"The music business is a business before the music. However, positive relationships are the key to my personal successes & survival within it. Art is a service industry just like any other job. The respect given to positive relationships is starting to allow me to exclude "a job for jobs sake", and focus on creating better art and a better life."
Given the quirky nature of his original music, one would not suspect that Matt grew up in East Tennessee, playing bluegrass at Dollywood, Dolly Parton's theme park, at age 11. Matt has performed with and produced many artists. Some well-known artists he has worked with are Pink, Beck, Liz Phair, Tenacious D, Phantom Planet, Beyonce, Butch Walker, The Sounds, Mandy Moore, Mika, and Smashmouth. Also, new artists such as Lupe Fiasco, The White Tie Affair, Cash Cash, Anarbor, Miranda Cosgrove, and many more. He played guitar, drums, and keys on tour with Beck throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan in 2005 and 2006, and he contributed to the "Odelay" deluxe edition. Matt's music has also been featured on numerous television shows, including CSI Miami, Dance Life, Entourage, MTV, E! Entertainment, and 60 Minutes. He has released more free online music than any other artist, and has worked with various movie directors, including Ivan Reitman, Michael Mann, Jeffery Katzenburg, Andrew Adamson, Hans Zimmer (for film score)and more. Notably, Matt wrote the only original song for "Shrek" and also recorded the cast and produced the music for surprise endings of all of the DVDs. Matt's current projects include Keith Urban, HelloGoodbye, I Fight Dragons, Ni Hao, Kai Lan, Nickelodeon, Disney, and the long-awaited "SELF" record.
In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)
Last month, TPAC hosted the fourth annual TEDxNashville talk series — one of the independent, locally produced offshoots of the popular Technology, Entertainment and Design conference. Since 1984, the mama con and its baby cons have featured presentations on topics of scientific or cultural significance, delivered by authors, scientists, entrepreneurs, philosophers, former Presidents and Nobel laureates — an arguably politically agnostic smattering of outstanding figures from a variety of fields.
The organization hasn't been without its controversies, but there are some pretty universal truths in the above video from the April 6 event in Nashville, in which Self jefe Matt Mahaffey explains the role of originality and creativity in living a sane and productive life as a professional musician. "Nice Guys Don't Finish Last, Nice Guys Finish Happy" is admittedly a condensed affair, with a good chunk of its 16 minutes and 24 seconds devoted to playing three songs. Also, some of his advice is a little self-contradictory (how exactly does saying "no" make you a nice guy? I'm sure he could explain given more time, but TED talks are limited to 18 minutes). There's a shout-out to The Black Keys and their fight against sound-alike music in advertising, as well as some choice thoughts on KISS, Prince and fatherhood. And, being Matt Mahaffey, the three songs presented are great slices of pop, all tangentially related to the topic at hand. Check out the clip to see him talk the talk and do some rocking, first on the drum kit and what I think is a Suzuki Omnichord simultaneously, then the piano ("Better Than Aliens"), and last on his guitar.
