Matt Hughes

Matt Hughes is a Canadian musician and songwriter delivering powerful, high energy, hard melodic rock music. Matt began playing drums at age 11, then picked up the guitar at age 14 and has since been a lifelong professional, performing musician. Influenced by everything from The Beatles to Metallica, Matt has extensive musical experience and incorporates different styles into his songwriting.

In 2014, Matt released his first 7 song EP entitled ‘Discovery’ which he wrote, produced and performed every instrument including drums, guitar, bass, keyboards and vocals. Matt has become a talented songwriter as you can hear in songs such as ‘The Other Light Shines’, which has everything from a beautiful acoustic intro, a melodic and dynamic guitar solo, to a climatic ending with soaring vocal harmonies. ‘Make it Better’ is a mid-tempo straight ahead rocker, while the rock-meets-techno track ‘In The End’ features techno-style beats and keyboards along with powerful drums and guitars. The thundering track ‘Make Love Not War’ rocks with a climatic crescendo ending, complimented by a screaming guitar solo and lyrics about bringing the world together. 'Can’t Bring Me Down’ features soaring vocals, a powerful chorus, solid drums and bass along with a blistering guitar solo. ‘Should Of Known You Better’ is another up tempo track with steady drums and bass, solid guitar playing and soaring vocals while ‘Gimme Your Speakers’ is the energetic opening track, complete with dynamic drums, bass and screaming guitar solos. Matt also shows his bluesy side with his Christmas single ‘The Christmas Blues’ which features his Dad on guitar (left speaker), as well as a few other guest musicians on bass and keyboards. 

Within 2 days after the release of 'The Christmas Blues', Matt happened to stumble across an online article praising the song at the Stubby's House of Christmas website. Matt’s music has also been featured numerous times on both internet and commercial FM radio stations such as his hometown rock station K-Rock 105.7 FM in Kingston, ON, where they once featured Matt’s music every night of the week for 1 month on the ‘Indie Night in Canada’ radio show. The station also featured ‘Make Love Not War’ quite frequently when it was first released. ‘Make Love Not War’ also helped Matt land a live on-air in-studio interview on another local FM station Kingston’s Classic Rock FM 96. The DJ’s we so impressed by the song that they invited Matt as a guest on their morning radio show where Matt sat in the studio and talked about his music career while also performing live on air. WOTT 94 Rock FM in Watertown NY has also played Matt’s music many times on their Friday night program Local Licks. Matt was also featured on an AC/DC tribute compilation CD called 'Rock & Roll Train a tribute to AC/DC'. 'Living Here' Magazine out of Brockville, ON also interviewed Matt for a feature article they did about him for their July, 2016 edition.

While continuing to play live around his region either with his original band, with his other musical projects or while doing session work with various artists, Matt is putting the finishing touches on his follow-up, full length album entitled Revolution. For this new album, Matt has recruited Juno award winning and veteran Canadian recording and mixing engineer and producer L. Stu Young. (Prince, Triumph, Sum 41, Downchild Blues Band). The new album will also feature guest musicians including drummer Matt Starr (Ace Frehley, Mr. Big, Black Swan), bassist Sean McNabb (Dokken, Lynch Mob, Quiet Riot), guitarist Toshiani Yanagi (guitarist for Jimmy Kimmel Live Band) and keyboardist Derek Sherinian (Joe Bonamassa, KISS, Alice Cooper, Dream Theatre).