Matthew R. Sayles at Fat Hill Brewing, Mason City, Iowa

Name: Matthew R. Sayles at Fat Hill Brewing, Mason City, Iowa
Start: 2026-02-14T16:00:00-06:00
End: 2026-02-14T19:00:00-06:00
Location: Fat Hill Brewing

Schedule

Sat Feb 14 2026 at 04:00 pm to 07:00 pm

UTC-06:00

Location

Fat Hill Brewing | Mason City, IA

"Clever songwriting alongside rearranged classics-- a throwback style that knows good, old-fashioned storytelling...yet is utterly unpretentious about modernity.” --The Source, Bend, Oregon
"...even more clear is what’s in the grooves, which is pretty damn fine from the opening Old Man’s First Call; a sweet steel infused song about the bar life of a man who starts the day drinking coffee and moves to the harder stuff as his first, rather than last, call. From then on Sayles’ songs run through a number of experiences that are tied in with the way everyone has to deal with the effects that time and tribulation have in tempering an individual view, for any particular lifespan. Between some the songs there are the occasional samples from radio and other such utterances (often related, not unsurprisingly given the band name origin, to duck hunting). The overall effect makes for a slice of alt. country that engages and embodies the real spirit of honky-tonk music.
But titles like Don’t Drink The Water, Whites Of Their Eyes, Defan Saleau (with its hints of a Cajun lifestyle via the accordion) and Life Gets In The Way, offer an overview on how things can so easily slip away. Taking a similar world-weary tone is Can’t Track Myself Down, while the album closes with the pretty factual statement that Truth Is Now A State Of Mind. It rides along on twanging guitars, flowing pedal steel and a highway rhythm topped by Sayles knowing vocal. As good a way to end what is a solid mission statement from this entertaining, upright and upbeat collective." --Stephen Rapid, Lonesome Highway (Ireland)
Matthew R. Sayles is a singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and founder of Philville Records, an independent label he formed in 2000 in Marquette, Michigan.
Sayles has toured nationally and internationally, and has had the honor of performing with country, bluegrass, and western swing legends like Merle Haggard, Dwight Yoakam, Asleep at the Wheel, Larry Sparks, Doyle Lawson, the Duhks, Uncle Earl, Hot Club of Cowtown, members of Bob Dylan's "Rolling Thunder Review" and a long list of other highly talented regional and national roots music performers.
Sayles's solo performances bounce from up tempo Telecaster-picked roots country, early rock & roll, roadhouse blues, Americana ballads, and bluegrass, to north African-inspired instrumental pieces on five string banjo and south American-infused arrangements on the Andean ten-stringed Charango.
An accomplished songwriter, story-teller, and performer with a deep interest in the history of American roots music, Sayles's live performances evoke a modern interpretation of the coffee house shows of the 1950s and 60s, while still keeping one foot grounded in the beer halls, honky-tonks, and night clubs of the recent past and present.
Philville Records was located in Ventura, CA from 2009-2019, and is now based in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Sayles continues to write, record, and produce, as well as perform with his latest project the Driftless Revelers, the Ventura based Ventucky String Band, and his California alt. country project the Detroit Sportsmen's Congress. He also performs solo and does session work with Eau Claire, Duluth, Marquette, Los Angeles, Ventura, Portland and Santa Barbara alt. country and roots music projects.