Matthew Stevens
Pittsburgh
Pittsburghers, natives or longtime residents, like to put the city down. Nothing happens here. What does happen here is lame. There's no support for new artists. (I'm not one of those people, let the record show.) Like most things, part of these comments are grounded in truth. There could be more support for upcoming artists, rather than continuing to celebrate people who are worthy but who often get all the recognition, based more on longevity. And yes - enough with the sports teams and sandwiches with French fries on them. But the locals are often more willing to sit back and complain - pandemic or no pandemic - than to go out and discover things, which once lead my wife to fashion a new slogan: Welcome to Pittsburgh. No one's going to spoon-feed you.
Visitors, on the other hand, are often enthralled with what we have to offer. There have been a number of times that musicians - of the more experimental or edgy type - have commented on how amazing it feels to play to a small-but-pretty-full room of attentive listeners on a weeknight. That isn't something that can be expected in a big place like New York City, they remind us. Combine that with our proclivity to chat with musicians after a set, making them feel like they're one of us, and it might inspire one in a small crowd to relocate here. Or else, they don't shoot down the idea when a family transition might point towards a move to the Steel City.
That kind of criteria may or may not have factored into Matthew Stevens' relocation to our fair town. (Though his wife grew up here.) But the guitarist, who has played on Esperanza Spaulding's albums Emily's D+Evolution, Exposure and 12 Little Spells, is one of us now (last time I checked) and named his set of solo works after his new home. The 11 tracks aren't necessarily inspired by sights around town, but more of a way to represent where he landed following his departure from the Big Apple and a shift from electric to acoustic guitar.
Pittsburgh came together as something of a silver lining of a cloud. After falling off a bike and breaking his right arm, Stevens began playing his Martin 00-17 acoustic guitar as suggested therapy. The results stand up as less restorative exercises and more as a fully developed works, with the mood and scope resulting in a varied set since they changing with each track. For instance, after the long melody of "Can Am," built on a single string line that never stops flowing, he transitions into "Foreign Ghost," a ballad marked by gorgeous chords and strong crescendos. The low galloping bass notes in "Blue Blues" seem to carry on a conversation with the upper register melody. "Purpose of A Machine" might attempt to sound mechanical but Stevens' arpeggios keep the strings resonating over all the octaves, suggesting something more organic.
The vintage Martin acoustic produces string scratch on a few cuts, evoking visuals of Stevens' left hand moving around on the fretboard. But it accentuates the music rather than distracting from it. His right hand seems to have recovered well from his accident too. In closing he also deserves a hat tip for using a photo by Pittsburgh native Charles "Teenie" Harris and most importantly acknowledging the Harris Archive at the Carnegie Museum of Art. (A lot of people used Harris' legendary shots over the years without proper credit.)
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