Matt Wigton was headed to college to play baseball as a pitcher, 6'4", from a family of Olympic-level athletes. Then music stole his heart and he never looked back.
What followed was a decade of trombone, an obsession with bass, jazz studies at the University of North Texas, six months in Peru, and ten years in New York City handing out government flyers at 7 a.m. and playing gigs until 3 a.m. before eventually landing at Soundstripe, where he's now written over 1,000 songs for the catalog under a half-dozen different monikers.
In this episode, Matt talks to host Jeff Perkins about building a music career the slow way: no single big break, just a snowball of connections, open doors, and what he calls "making the hang". This means showing up, being seen, and staying open to gigs that don't look like the gig you moved to New York for.
He gets into his creative process (he scores films that don't exist, in his head, before a single note is played), how he uses different monikers to keep his wildly eclectic output organized (Dresden the Flamingo for the quirky stuff, Wicked Cinema for dark cinematic, Shimmer for lush string arrangements) and how a string quartet cover of a Nick Jonas song, made in a Connecticut basement, ended up on Bridgerton. Check out "Jealous" by Shimmer on Spotify.
There's also an Unsolved Mysteries tangent, a breakdown of his mobile studio rig, and a preview of a Shimmer EP with string covers of Tate Mcrae, the Cardigans, and Fleetwood Mac dropping soon.
If you make music for a living or want to this one's worth your time.
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