Matt Thigpen

I came across the Bio of Rodney Crowell written in the first person, and thought it a very interesting take, especially for someone so well known. So here it goes:My name is Matt Thigpen. I am a Texas-born, Texas-based singer/songwriter. I was born in Waco, Texas and am currently living in Wharton (southwest of Houston). I have always loved to sing, but never really became serious about it until I began playing (if you can call it that) guitar my freshman year in college. I was 19 years old. I guess picking up that guitar brought something out in me that I always knew was inside somewhere, but until then never really had an avenue for exploring. I played night and day, often at the expense of my grades, picking out Eagles and Buffet tunes with the simplest chords until I had four or five songs I could play and sing for friends and strangers at weekend gatherings. The first time I had a few people singing along, I was hooked. I grew up listening to Elvis and the Beatles, and later mostly to whatever was playing on popular country radio. My favorites were Merle Haggard, George Strait, Waylon & Wille, and George Jones. I would memorize every song they sang on the radio, and sing at the top of my lungs when no one was listening. I would rarely sing in front of anyone. Singing country music felt very natural to me, like I was born to do it.At the urging of a friend of mine at Texas A&M in 1994, I auditioned for a country music review called “Music Country Music”. The show ran in the summers at both Opryland in Nashville and Fiesta Texas in San Antonio. I was the only male performer in my cast to be chosen from the audition that year. The experience was both awesome and terrifying at the same time. Awesome because I got to dress up like my favorite country artists and sing their songs for very large crowds, and terrifying because I had to learn to dance in three weeks!! That experience just may be the reason I am still performing and writing songs today. Being chosen for those shows and performing in front of hundreds of people was the validation I needed to take my talent to “the next level”. I also wrote my first song that summer, having been exposed to people my age and younger who were already writing songs. The discovery of my writing ability changed me for good.After doing a few keg parties, open mic nights, and coffee houses around College Station I finally got my first “paying gig”. I made fifty bucks at a little bar called The Tap, in College Station. They had a decent crowd that Wednesday night so they invited me back the following week. That was my first taste of what it was like to be a bona fid country singer. Oh yeah, did I mention it was just me and my guitar? The band would come later.I played my first band gig at a little old saloon in Egypt, Texas (yes, its really called Egypt). The placed was packed with a couple hundred people and I was terrified, but the crowd didn’t seem to notice. They danced every song and I had the time of my life. That was when I knew I would be doing this for a very long time. I have never felt a feeling like I get when I’m on stage singing my songs and people are not only listening, but really into it. There is nothing like that feeling for me. So after I graduated from A&M, I went on the road with a band called Texas Avenues headed up by my good friend (also a singer/songwriter, Jason Manning. We had the time of our lives playing dance halls throughout the southwest and blowing all of the money we made on Beer and Gambling after the gigs. What a time!I recorded my first album in 1998, again with the help and encouragement my friend Jason Manning. I flew to Nashville, where Jason was living at the time, and made a record at Creative Workshop. This is a very famous studio among all of those “in the know” in Nashville. This is where Jimmy Buffet made many of his earliest Master recordings. I was blown away by the experience…another one of those “firsts” that kept me pushing forward. The album is called Gone To Texas and I have included a track from it on this page.I recorded my next album in 2004 and released it in 2005. The album is called Way Past Waco and contains 10 of my own compositions out of a total of 12 songs. The album earned me a nomination for “male vocalist of the year” at the 2006 Texas Music Awards presented by the Academy of Texas Music. Michael Martin Murphy hosted the show, and my band and I had the privilege of performing there. My favorite song from this album by far is Down At The Bay. I wrote this song shortly after the passing of my Grandfather, who I was very close to. He retired on the Texas coast and he taught me how to fish when I was seven or eight years old. Some of my best memories are going out on the bay with him in the little wooden boat with the 15 horsepower Evinrude motor. Sometimes it would start, and sometimes not. Of all my songs, I am most proud of Down At The Bay. It is still difficult for me to sing it without choking up a bit. Today, I am still writing songs and still looking for that “one big break” in the form of a hit song or record. I play as many gigs as possible and I enjoy playing live more than ever. Thank-you for visiting my space and I hope you enjoy my music. Come out and catch my show some time!Matt Thigpen