Matt Schofield is an English

English people

The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...

 blues

Blues

Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...

 guitarist

Guitarist

A guitarist is a musician who plays the guitar. Guitarists may play a variety of instruments such as classical guitars, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and bass guitars. Some guitarists accompany themselves on the guitar while singing.- Versatility :The guitarist controls an extremely...

 and singer, whose music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

 blends blues

Blues

Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...

 with rock and funk

Funk

Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...

y jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 rhythms.

His band, The Matt Schofield Trio, play their own material, which is a blend of blues, funk and jazz, along with covers

Cover version

In popular music, a cover version or cover song, or simply cover, is a new performance or recording of a contemporary or previously recorded, commercially released song or popular song...

 of blues classics such as Albert Collins

Albert Collins

Albert Collins was an American electric blues guitarist and singer whose recording career began in the 1960s in Houston and whose fame eventually took him to stages across the US, Europe, Japan and Australia...

' "Lights Are On, But Nobody's Home".

Influences

Schofield's guitar

Guitar

The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...

 playing is often likened to Robben Ford

Robben Ford

Robben Ford is an American blues, jazz and rock guitarist.-Biography:Ford was born in Woodlake, California, United States, but raised in Ukiah, California, and began playing the saxophone at age 10, picking up the guitar at age 13...

 in reference to his melodic and fluid style, and jazzy lines. However, Schofield was also influenced by B.B. King, Freddie King

Freddie King

Freddie King , thought to have been born as Frederick Christian, originally recording as Freddy King, and nicknamed "the Texas Cannonball", was an influential African-American blues guitarist and singer. He is often mentioned as one of "the Three Kings" of electric blues guitar, along with Albert...

, Albert King

Albert King

Albert King was an American blues guitarist and singer, and a major influence in the world of blues guitar playing.-Career:...

, Muddy Waters

Muddy Waters

McKinley Morganfield , known as Muddy Waters, was an American blues musician, generally considered the "father of modern Chicago blues"...

, Eric Clapton

Eric Clapton

Eric Patrick Clapton, CBE, is an English guitarist and singer-songwriter. Clapton is the only three-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: once as a solo artist, and separately as a member of The Yardbirds and Cream. Clapton has been referred to as one of the most important and...

, Albert Collins

Albert Collins

Albert Collins was an American electric blues guitarist and singer whose recording career began in the 1960s in Houston and whose fame eventually took him to stages across the US, Europe, Japan and Australia...

, Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix

James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...

, Billy Gibbons

Billy Gibbons

William Frederick "Billy" Gibbons is an American musician, actor and car customizer, best known as the guitarist of the Texas blues-rock band ZZ Top. He is also the lead singer and composer for many of the band's songs. Gibbons is known for playing his Gretsch Billy Bo guitar and his famous 1959...

, Stevie Ray Vaughan

Stevie Ray Vaughan

Stephen Ray "Stevie Ray" Vaughan was an American electric blues guitarist and singer. He was the younger brother of Jimmie Vaughan and frontman for Double Trouble, a band that included bassist Tommy Shannon and drummer Chris Layton. Born in Dallas, Vaughan moved to Austin at the age of 17 and...

 and Jimmie Vaughan

Jimmie Vaughan

James Lawrence "Jimmie" Vaughan is an American blues rock guitarist and singer from Dallas, Texas, United States. He is the older brother of the late Stevie Ray Vaughan....

.

Recordings

Schofield has four studio

Recording studio

A recording studio is a facility for sound recording and mixing. Ideally both the recording and monitoring spaces are specially designed by an acoustician to achieve optimum acoustic properties...

 album

Album

An album is a collection of recordings, released as a single package on gramophone record, cassette, compact disc, or via digital distribution. The word derives from the Latin word for list .Vinyl LP records have two sides, each comprising one half of the album...

s and two live album

Live album

A live album is a recording consisting of material recorded during stage performances using remote recording techniques, commonly contrasted with a studio album...

s. The first of the live discs, The Trio, Live was recorded

Sound recording and reproduction

Sound recording and reproduction is an electrical or mechanical inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of sound recording technology are analog recording and digital recording...

 at the Bishop's Blues club at The Half Moon, Bishop's Stortford

Bishop's Stortford

Bishop's Stortford is a historic market town and civil parish in the district of East Hertfordshire in the county of Hertfordshire in England. It is situated just west of the M11 motorway, on the county boundary with Essex and is the closest large town to London Stansted Airport and part of the...

 in 2004 and, funded and released by Richard Pavitt on his Nugene record label

Record label

In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...

, gave the band their first breakthrough. The first studio album, Siftin' Thru Ashes was released in 2005. This album showcased Schofield as a songwriter, writing or co-writing eight out of eleven of the tracks. AllMusic called Schofield's approach "an enjoyable demonstration of what can happen when blues-rock and blues-jazz are united". The second live album, Live At The Jazz Cafe! was recorded at the London Jazz Cafe in April 2005, and was made available as a web only release. Schofield is one of only two living British artists to be given a four star (excellent) rating in the Penguin Book of Blues Recordings.

The release of The Trio, Live prompted Schofield to be featured in a Guitarist

Guitarist (magazine)

Guitarist is a monthly music making magazine published by Future Publishing in the United Kingdom. The magazine features reviews of newly released guitars, amplifiers and other equipment, plus interviews with guitar players, features on the guitar industry, news articles, and features on playing...

magazine

Magazine

Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...

 article, listing the nine notable up and coming blues guitarists, Schofield being the only non-American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. Of the album they said "britblues meets jazz via N'Orleans - all played with the kind of sizzling guitar that just does not often surface in Fairford, Gloucestershire". In 2007, Guitar & Bass Magazine picked Schofield as one of the "Top 10 British Blues Guitarists of All Time". In August 2009, Schofield released Heads, Tails, & Aces, his third studio effort.

