Matt Hoyles hopes people feel his music, not just hear it

by Kate Wilson on July 19th, 2017 at 4:35 PM

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In 1996, Noel Gallagher of Oasis took to the U.K.’s Top of the Pops stage strumming his iconic Union Jack Epiphone. Those four minutes of footage changed multi-instrumentalist Matt Hoyles’s life. Deciding that nothing could be cooler than playing the guitar, he badgered his parents to get him some lessons—and thus began a lifelong obsession for the New Zealand national.

Despite first falling in love with the Gallaghers’ catchy rock ’n’ roll melodies, though, it was the blues that really captured the musician’s imagination.

“From the moment I first heard that genre, it was the music that most resonated with me,” Hoyles tells the Straight on the line from a park near his Vancouver home. “I feel it in my soul—there’s something so primal about it. I wasn’t exactly the happiest teenager, so it was a really good way for me to deal with what was going on, and I guess right up until now it’s always been my outlet. There are a fair few people on the circuit doing the classic strum-along 12-bar blues, but I think one of my strengths is that when people see me really living in that music, and completely embodying it, they feel it rather than hear it.”

Starting with a formal education in jazz and classical composition in New Zealand, the performer quickly realized that it would be difficult for him to break out as an artist from, in his words, “a lonely island in the middle of the South Pacific”. Packing his bags and loading his guitars into their flight cases, Hoyles jetted off to Canada to launch his career. A fistful of gigs and a live EP later, the musician found himself at Toronto’s Canadian Music Week, talking to feted producer Earl Powell.

“Earl was on some of the mentor panels there,” Hoyles recalls. “He’s been nominated for a Grammy and he’s working with the Jacksons right now, so it was an honour to talk to him. He blew my mind. Everything he said was some really sage advice from a place that I’d never tapped into. I met him with Ben Pelchat from Toronto’s Kensington Sound studios, who was a new friend. A couple of weeks later I got a call, and Ben and Earl had been talking together
unbeknownst to me, and said that they wanted to record my next album for free. It still blows my mind.”

Laying down the entire record in just seven days, with sessions running from 11 a.m. until 3 a.m., Hoyles has crafted a unique mix of tracks, incorporating elements from swing, Delta blues, jazz, and country. A big advocate of working in a number of different genres while still staying true to his style of composition, the artist is excited to reveal the new songs at Merritt’s Rockin’ River festival, and has planned a characteristically explosive performance.

“There’s more diversity in the festival’s lineup this year,” he says. “More and more booking agents understand that genres are becoming more plastic. You listen to any really good country artist at the moment, and there are definitely elements of other styles in there, like the blues. I’m really looking forward to getting up on that stage and showing people what I bring to the table.”