THE ENIGMA THAT IS MATT LOVE
Matt Love is one of the greatest rock and rollers of all time, a platinum selling, Grammy award winning singer songwriter, well versed in the stylistic tropes of both rock and roll music. When Love dances, it looks like a hippo struggling to get out of an overturned rail car. When Love sings, that’s what it sounds like, too.
Early in his career, he attracted critical attention for his role in the Cringeworthies, a band that struck a delightful balance between Harry Chapin and Young Marble Giants. He relocated to Olympia, WA where he gained widespread fame in the renowned punk band Wimps, His exploits from that era are legendary. In a drunken fit one night, he drove his limousine into the swimming pool at the Chappaquiddick Hilton, drowning his entire band. Thanks to celebrity justice, he was given probation for the tragic accident. After that, he added to his legend through his work with noise masters Blood Paradise, and The Waiters and Remote Possibility. While working with that band, he and his musical partner Sknoblogger were stranded on a tiny, uncharted island between the Australian mainland and Tasmania for 14 years, where ongoing survival was a daily struggle. It was a profoundly shaping effect on Love, both as a man and a musician.
After conducting an affair with the wife of his best friend for years, eventually he married her, only to divorce a short time later. They had no children. However, he has fathered 47 children on 5 continents by 32 women. He retired from public performance in 2001, but after a near-fatal gardening accident, and a poorly understood incident involving choking and somebody else’s vomit, he returned to the music world in 2007, relocating to Canada, he continued to add to his amazing body of solo work, as well as working in the band Dweebish and performing reunion tours with The Waiters and Remote Possibility from his fortress of solitude in the great white north.
In 2011 he returned from his self-imposed tax exile in Canada, and found a new creative home in Michigan, where he joined the supergroup Julia’s Seizure, which he likes to think of as the Northern Hemisphere’s answer to the Travelling Wilburys. In addition to his own creative activities, he formed a label, Egregious Records, where he is propelling younger artists such as The Bacardy Boys, The Lunkheads, and The Sons Of The Savannah into stardom. If that’s not enough, he also became involved The Human Skab tour, which was documented in the now classic film, The Human Skab. Inspired by his experience before the camera, he quickly lined up two more film credits; portraying a beginning songwriter in Australian film “She’s A Bad, Bad Girl.” That was a tough role,” Love laughed. “I can’t even remember what it feels like to be a beginning songwriter.” He also played an OCD film buff in the as yet unreleased “Waiting For Ishtar.”
His poetic lyrics—described by a Time magazine critic as “furiously intelligent”—are often evocative, yet are sparse enough to allow for multiple interpretations. Love has cited Lulina, Tim Simmons, Vincent Knobil, Jandek and Curt Homan among his favorite singers, and beyond an occasional similarity in vocal technique, these singers’ sweeping sense of dramatic affect
He wants to perform in your town. Learn more here.