Matt Minglewood - Fly Like Desperados (2017)

Guitarist, singer, and songwriter Matt Minglewood began his professional music career in the '70s. He recorded a debut album, a self-titled offering also known as the Red Album, with his own band in 1976. About a dozen other albums followed with the Minglewood Band or solo through the '80s. During those years, Minglewood earned three gold records and a number of awards for his music, including an East Coast Music Association Lifetime Achievement Award. His music is a mixture of blues, rock, and country. At times it seems fitting to label it simple blues-rock, at other time it's just all Minglewood. Matt Minglewood began his life as Roy Batherson. He was born in 1947 in Moncton, but raised in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Music was a part of his life from his earliest memories. His grandfather was a fiddler, and a very young Minglewood learned from him, taking up the fiddle when he was barely old enough for school books. Piano lessons came next, then the guitar, and even the organ, with time in between for more popular things like hockey -- something he has held on to as long as he has to his music. He was in his early 20s when he put away his real name and took up the stage name Matt Minglewood. Back then he was performing with a band called Sam Moon and the New Moon. There was a later name change to Moon, Minglewood and the Universal Power. Minglewood's next step was to form his own group, the Minglewood Band. He recorded his debut album with the group in 1976. It was an independent release. By the time his sophomore offering was ready three years later, Minglewood had a signed contract with the major-label RCA Records. The band's recordings were doing well, but Minglewood moved to Epic Records in 1982 for the Minglewood 5 album. Two years later, without doing another full-length recording under Epic, Minglewood put an end to his band and went solo. The new career move resulted in three more albums: Me and the Boys in 1985, the Promise in 1988, and Drivin' Wheel in 1999. ~ Charlotte Dillon