Matt Austin

About

If you are a country music fan, you have got to take a listen to Matt Austin! “After all of my history, I have now grown in to the artist that best fits who I am, and it shows in this record,” says Matt Austin, “and it is good to do music that can touch your soul and raise the hairs on your arms, because that is what I grew up on, and why I fell in love with music in the first place.”

Matt Austin grew up in the metropolitan Detroit area with a guitar-playing father but he didn’t gain interest in playing until his uncle from Texas moved to Michigan. When Matt was 9 years old, his uncle introduced him to a Stevie Ray Vaughn cassette tape. Matt said “what is that sound?”, and his Dad said “that’s a guitar.” He immediately asked his father for a guitar, and got one that Christmas. Over the next five years, his father taught him classic rock, southern rock and blues, and used artists such as Lynard Skynard, Eric Clapton, Jimmi Hendrix, and of course Stevie Ray Vaughn, to help inspire the young artist. This led to Matt’s involvement in bands and song writing beginning at the age of 14.

Nicknamed “The Kid”, by 17 years old, seasoned musicians watched as Matt played songs such as VooDoo Chile, Cocaine and Red House. At 18, he joined a classic rock and blues cover band as the lead guitarist and then moved forward with his own project, Bridgewood. Besides playing lead and back up vocals, Matt led the band, and wrote the songs. While having some success locally and opening for national acts such as Vince Neil, Trapt and Sponge, a friend asked him to help form a band with multiple recent national act members. They diverted him and they formed the Paper Street Saints. PSS became a major Detroit headliner, regularly packing houses throughout the metro area and opening for national acts as large as Bon Jovi with 20,000 fans in a sold out arena.