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  BIOGRAPHY

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    Like the food on your table, Matt Novak emerged from the "the world's richest agricultural valley" of the San Joaquin, California, the bread basket of these United States. This valley, an expanse of cotton fields, vineyards, orange groves, and oil fields, is also the home of a great many people of varying backgrounds. The San Joaquin Valley includes half a dozen substantial cities with Fresno as the regional capital. Fresno, at the foot of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, is where Matt came of age. After two years of piano lessons, Matt made the transition to the guitar. Two years later, self-taught on the guitar, Matt Novak landed in Northwest Washington State, where he as spent the last nine years working on what he calls the most important project of all, "the creation of self." It was in Bellingham, Washington, that Matt really flourished, studying literature and the spanish and english languages at Western Washington University, writing poetry, and working on his continuing development as a musician. In the last half of the last year of the twentieth century, Matt moved to Spain, and traveled throughout Europe, exploring new countries as well has his own identity as a North American. When he came back home to his home in Northwest Washington State, it was the American folk music tradition that struck him the hardest, prompting him to make the transition from poet to songwriter, eager to contribute as an American folk artist. Matt immediately began performing solo, and only four months after arriving home from Spain, had formed a duo with a local Whatcom County fiddler named Linda Fox. Matt's time with Linda, however, was short lived, and after eight months, dissipated. It was then that Matt called one of Washington State's finest Old-time fiddlers, Howie Meltzer, and founded the guitar/fiddle duo, the Gravel Grinders. The Gravel Grinders played together solidly for over a year before scaling back, allowing Matt to form his current four-piece acoustic string band, Quickdraw String Band, as well as carving out the time to write and perform his original songs. Matt continues to play with Howie off and on, and has played with Quickdraw solidly for the last three years. His solo project has steadily been taking off since the release of his debut album, Ten Valley, in November of 2004.

    Matt Novak's late 2004 debut, Ten Valley, firmly places him in the ranks of contemporary American singer/songwriters. The whole album is a profound and unassuming gem among the all-too-often hasty of world of modern-day music releases. The release of Ten Valley is the culmination of two years of songwriting, and another year of recording. The final result is an album that proves the careful attention paid to every aspect of each song, never really leaving the listener, but unraveling him/her to the very core of love found and lost, quests of the spirit, parental abuse, homelessness, homecomings, the listless, jail bound, and the broken-hearted.

    Ten Valley brings some of the American Pacific Northwest's finest musicians together in a sparing, delicate, and often beautiful way, creating one mellow, melodic, and beautifully melancholy song after another. Each song is delicately arranged and enriched by sparse instrumental combinations just full enough to support Matt's emotive heartfelt voice.