Fiddle and Vocals - Julie Bates
Guitar and Vocals - Andrew Morris
Recorded in Knoxville, TN and Longwood, FL by Andrew Morris.
Mixed and Mastered by Andrew Morris
Special Thanks to: Reese and Rhonda, Don in Knoxville, Dying For Bad Music, everyone who has helped us on tour (you know who you are, sincerely thank you), our supporters, friends and families.
The Matchsellers’ newest release, The Matchsellers See The Light, provides listeners with a taste of life on the road, in the form of a bluegrass gospel album. The band has toured relentlessly since June when they ended their Fulbright grants in Leipzig, Germany, and began a new life as musicians. After performing in Germany, the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, and the Midwestern and Southern United States, they decided to record an album that showcased their more traditional repertoire, which plays an important role in their live performance.
The album was recorded in makeshift bedroom studios while on tour in Florida and Tennessee. Using a single microphone and minimal editing, the raw, unfiltered recordings create an atmosphere of intimacy and honesty. They are as much a reflection on the rambling spirit as the Holy Spirit. The Matchsellers See the Light tells a story of searching, pilgrimage, and grace, and invites the listener to travel with the duo in the very rooms where they recorded and slept.
The life of small, underground bluegrass musicians is one of great variety, much like the tracks on The Matchsellers See The Light. These 8 gospel songs are a mix of lightning fast rhythms and slow, heartfelt solos. They include well-known standards (I Saw The Light, Amazing Grace), a few lesser known songs (The Heavenly Light is Shining, I Am A Pilgrim) as well as original compositions (The Easy Way, Take My Body). Amid this variety, the tight vocal harmonies, powerful rhythmic guitar and emotive fiddle give the album a sonic consistency.
Morris and Bates are very proud of "The Matchsellers See The Light" and hope you enjoy listening to it as much they enjoyed creating it.
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The Matchsellers – The Matchsellers See The Light
I wrote about The Matchsellers last year and also about the weird circumstances that this american folk duo was living near to me, in Leipzig for quite some time. Unfortunately we never met and I missed them in Atlanta last year. But who knows - some day I will meet Andrew and Julie and talk to them in my broadest saxony dialect and they might be able to understand me.
The Matchsellers are back in the US now and playing here and there. This album is some kind of Bluegrass-gospel-folk. It's hard to describe. Fiddle, guitar strumming and picking and harmony singing, more traditional songs incl. the burner Amazing Grace.
I'd say they are living for the music - probably not from it - but that's another thing.
The recordings were made on their travels through Europe and the US and if you have some money overy, get it on bandcamp or stream it for free.
Peace!
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