Hi! My name is Mat. I play guitar and sing in a band called Obadiah Parker. Occasionally, I play guitar and sing all by myself in bars and restaurants and clubs and LA Fitness (well, I guess that was only once but it’s worth mentioning). I play a lot of original songs as well as a whole bunch of covers. Here’s a big list of people that I have covered: Radiohead, Bjork, Counting Crows, Dave Matthews, Bill Withers, Al Green, Foo Fighters, Damien Rice, Spoon, Neil Young, Coldplay, Marvin Gaye, Oasis, and Pedro the Lion. Oh yeah, and Outkast.
In August of 2006 a whole lot of people started watching this YouTube video of me covering “Hey Yaâ€. People all over the world started looking us up and emailing us and buying our music. It was pretty sweet. At this point I think that the video has been viewed well over 3 million times. Ridiculous. Our live album was one of the most popular folk albums of 2007 on iTunes (I know it’s not really “folk†but what would you call it?).
Some of the people that saw our video work for radio stations and they started playing the song. The Edge 103.9 in Phoenix was one of those stations that played it a lot. They told us that it was one of their most requested songs for months. We’ve met more and more people that have come to our shows and found our original music and we’ve been able to create quite a fan base in the Phoenix area.
This profile is to let you guys know when I’m playing solo shows. If you come by some time it would be awesome to see you and meet you and talk to you a little bit and sing you some songs!
