Matt Downer

Artist Biography

Chattanooga, Tennessee’s Matt Downer is a banjo player, fiddler, and self-described “Old Time Traveler” who has spent as many years performing traditional music as he has spent documenting traditional musicians. The predecessor to bluegrass, Old Time string band music features fiddle and other plucked string instruments (banjo, guitar, bass, and mandolin) playing tunes, passed from generation to generation, intended for dances at social gatherings. Like many Old Time pickers, Downer learned knee-to-knee how to play from elders in his community like his grandfather Wayne Heard, a dobro maestro from Sand Mountain, Alabama. As elder musicians passed away, Downer intentionally sought out master artists in Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee to document their tunes and oral histories, beginning the Slowtime Field Recordings project in 1998. In addition to recording interviews, Downer has recorded multiple albums under his Old Time Traveler project, including one directly to wax through 1906 Edison Gramophone. As an organizer, he helped revive the Great Southern Old Time Fiddlers’ Convention in Chattanooga.

“I deeply believe that geography shapes music and art,” says Downer. Exploring this relationship between place and sound, through the support of the Folk and Traditional Arts Master Artist Fellowship, Downer will embark on “an epic road trip/fiddle and banjo experience through the Appalachian mountains,” interviewing, playing with, and learning from old time who live in the Appalachian Mountains in the New England range.