Band

Schofield performs with an organ trio

Organ trio

An organ trio, in a jazz context, is a group of three jazz musicians, typically consisting of a Hammond organ player, a drummer, and either a jazz guitarist or a saxophone player. In some cases the saxophonist will join a trio which consists of an organist, guitarist, and drummer, making it a quartet...

 (guitar

Guitar

The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...

, organ

Electric organ

In biology, the electric organ is an organ common to all electric fish used for the purposes of creating an electric field. The electric organ is derived from modified nerve or muscle tissue...

, and drum

Drum

The drum is a member of the percussion group of musical instruments, which is technically classified as the membranophones. Drums consist of at least one membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a shell and struck, either directly with the player's hands, or with a...

s). Organ trios are mostly associated with the 1950s and 1960s U.S.

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 groups led by organist

Organist

An organist is a musician who plays any type of organ. An organist may play solo organ works, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers or instrumental soloists...

s such as Jimmy Smith

Jimmy Smith (musician)

Jimmy Smith was a jazz musician whose performances on the Hammond B-3 electric organ helped to popularize this instrument...

. Blues bands more commonly use trios of guitar, bass and drums, quartets (guitar, keyboards, bass, and drums) or quintets (guitar, rhythm guitar, keyboards, bass, and drums). In Schofield's organ trio, organist Jonny Henderson

Jonny Henderson

Jonny Henderson is a British keyboard player most known for his work on the Hammond Organ. He has been voted Keyboard Player of the Year in both the 2010 and 2011 British Blues Awards....

 plays a Hammond organ

Hammond organ

The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond in 1934 and manufactured by the Hammond Organ Company. While the Hammond organ was originally sold to churches as a lower-cost alternative to the wind-driven pipe organ, in the 1960s and 1970s it became a standard keyboard...

, performing basslines using his left hand, and playing chords and lead lines with his right hand. The trio's drummer is Evan Jenkins. Jeff Walker played bass on the final track of Siftin' Thru' Ashes. In 2009, as of the recording of Heads, Tails & Aces, The Matt Schofield Trio became The Matt Schofield Band, a four-piece, featuring Jeff 'The Funk' Walker on bass, and also replacing Evan Jenkins with Alain Baudry. At a concert at the Swindon

Swindon

Swindon is a large town within the borough of Swindon and ceremonial county of Wiltshire, in South West England. It is midway between Bristol, west and Reading, east. London is east...

 Arts Centre on 22 October 2009, the band reverted to a trio. In June 2010, Kevin Hayes, replaced Evan Jenkins in the band.

Discography

• 2004: The Trio, Live (NUG601)

Uncle Junior

Everyday I Have The Blues

Bloody Murder

Treat Me Lowdown

Cissy Strut

Travellin' South

Sittin' On Top Of The World

Hippology

• 2005: Live at the Jazz Café (NUG503)

All You Need

Uncle Junior

Lights Are On, But Nobody's Home

Travellin' South

Cissy Strut

On My Way

It's Your Thing

• 2005: Siftin' Thru' Ashes (NUG501)

All You Need

Siftin' Thru Ashes

Djam

Lights Are On, But Nobody's Home

The Letter

Back At Square One

People Say

How I Try

On My Way

Middle Ground

Hard Lines

• 2007: Ear To The Ground

Pack it Up

Troublemaker

Ear to the Ground

Heart Don't Need a Compass

Once in a While

Room at the Back

Someone

Searchin'

Move Along

Cookie Jar

When it all Comes Down

• 2009: Heads, Tails & Aces

What I Wanna Hear

Live Wire

War We Wage

Betting Man

Lay It Down

Can't Put You Down

Woman Across the River

Nothing Left

I Told Ya

Stranger Blues

Not Raining Now

• 2011: Anything But Time

Anything But Time

See Me Through

At Times We Do Forget

Shipwrecked

Dreaming of You

Wrapped Up in Love

Where Do I Have to Stand

One Look (and I'm Hooked)

Don't Know What I'd Do

Share Our Smile Again

• Other albums featuring Matt Schofield
  • Swagger - Ian Siegal
    Ian Siegal
    Ian Siegal is a British blues singer and guitarist, whose style reflects the more rootsy side of the genre, drawing on influences such as Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, Son House, Junior Kimbrough and Tom Waits....
    
     - produced
    Record producer
    A record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...
    
     by Schofield
  • Meat And Potatoes - Ian Siegal - co-produced by Schofield
  • My Day Is Just Beginning - The Lee Sankey Group
  • She's Not Alone - The Lee Sankey Group
  • Two Timing Lover Boy - Dino Baptiste
  • A Different Picture - Earl Green
  • Driving Savage Groove - Harmonica Posse
  • Staying Power - Dana Gillespie
    Dana Gillespie
    Dana Gillespie is an English actress and singer.-Career:Gillespie was born to the Baron De Winterstein Gillespie, an Austrian radiologist, and his wife. She grew up in England and her family's villa in Maccagno, a village on Lake Maggiore, Italy...
    
    
  • Experienced - Dana Gillespie
  • Songs Of Love - Dana Gillespie
  • Back To Blues - Dana Gillespie

External links

• Matt Schofield official website
• Nugene Records