Located at 431 W 16th St
New York, NY 10011
between 9th and 10th Ave
(212) 414-5994 |
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Matt Duke
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Charlotte Martin
October 3,2009
Concert starts @ 7PM
Doors open @ 6 PM
Tickets $17.00 in advance
$20.00 day of show.
Buy Tickets Online [more]
Full dinner menu available / General Admission Seated Show / All Ages / First come, first seated / $10 min per person at tables
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Anyone who caught singer-songwriter Matt Duke at his early shows in the Philadelphia area or on Manhattan’s Lower East Side a few years back would have discovered an artist whose musical vocabulary was nothing short of astonishing. His tee-shirt/jeans/baseball cap attire may have seemed reassuringly familiar, but Duke’s performances immediately took listeners into uncharted territory. A self-taught guitarist, Duke’s acoustic playing was often full of abrupt stops and starts, unexpected changes of direction, complex rhythms that came off more like jazz than folk or rock, challenging the limits of his acoustic instrument. His voice could be quietly confessional at first, then escalate to an impassioned wail, as startlingly intense by the end of a song as it was gently intimate at the start. In a world of heart-on-their-sleeve singer-songwriters, Duke pushed past the conventions of the genre, combining elements of jazz, folk and pop, even grunge and progressive rock, with unbridled emotion to create a sound very much his own.
Duke has always been drawn to music as a means of self-discovery. As a teenager, Duke initially picked up the guitar for a time-honored reason: “solely for the purpose of getting girls,” figuring out how to play the instrument on his own. When a coffee house in Collingswood, New Jersey, started offering open-mike nights for local talent, Duke decided to get a little more serious about his burgeoning craft. The coffee shop proprietors, recounts Duke, “were always good about letting local people come in and perform. Ninety percent of the time they sucked, but it was always endearing to go in and watch people go up and play. For me, it was perfect because I sucked too and I had virtually no songwriting experience. I would do these shows with my friend Brendan, who played a hand drum, a djembe. I started writing more because he and I were hanging out a lot. Most of the songs weren’t very good initially, but they started getting better and better.”
Duke’s parents eventually surprised him with a gift of some recording time – a live session at his parents’ church, helmed by Duke’s childhood piano teacher. There was magic in the studio even then: a copy of the resulting demos made it into the hands of a grammar school buddy, then a Drexel University student enrolled in the college’s innovative music business program, and the friend brought it into his A&R class for critiquing. The class instructors urged the student to bring in his talented friend – they wanted to feature Duke’s songs on the first compilation from Drexel’s in-house record label, Mad Dragon. That led to an acoustic-based, full-length album, Winter Child, on Mad Dragon, distributed by Ryko. The folks at Ryko were as impressed as those Drexel professors, and Duke was quickly offered the opportunity to join the label’s artist roster.
Music lovers in Philadelphia have proven to be staunch supporters of Duke, as has influential radio station WXPN-FM. Now it’s everybody else’s turn to discover the mysterious, compelling, emotionally charged world Duke has created with Kingdom Underground. Matt Duke myspace
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