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Biography

Matthew Phillips was born too late to witness first hand the music of the 60’s and 70’s. It is this music that will eventually influence him like no other. Born in Southern California in 1973, music would not be important to him for ten years. Like many others, it was the music of Van Halen that inspired an extreme interest in the guitar. He started learning the guitar at age 11, and has not put it down since.

The only outlet early on was playing in school band. Forming a band with friends was always talked about but never became a reality. Matthew learned to play bass in his Junior High orchestra and subsequently played in the school Jazz band in 8th and 9th grade. His influences began to expand in High School listening to more than just Rock. Suddenly, people like Joe Satriani, Steve Vai and Eric Johnson became compositional influences as well as guitar idols. After High School, there were three very important discoveries for Matthew: Led Zeppelin, Rush and The Beatles.

After listening to progressive rock music for a while, it was natural that Matthew would join such an outfit. In April of 1995, he joined a group that would eventually become Prymary. A year and a half later, it was time to pursue a project to just have fun and play! Matthew joined The Gregg Edwards Band in the winter of 1996 and played many-a-gig around the Inland Empire area in Southern California. The following year, he joined a second band call The Loaded Dice that was a Rockabilly cover band and learned a lot about the bass in both bands. By the dawn of 1999, it was apparent that Matthew was ignoring what he considered his primary instrument: the Guitar. In February, he decided it was time for something new. ‘I formed a cover band with good friends that would play all sorts of music-new and old.

At the same time, I was writing music and recording demos at home.’ Those demos would eventually become Never Far From Mind. It would take three years to complete this project and Matthew found himself in other bands during that time. In 2001, he joined the Blues Buzzards as a bassist. The Blues Buzzards played classic Rock, R&B, and Blues. Like the previous bands, the Buzzards provided another great learning experience that would influence the music he will write in the future. In 2002, Matthew joined an up and coming Contemporary Country band called the Pam Scheller band.

2003 will be an exciting year for Matthew Phillips. July will see the independent release of Never Far From Mind, and the debut performance of The Pam Scheller band. There are plans to perform in support of Never Far From Mind. Only time will bring forth what the future holds…

Discography
1997	The Gregg Edwards Band - The July Show	Independent
2003	Matthew Phillips - Never Far From Mind	Soundscape1