MATT DUSK is a velvet-voiced twenty-four-year-old, who is all set to sing his way to international stardom.
Matt’s music takes the finer elements of the rat pack era (great vocals, style, sophistication), and gives this classic genre a 21st century spin with state of the art production values and unique new material. Past, present and future meet and the result is the dawning of a new era of sound and a stunning collection of songs, entitled ‘Two Shots’.
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As trends in popular music arrive and disappear at ever-increasing speed, the reputations of classic performers from a previous generation, like Tony Bennett or Ella Fitzgerald, keep growing in stature. It will always be a daunting challenge for a young artist to try to rival the achievements of these icons of song, but 24-year-old Matt Dusk has the ambition, the technique and the chutzpah to give it a try.
“You learn from listening all the time,” says Toronto-born Matt. “It’s a teacher-and-apprentice situation, the teachers being the old greats. Then there comes a point where you can only copy them so much, and you start creating your own style.”
‘Two Shots’, his debut album for Decca was recorded in Miami, Toronto and Abbey Road Studios in London, where a 42-piece string section from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra added luxuriant textures reminiscent of the heyday of the big-band balladeers.
Although the majority of the album is made up of original compositions, the title track ‘Two Shots’ was penned by U2’s Bono in honour of Frank Sinatra, and allows Matt to pay tribute to two of his musical heroes in one fell swoop. A classic style saloon song, it was presented to Sintatra on his 81st birthday and he planned to record it himself.
“I would have to say that ‘Two Shots’ is one of my favourites on the album because it involves two of my favourite artists of all time and is an incredible song. Bono wrote it for Frank Sinatra but unfortunately Sinatra died before he got the chance to record it, so Bono released it as a B-side to a single but it kind of got lost in the woodwork, which is so easy for a track to do. It’s a great honour for me to record it.”
Bono is best known for the widescreen hard rock he plays with U2, but ‘Two Shots’ proves that he has a solid grasp of the mechanics of the nostalgic saloon-bar ballad too. With lines like “I’m just a singer, some say a sinner / Rolling the dice, not always a winner”, the song instantly evokes images of Las Vegas and the heyday of Sinatra’s infamous “Rat Pack”.
The album also finds Dusk’s unique and audacious rendition of The Beatles’ ‘Please Please Me’, alongside a batch of his own songs and new material by other writers specially commissioned for the project.
When The Beatles recorded ‘Please, Please Me’ in 1962, they played it in a hectic, up-tempo arrangement. Matt’s version is slow, languid and introspective, prompting the listener to make a complete reassessment of its content. “Yeah, for me it gives the song a whole new meaning,” he says. “The original was a very happy-go-lucky song — it’s great, I love it, I really enjoyed the sentiment of it. My version is more pensive and reflective, where The Beatles version is very in your face. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong; it’s just a different way of doing it.”
Dusk has selected his material to show off the various dimensions of his artistry. The bright strolling beat of ‘Windows’ is in stark contrast to the heart-on-the-sleeve emotionalism of ‘Every Mother’s Son’. The windswept, autumnal feel of ‘Precious Years’ seems to echo back to the days of epic ballads like’Days Of Wine And Roses’ or ‘It Was A Very Good Year’. Of the tunes on the album, Matt cites ‘Five’ as his ultimate favourite.
“’Five’ is simply a huge heart-wrenching song of hopelessness,” he says, sounding indecently cheerful. “It’s that feeling after a break-up, when you’re feeling absolutely smashed and want to die. I think the songs that most affect people are the slower and more pensive ones. People love to sit and soak in sorrow!”
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Dusk’s feel for this type of music is all the more remarkable considering that in his early youth, he appeared to be destined for a career in classical music or even opera. As a seven-year-old in Toronto, he was accepted into the St Michael’s Choir School (SMCS), where he remained for 11 years of intensive musical study. He toured regularly with SMCS choirs, singing a wide array of classical and choral music — “lots of Latin music... classics like Ave Maria, songs by Palestrina and 16th- and 17th-century church music,” he remembers. “One of my first singing teachers was an opera singer, and I learned opera for seven years. I also did stage training with a musical theatre I was involved with. It wasn’t until I was 18 that I started listening to Tony Bennett, Sarah Vaughan and all that jazz.”
It was during one of his regular bouts of touring that one of Matt’s fellow choristers lent him a CD of big-band singers. “I’d been listening to mostly electronic and club music, but I heard this disc and was hooked from the start, and one thing led to another.”
Confirmation that he was on the right track arrived when he won the Rising Star competition in 1998, a prestigious talent contest held at the annual Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto. Matt thrashed the other 654 contestants to emerge as Grand Champion.
By the time he enrolled in Toronto’s York University to study for a BFA in music, his emphasis was squarely on jazz and popular music. He studied jazz theory with John Gittens, jazz vocal with Bob Fenton, and attended master-classes with Montreal-born jazz pianist Oscar Peterson. The precocious Dusk was subsequently awarded the university’s Oscar Peterson Scholarship.
“Oscar is a really nice guy,” Matt enthuses. “He’d sit in class and tell you a story for half an hour... There would always be a punch-line, like he’d go ‘and that was when I played with Charlie Parker’. You’d be like ‘Whoaaa!’” It isn’t just musical ability, which has driven Matt Dusk’s career. He also has a broad streak of entrepreneurial self-motivation.
Long before he secured his Decca deal, he recorded four independent CDs and his tracks became regular fixtures on the internet charts at MP3.com. “We got to number 4 on the TOP 40 chart, and it’s such a thrill when you’re an independent beating out major label superstars. It’s a David and Goliath thing.” Meanwhile he was successfully running his own eight-piece band with a four-piece horn section, playing as many as 20 gigs a month around the Toronto clubs. “Financially, you can’t haggle,” insists Matt, wearing his businessman’s hat. “You charge what you charge, and if they don’t like it they can hire another band.” He was also shrewd enough to note that since there were only a handful of performers singing this type of music, regular work was there for the taking. “This music is forever gold, as one of the song lyrics from the new album says. We’d get audiences aged 16 to 60. It was great.”
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With ‘Two Shots’ hot for release, our singer rolled the dice, as the lyrics to the title track suggest, and became a winner: Matt was invited to the Golden Nugget in the heart of Casino-land, Las Vegas to perform as in-house entertainer throughout the filming of reality drama, ‘The Casino’.
‘The Casino’, is an unscripted drama, which follows the dream of the Golden Nugget’s new owners, Tim Poster and Tom Breitling, to return this Vegas stalwart to the heyday of the Rat Pack era… and who better to help them with his velvet-smooth vocals and Rat Pack idol presence, than our very own Matt Dusk. The real life drama is captured 24/7 as it unfolds by Mark Burnett Productions (of Survivor and The Apprentice fame) and the 13 resulting episodes will air on Fox from June 2004.
Matt performed in Zax restaurant in the Casino at the behest of Tim and Tom throughout the 6 weeks of filming and also headlined the main ballroom. He has been invited back to perform at the Casino later in the year.
‘Two Shots’ will be released in the US and Canada to coincide with the show’s broadcast. Worldwide release will follow.
