribution distributing the Winter Child record. A student-made music video for the song "Oysters" was also made and the song was treated as the single from the album.[3]
Matt Duke performing at the City Winery in NYC on April 28, 2011
Kingdom Underground, Acoustic Kingdom Underground and TFDI
After the release and tour to promote the album, Ryko took interest in Duke and asked him to sign a record deal with them, to produce the full-length album that would become Kingdom Underground. Using a demo of the song "I've Got Atrophy On the Brain" that was recorded with students at Drexel, Ryko got the interest of producer Marshall Altman and Altman agreed to meet Duke in Los Angeles to see how the two would work.[1] After the meeting in Los Angeles, Duke and Altman agreed to work, leaving Duke to head back to Philadelphia to prepare and write songs for the release.[5] With the songs written, Duke traveled to Burbank, California to record with Altman[7][9] and finished the production of the album in just four weeks.[5] Kingdom Underground was released later that year on September 23, 2008.[13]
Months after the tour and release of Kingdom Underground Ryko asked Duke to record a supplemental EP of acoustic tracks to the Kingdom Underground album, called Acoustic Kingdom Underground. This was to match the feel and sound of Duke's live shows, as he was touring solo without a band.[13] The producer of that EP, Jason Finkel, would later become the producer of Duke's next full-length release.[1] After recording Acoustic Kingdom Underground, Duke was invited to be the opener for a co-headlining tour featuring Jay Nash and Tony Lucca.[14] During this time the three became friends and recorded an impromptu collection of songs during the tour at a studio in Evanston, Illinois,[14] calling the collaboration TFDI, they released these songs as an EP with the same name.
One Day Die
Following the tour with Jay Nash and Tony Lucca, Duke returned home and began to focus on his next full-length album, One Day Die. Duke asked Finkel, who had produced his acoustic EP,[4] to be the producer for this album and the two began work in September 2009 on material. The album was then pushed back indefinitely, when, on November 1 of that same year, Duke suffered a hand injury in an accident,[4] breaking two bones near his pinkie on his right hand.[1] Duke was unable to play the guitar after the surgery and during his rehabilitation, but he worked on writing during his downtime, and was successfully able to play guitar again a few months later. Well enough to play, production for the album began again, and the direction of the album changed as a result of the accident. The album was released on March 29, 2011, two and a half years later than Kingdom Underground.
Style
Duke has said that his musical styling has been influenced by the likes of '90s grunge[10] and rock bands like Pearl Jam,[5] Alice in Chains,[9] Soundgarden[8] and Nirvana.[8] Other influences include Ani DiFranco[10][11][13] and Conor Oberst.[8][13] He tours primarily as a solo act, with just an acoustic guitar for accompaniment.
As a song-writer, Duke's lyrical influences greatly refer to his religious upbringing and literary references,[6] with many songs either directly based on novels,[10] literary characters and/or religion.[3] The track from Kingdom Underground's "Rabbit" is based on the John Updike Rabbit series of novels,[10][15][16] for example. Other songs are based or reference such works as Ayn Rand,[10] Don DeLillo, John Milton[10] and Leon Uris.[10] References to religion can be seen in songs like "The Father, The Son and The Harlot's Ghost" and the title track to Kingdom Underground, which is a song about the story of Adam & Eve through the perspective of Satan.[17]
Discography
- Floating Mass Demo/The Major Joke EP (2003)
- XYX (2005)
- Winter Child (2006)
- Kingdom Underground (2008)
- Acoustic Kingdom Underground (2009)
- TFDI (2009)
- One Day Die (2011)
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Evan Amos (April 28, 2011). "Evan Amos interview". http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Evan-Amos/Interviews/MattDuke. Retrieved May 4, 2011.
- ^ Staff. "SJ Faces: Matt Duke", Courier-Post, January 8, 2006. Accessed June 19, 2011. "Musician Matt Duke is a 20-year-old native of Mount Laurel who is recording his first acoustic album for release in March."
- ^ a b c d e f S.J. Dibai. "One Note Ahead interview". http://onenoteahead.blogspot.com/2006/10/winter-child-for-all-seasons.html. Retrieved May 3, 2011.
- ^ a b c d "Blackbird bio". http://blackbirdartistsagency.com/artists/matt-duke. Retrieved May 3, 2011.
- ^ a b c d e f g h "Music Emissions bio". http://www.musicemissions.com/artists/Matt%7CDuke. Retrieved May 3, 2011.
- ^ a b "Ryko: Kingdom Underground overview". http://www.rykodisc.com/mattduke/home/?id=74206288&display=min. Retrieved May 3, 2011.
- ^ a b c Amanda Brumfield. "Pop Rock Candy Mountain interview". http://poprockcandymountain.com/?p=1654. Retrieved May 3, 2011.
- ^ a b c d e f g "Altsounds interview". http://hangout.altsounds.com/features/104678-q-a-interview-matt-duke.html. Retrieved May 3, 2011.
- ^ a b c d Tom Coyle. "The Correspondence interview". http://thecorrespondencemusic.com/post/4573079687/matt-dukes-one-day-die-and-the-road-to-the-tla-and. Retrieved May 3, 2011.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Ross Currie. "Phillyist Interview". http://phillyist.com/2009/09/28/phillyist_interviews_matt_duke.php. Retrieved May 3, 2011.
- ^ a b "Seventeen interview". http://www.seventeen.com/entertainment/features/matt-duke-aug09. Retrieved May 3, 2011.
- ^ Meghan Ziegler. "Phillyist 2007 interview". http://phillyist.com/2007/03/04/almostspring_ch.php. Retrieved May 3, 2011.
- ^ a b c d "myspace bio". http://www.myspace.com/mattduke. Retrieved May 3, 2011.
- ^ a b "Ryko: TFDI overview". http://www.rykodisc.com/mattduke/home/?id=CMS-8a0af81224c70dce0124fa432fa4376b&display=min. Retrieved May 3, 2011.
- ^ Kate Branch. "Teen Vogue interview". http://www.teenvogue.com/industry/blogs/music/2009/02/songwriter-matt-duke-channels-updike.html. Retrieved May 3, 2011.
- ^ "Ryko: Acoustic Kingdom Underground overview". http://www.rykodisc.com/mattduke/home/?id=110876174&display=min. Retrieved May 3, 2011.
- ^ Fitz. "blogcritics review: One Day Die". http://blogcritics.org/music/article/music-review-matt-duke-one-day/. Retrieved May 3, 2011.
External links
Categories:- Rykodisc artists
- 1985 births
- Living people
- American male singers
- American people of Irish descent
- American people of Italian descent
- American people of Polish descent
- Musicians from New Jersey
- People from Mount Laurel Township, New Jersey
- People from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Singer-songwriters
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
