Rock The House

On Wednesday this week, we were priviledged to have a couple aspiring musicians play a small house concert for us. Some of you guys may remember Matt Jones who went to TCU with us. Others of you might not be aware of our friend Matt. Well Matt has been pursuing his music career for the past few years and has release a number of CD's and is currently touring Texas. As a result he visited us while he was on the Dallas part of his tour which is how we got our house rocked!

As part of marketing his music, Matt has a program he dubbed "Rock the House." As he tours accross the country with fellow musicians he finds fans in the area and offers to play a small house concert for that fan and 15-20 of their close friends. It is actually a brilliant piece of social marketting, and appears to be very effective from the experiences he told us about. Well since it was time for another Dallas/Fort Worth visit, of course we wanted to be those fans!

So we had Matt Jones and Landon Smith over and they preformed a number of their pieces from their new CD releases as well as some classics. Landon Smith is a musician that hails from Lubbock. From what I gathered he has played in a number of bands in the past, and is currently on a solo tour. Both of them are talented guitarist with quality vocals. Landon played songs of his called "Shakin", "Baby", "Bad Luck", and "Rosanne." Matt played some of his tunes named "Parked Car", "Something New", "Your Problems for Mine", and "Austin." He also played us an old favorite of a lot of folks that I think is titled "Single." Anyway, if any of you attended Frogpalooza '02 you might remember Matt opened for the Benjamin Gate at that festival. I'm still very thankful to Matt and I think it was Tyler for opening for us at that event.

It was interesting seeing these two artists play together. They had strong qualities that were definately unique to each of them. I was impressed with Landon's guitar work. He worked the frets and scales with an ease that made his melodies very fluid. It also allowed for some really creative tunes from a musical sense. Also Landon appears to have carried a lot of personal experiences into his music that provide a diverse backdrop of ideas he draws upon in his music. It allows a person to find many different aspects of life in each of his various songs.

For those of you that have heard Matt preform before, you will of course recognize his strong vocal talent. He almost uses his vocal range as an instrument all its own. He can slide up and down vocal scales with ease. It is actually quite impressive. A lot of Matt's music has a good upbeat feel in my opinion which definately makes his songs quality music in good times as well as when you need a lift.

Overall, it was a priviledge to see them. They are touring Texas right now so they might be coming to an area near you if you live around here. Also I'm sure that Matt will at least be on a broader tour over the next few months. If you see he is coming to your town and you want to have your house rocked, get in contact with him!

So if you are interested in checking out their music you can follow the following links. I definately think they are worth listening too, you might miss out if you don't!

Landon Smith
http://www.myspace.com/landonsmithmusic

Matt Jones
http://therealmattjones.com/music.htm

Also if you want to support our friend Matt, he has a facebook group as well as his webpage. I'm sure he would love for you to join if you aren't already a member.