After moving from San Francisco to Brooklyn Matt Bauer released his most personal release. This collection of songs displayed Matt's impressive banjo and guitar work, his vocals that range from gravelly to a whisper from one moment to the next and his intense depth and range as a songwriter.

The Wasps and White Roses EP was released in 2006 from Matt Bauer on Crossbill Records. It features 7 new recordings including Matt's interpretations of two traditional songs, harmony vocals from Mariee Sioux, Nathan Wanta (Last of the Blacksmiths), fiddle from Alisa Rose, and a duet with the incomparable Jolie Holland.

Photo by Jeremy Conant

Matt Bauer's "Carve It Out" listed in WMPG's Saltwater Farms best of 2006

San Francisco Bay Guardian October 2006

Don't hate Matt Bauer because he looks like a lost, somewhat menacing member of Neurosis. Hate him because he's so damn good: the Kentucky native's 2004 disc Nandina, was frickin' amazing, and his latest EP, Wasps and White Roses, featuring Jolie Holland, is equally excellent. Nick Drake, Iron and Wine's Sam Beam, and all ye guitarsmiths, look out.

-Kimberly Chun

Pure Music Review October 2006

Skyscraper Summer 2006

Jolie Holland lends a hand on "Carve It Out", providing a vocal accompaniment to the expressive near-whispers of MATT BAUER, on the Wasps and White Roses EP (Crossbill), his follow up to the fine 2004 full-length, Nandina.  These three originals, two instrumentals, and two traditional covers offer more of Bauer's hushed, nearly naked banjo and guitar, augmented with a smattering of piano and fiddle.  This album's title says it all-this disc examines the intermeshed realitieis of our world, it's natural workings of beauty and cruelty,  most painfully examined in a creepy reworking of lullaby "All the Pretty Horses".

Raven Sings the Blues on-line review

July 7, 2006

I've seen a couple of posts bandied about the blogs regarding Matt's work Songs:Illinois, MOKB and it prompted me to check him out. Bauer has a plaintive almost somber style to many of his songs. They capture the spirit of a time forgotten, reflective but not mired in the past, not unlike collaborater and kindred spirit Jolie Holland. Bits of bluegrass mingle with whisky soaked ballads that leave the taste of sour mash and smoke on your tongue. Bauer's original compositions mesh well with his traditional selections creating a new era of oral tradition. Hopefully years from now his songs will be played in country fields, the notes worn from memory but the story just the same.

My Old Kentucky Blog review of "Wasps and White Roses"

July 2, 2006- by Dodge

Matt Bauer - Wasps & White Roses EP

I am on vacation this weekend/some of next week in Michigan, up on the lake. Good times with the family. I found a wireless internet coffee house finally that's pretty close, so I should be able to keep you informed while I'm away. I'm listening to a load of new music, so I should have lots to write about eventually, even if, at the moment, I don't have lots of time to write about it. Anyway, I might have introduced some of you to Jolie Holland (MOKB Post) a while back, so I've kept an ear out for anything related to her since. An artist who's music parallels Holland's in ways such as tone and subject matter is Matt Bauer.

Matt Bauer : Wasps & White Roses I checked out Matt Bauer's new EP, Wasps & White Roses on the way up here. It's beautiful to say the least. Bauer is a fellow Kentuckian, so his roots lie in folk and bluegrass. He is not a bluegrass artist however, so you ultra-indie types don't have to tune out just yet. He does play the banjo, acoustic and electric guitar and mandolin, but he uses these instruments to create a haunting brand of folk/americana. On the EP, Bauer has really spiced things up with guest vocals from the aforementioned Jolie Holland, Marie Sioux and Nathan Wanta. At times the songs are sleepy and intimate folk, other times they draw more heavily on Bauer's bluegrass ancestry.

Fans of Iron & Wine will be immediately attracted to Bauer's sound.

Slightly Confusing To A Stranger Blog-review July

"Carve It Out," the opening track from Wasps and White Roses, is one of the prettiest songs you're likely to hear in 2006. Featuring vocals by Jolie Holland, the song is a study in simplicity--sparse and haunting, as is most of this EP. Do not be fooled by this starkness, however, as the imagery conjured up by Matt Bauer over the course of these seven songs is deceptively and quietly dark as a deep, deep well: "My head feels like a buffalo/My heart's a nail sticking from a board/I'll find a hammer to pound it down/I'll find a knife to carve it out."

