Since moving to Nashville in 2019, Matt Burke has been working hard to develop his voice and sound as a solo performer and songwriter, after tragically losing his musical collaborator Leona Ellis to an undiagnosed illness. Ellis was the keys player for the Matt Burke Band and the pair had grown up together in Florida public school band programs since the 6th grade. Ellis’ death marked the end of the Matt Burke Band era and the beginning of a renewed focus on songwriting as a solo artist.
Burke’s new material shows sophistication and maturity as a singer-songwriter and invites comparisons to Chris Stapleton and early Zac Brown. He sings songs about love, family, traveling, loss and heartbreak, and his soulful, powerful voice captivates audiences across the country.
Matt Burke’s latest single ‘Missed My Chance’ is a delightful song about a love affair coming to a premature end. The lyrics speak of heartache and drowning one’s sorrows in a bar. The feeling is both a sombre one yet there’s a glimmer of hope - ‘tonight the beer is colder than it was before’, but ‘tonight feels like a chance to try something new’. By the third and fourth verses the speaker has well and truly realised that there might just be a fresh start on the horizon, with a blue-eyed beauty giving him the eye and the band playing something that’s got him in the mood. There's an echo of what he hears as a sort of mise-en-scène at work; the instrumental middle eight of the single brings this image of the band to life.
With his voice discovered and sound defined, Matt Burke is poised to make a big mark in the Americana and Country music industries alike with an eagerly awaited body of work to be released over the next year.
