Flutist Matt Eakle was looking for an excuse to get some of his friends from the San Francisco Bay area to come to Bellingham to perform with him. So what else would a musician do? Put together a band!
Matt’s brother and fellow musician, Kit Eakle, has a violin jazz series in Vancouver, British Columbia, and had lined up Grammy Award-winning violinist Mads Tolling for that, so he asked Matt to put Tolling up for a couple nights in Bellingham. When Matt learned Tolling was free the night before his Vancouver gig, he realized he had the perfect start for his “California dream band.”
It didn’t hurt that Matt has played in the renowned David Grisman Quintet for more than 30 years.
Bassist James Kerwin had been a friend since before he joined the Grisman Quintet in 1985. Drummer Curt Moore played in a progressive bluegrass band with Barnaby Finch on keyboards.
All of these musicians — Matt (flute), Tolling (violin), Finch (keyboard), Kerwin (upright bass) and Curt Moore (drums) — will be onstage at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 6 in the intimate Walton Theatre as part of Mount Baker Theatre’s Lookout Sessions.
Matt grew up the youngest of four boys in the Bay Area. His mom taught piano and Kit, his oldest brother, played violin, so classical music was always played around the house. Matt learned flute in junior high band in Richmond, California, and took to it right away, learning tunes such as Bobby Hebb’s “Sunny” in class, and anything by The Beatles from the radio.
He studied with David Subke, who was playing with the Oakland Ballet Orchestra and teaching at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. For two months, Subke had Matt play the first bar of the Haydn Flute Concerto in D Major over and over.
“Subke taught me to play with intention and to notice and be honest with myself about imperfections in execution,” Matt said, “but he also encouraged me to be carried away by the spirit of the music. He inculcated a love of Bach and introduced me to the standard classical routine of scales and arpeggios.”
From the start, Matt improvised on pretty much everything he learned, which turned out to be some of his best practicing.
Matt Eakle first started playing flute in junior high band in Richmond, California, and took to it right away, learning tunes such as Bobby Hebb’s “Sunny” in class, and anything by The Beatles from the radio. In 1989, he joined the renowned David Grisman Quintet, which he still performs with to this day. (Photo courtesy of Matt Eakle) Following a two-year stint in the United States Army Band, he got a job washing dishes in a restaurant in Point Richmond, California. He fell in love with the owner’s daughter and subsequently married her. (The couple’s daughter now owns an organic cattle ranch near Lillooet, B.C. in the Fraser River Valley — the main reason Matt and his wife made the move to Bellingham four years ago.)
After a year of learning classical repertoire at Hayward State University, Matt worked landscape labor jobs during the day and played gigs and jam sessions at night.
Then Kerwin, his friend, auditioned for and became the bass player in the David Grisman Quintet. Matt happened to be at another bass player’s house when the acclaimed mandolinist was auditioning bass players.
“David had sheet music for his tunes and asked me to join in the melodies,” Matt said. “It surprised him I could sight-read his barn burners, and we were both intrigued by the sonic blend of the flute and mandolin. The mandolin has a strong attack and the tone decays fairly rapidly, like a bell. The flute has a softer attack but sustains, like a violin or a human voice. The combination was thick and sweet.”
In 1989, four years after Kerwin joined Grisman’s band, Grisman invited Matt to join a jam session. Several jams later, in September 1989, he invited Matt to learn a bunch of his tunes with the legendary bluegrass violinist Vassar Clements for a five-day performance run at Yoshi’s in Oakland.
Later that year, Grisman started his own record label, Acoustic Disc. Matt’s first recording for Grisman, and the first recording for that label, was “Dawg 90.”
“I didn’t know anything about bluegrass, but Vassar introduced me in a hurry,” Matt said. “We learned about 30 Dawg tunes in three days.”
Matt has played every Grisman gig ever since (with the exception of a show with Yo-Yo Ma at Carnegie Hall). A few months later, when Matt walked into Grisman’s studio, there was Jerry Garcia.
“David introduced me to Jerry as the ‘world’s greatest flute player,’” Matt said. “Jerry asked, ‘You got your ax? Well, pull it out!’”
One of the perks of being in the David Grisman Quintet has been getting to know Grisman’s musical friends, Matt said. Among them, he has either jammed, recorded or performed with Mark O’Connor, Linda Ronstadt, Stephane Grappelli, Bucky Pizzarelli, Bela Fleck, Steve Kimock, Darol Anger, Jerry Douglas, Ricky Skaggs, Paul Winter, Norton Buffalo, Sam Bush, Mike Marshall and Tony Rice.
In the 1990s, Matt became involved in the fight to preserve the old-growth redwoods, especially those in the Headwaters Grove, about 10 miles outside of Arcada, California. He produced a compilation CD, “The Headwaters Project,” of music “inspired by, or evocative of the wilderness” to raise funds for and bring attention to the issue.
When asked his own age, Matt quipped: “Not unlike a redwood tree, the original burl from which my current incarnation emerged was a close friend of the character portrayed by Raquel Welch in the historical epic ‘One Million Years B.C.’ The one named Matt was born in August 1956. By my arithmetic, that’s 66-and-a-half years ago.”
In 2010, the flutist started his own group, the Matt Eakle Band. They have a CD, “Hardly Work,” that’s a compilation of tunes written by Matt and other members of the group.
For the show at the Mount Baker Theatre, Matt is looking forward to introducing some of his other music-minded friends to Bellingham.
“Mads is a brilliant artist on his instrument,” Matt said. “We always put big smiles on each others’ faces when we play together. We’ll be playing some of his tunes, some of mine, a couple crowd-pleasers and a bunch of cool tunes that Barnaby Finch turned us on to,” he said. “I promise music on a high level and a large smile curve!”
Mads Tolling and the Matt Eakle Band perform at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 6 at the Mount Baker Theatre’s Walton Theatre, 104 N. Commercial St. Tickets are $25.50–$35.50. Info: mountbakertheatre.com or matteakle.com.
