Opening times:
10 am - 4 pm Thursday 16 January - Tuesday 21 January 2025
10 am - 1 pm Wednesday 22 January 2025
Scheduled Events:
Opening Night: Thursday January 16 2025, 7 - 10 pm - Live acoustic performances of the EP singles throughout the evening
Closing Night: Tuesday January 22 2025, 7 - 10 pm - Live acoustic performances of the EP singles throughout the evening
Artists / Medium:
BearFootSoul - Matt White: Live performance, lyrics, songwriting, music production, audio, projected video
Jon Downs Photography
www.instagram.com/jon_downs
www.instagram.com/jon_downs_photography
Event Overview:
Matt White of BearFootSoul is releasing his highly anticipated solo debut 4-track EP "Road Bumps and Revelations". Through this installation of collaborative, immersive multi-media, the story behind the music is visualised with the emotive photographic works of Jon Downs and Mike Howlett. The process of music production will be on display during live demonstrations, and live recording sessions. Music video from the EP will be projected in large format in a cozy live lounge setting. Public participation is invited during interactive songwriting, creative process, live performance discussions and live-looping demonstrations. Matt will perform the EP tracks live and unplugged at the opening and closing evening events.
“Honestly, this debut solo EP has been far too long in the making. Yet its delay is entirely apropos. I’ve been a partially inactive songwriter but highly active live music performer for over thirty years. In the last ten years, the stories of these songs gestated and started to kick as they matured melodically and lyrically. They were finally spawned to completion by more recent revelatory life events, demanding I knuckle down and set them free. As I took all corporate hats off in 2021 and finally turned to music full-time, the resonance of these stories found a full-throated voice. It’s been quite a wonderful process seeing them spread their wings throughout live performances in the last couple years.
While preparing to release an EP in 2023, the title track was named ‘Gravity and Time’. My father’s passing late that year immediately introduced a more visceral song which became “Glow” based on his inspirational support in my formative years. It also brought to the fore a longing to rebuild some long-scorched bridges. ‘Gravity and Time’ got bumped, and during a sold-out May 2024 performance at Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich, I shared these sentiments and the crowd agreed a more fitting name for this jarring point in the journey was ‘Road Bumps and Revelations’. The overall musical tone then began to lean more heavily into my much-loved roots of Americana, blues and soul and a simplified, earthy-acoustic production took over.
Having not thought too much about visuals to accompany the music, late in 2023 I had the unexpected good fortune to meet Mike Howlett and Jon Downs at an event in 142 Gallery, Felixstowe. Both gentlemen are incredibly gifted photographers with distinct and unique styles I hadn’t previously seen. I pretty quickly found that their humour, sensibility and artistic rhythms were in step with my work and I suggested this collaboration:
”...Let’s tell the story of these songs through your resonant photographic visuals to accompany the new music and then pepper it with some interactive moments for folks to jump in and enjoy the creative process…”
So here you are. As you can tell, I’m not short of words, so come and talk to me. Other than to keep good relations with the competing voices in my head, you’re why I do it.
”