Matt Yeager

My brother bought me an Oscar Schmidt Washburn guitar for Christmas in 1998. I taught myself all the necessary chords over the next few months. I began writing songs almost immediately. Most of the first ones were either tongue-in-cheek and comedy, or just really bad. I started to take a more serious approach later in the year and on into 1999.With enough songs written, I teamed up with Jeff Julian, my Brother Neil, and Kurt Buchmeier in 2000 to form the short lived "Little Nathan, Jr." Played some really good shows, but didn't last too long. But I kept writing.With some financial help from family and friends, I self-released my first EP "In the Company of Others," in August 2001. I pressed 100 copies. They are all gone. If you have one, you're very lucky. And still I kept on writingIn the fall of 2002, I had acquired enough good songs to catch the attention of Jeff Julian once again. Wanting to start a band and tour, Jeff proposed we hook up and play together. We put our songs together, harmonized on each others songs, and wrote together. And in a few months we had the workings of a new band. We called it "Deconstructing Jim." We played accoustically together for almost a year before bringing on Bass and Drums (Trevor Hoger and Brain Cann, respectively). With a newer higher volume rock sound, some of the lighter accoustic songs naturally fell to the wayside. But the songs kept on coming. It was up to me to determine if a song that I wrote was "rocking" enough to bring to the band. If I thought it wasn't, I just kept it. And still kept on writing.The band rages on as a 3 piece and I now play bass, with Jason Dixx now on drums.Since 2002, I have acquired a great many songs that were too mellow to bring to the band. My brother, knowing this about me, convinced me to come down to Champaign and record a bunch of these songs with world renowned recording legend Colin "the punchmaster" Larson.So this is where they will go until I can release them somehow...And still I keep writing.