Matt Butcher is a favorite of the Bay area music scene even though he doesn't technically live here. The Orlando-based singer-songwriter produces poignant, earnest, melancholy-leaning alt country and folk-Americana, his high-toned vocals crystalline clear, tender, and delicately sweet.
His sensitive introspective 2008 debut, Me and My Friends, was co-produced by Justin Beckler and put him on the map with its bittersweet melancholy, earning the artist heaps of acclaim and attention. Last year, in the midst of a busy performance schedule that included opening slots for the likes of The Avett Brothers, Conor Oberst, and Jason Isbell, he re-convened with Beckler and began working on his sophomore record. The result, Ghostwriting, employs his usual blend of piano, pedal steel and acoustic guitars, though the songs are less personal and more about the insights he's gained in life so far, like "The Road," a forlorn number about the hard paths we travel ("And it goes on, all night long, through 'til dawn"), and the title track, "Ghostwriting," a song that would be morbid if it didn't feel so gentle, hopeful and uplifting, even as Butcher waxes on the traces and memories we leave behind after we die, and implores that we meet our own end as if it weren't daunting but "a bridge on the road to all, we'll go there dancing, waltzing between the stars."
For this release show, Butcher opens a short solo acoustic set that's followed by a full-band blowout with a re-arranged Revolvers.
Details: Matt Butcher & The Revolvers Album Release Show with Will Quinlan & The Diviners, Fri., June 24, 9 p.m. doors, New World Brewery, Ybor City, $7; and and Sat., June 25, 8 p.m., Hideaway Café, St. Petersburg, $7.
This article appears in Jun 23-29, 2011.