Matthew Check

41 year old Matthew Check hails from Newtown, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, and has lived in New York City since 2006. He moved there initially to take graduate classes at the Jewish Theological Seminary but spent much of his time playing bluegrass banjo in jams in downtown Manhattan.

Eventually, he would combine his love of bluegrass and Judaism into something he dubbed 'jewgrass', which yielded an album colorfully entitled "The Bluegrass Kabbalat Shabbat Experience". He was also the 1st banjo player for Gangstagrass and played on the 2010 Emmy nominated song "Long Hard Times To Come". He then joined the Grammy winning Joanie Leeds for a 2019 set of organic folk rock credited to "Joanie & Matt".

All of this led up to the year 2020. Like many people, Matt had time and took the opportunity to write original material for the 1st time in decades. The result was "The Condesa Queen" in December 2020. He decided to put out 2 more unreleased albums in 2021, followed by a 3 song EP in February 2022, and finally his latest contribution, just released, "Without A Throne".

Check’s attraction to the rootsy, honest pop, folk, introspective rock of the mid to late 70's has taken hold in the songs of "Without A Throne". The resulting hybrid of the sound, with his authentic vocals, somewhere between Jakob Dylan and the Waterboys’ Mike Scott, dominates and energizes his new work.