There are few adornments to be found in these gently skeletal arrangements, held together by deliberate (and sometimes delicate) guitar, banjo, piano and fiddle. Bauer's voice is the true gem here--almost raspy, it sounds as if he's lived a thousand lives and walked down a thousand roads yet still survived to tell the tale, as it's world weary, well-worn, comfortable and chilling all at the same time. Anchored by two short instrumentals, Wasps and White Roses could easily be a series of vivid snapshots from times gone past--both the quietly insistent "Sea Lion Woman" and "Heap of Little Horses" are traditionals, given additional lyrics and new life by Bauer.

Totalling less than twenty minutes, my only wish is that the EP was slightly longer; it casts such a spell in such a short amount of time, and leaves the listener wanting more, especially after the beautiful "Poor Robin," with its fiddle-laden melody and warm vocals--"This blue light is quiet/And calms my heart/Clouds crawl beneath us/Above us only stars."

Matt Bauer receiving Heavy Airplay at the famed WFMU in Hoboken, New Jersey- June 21, 2006

Il Popolo del Blues On Line Review-June 2006

Wasps and White Roses is the new EP from Matt Bauer a Kentucky born songwriter that draws on country and bluegrass traditions to make a distinctly contemporary music. In this album shine a wonderful duet with Jolie Holland.

Nativo di Fort Campbell, Kentucky ma ormai da tempo residente a San Francisco, Matt Bauer, con Wasp And White Roses EP, giunge al suo secondo capitolo discografico dopo Nadine, il suo album di debutto. Certo l'aver scelto il formato dell'Ep per dare seguito alla sua carriera musicale, ci sembra un po' poco, ma all'ascolto questi poco piu di diciassette minuti di musica, sono una vera ventata di novita nell'ambito di quella che comunemente e detta roots music. La prima cosa da precisare e che lo stile di Matt Bauer e all'insegna della trasversalità, nella sua musica si fondono elementi di bluegrass degli Appalachi, la tradizionale folk song e una bella dose di sound del New Acoustic Moviment, che confluiscono in uno stile molto personale dove armonie e suoni tenui disegnano spazi musicali di grande eleganza. In questo senso vanno letti sia il brano di apertura, Carve It Out, una splendia ballata in cui Bauer duetta magicamente con Jolie Holland sia le altre due composizioni autografe, Wasps And White Horse e Poor Robin, quest'ultima baciata da un testo di ottima fattura. Il resto del disco presenta due momenti strumentali di ottima fattura, White Horse e The Owland The Snake e due traditional Sea Lion Woman e Heap Of Little Horse, entrambi suonati ed interpretati ottimamente. Se Bauer sapra far fruttare le sue doti di songwriter siamo sicuri che la sua musica arriverà a toccare anche il grande pubblico.

Salvatore Esposito

AltCountry.NL reviews "Wasps and White Roses" May 6th, 2006

By Hugo Vogel (3 mustangs)

Nandino van Matt Bauer kwam in mijn top-10 over 2004 terecht. Reikhalzend keek ik dan ook uit het een opvolger. Die opvolger is er dan nu, in de vorm van een EP: Wasps And White Roses (Crossbill). 17 minuten en 53 seconden is natuurlijk veel te weinig om mijn honger naar meer te stillen. Het is wel weer schitterend. Maar goed, deze man met de banjo zou waarschijnlijk van het werk van zijn Nederlandse naamgenoot nog wat weten te maken. Wat een stem (en wat een banjospel). Twee instrumentals en vijf liedjes waarin deze illustere bard zijn hart legt en je daarmee de peilloze diepte intrekt. Het titelnummer, met een tweede stem van de in Californische countryfolk-kringen zeer gewaardeerde Mariee Sioux, gaat over leven en dood. Jolie Holland staat hem dan weer vocaal bij in Carve It Out dat hetzelfde thema behandelt. De tegenwoordig in New York woonachtige Bauer heeft zijn vliegangst, die hem van intensief toeren afhield, overwonnen. Daarmee staat niets hem meer in de weg om eens de stap naar Europa te wagen. Wij zijn er aan toe. We snakken ernaar. (Hugo Vogel)

HANX on-line German interview with Matt

PASSPORT- 27: MATT BAUER

Matt Bauer - Wasps And White Roses

My head feels like a buffalo
My heart’s a nail sticking from a board
But look how pretty the sun is gone
The moon shines through the cherry blossoms

Bullfrog sliced up side to side
Caught in the mower guts
Stuck to the cuttings
Look how soft his body kicks
Stomach unfolding like a
Newborn kid

Het lijk typisch Matt Bauer. Tijdens de eerste regels van Carve It Out laat hij het gruwelijke en het mooie met elkaar botsen met op de achtergrond slechts wat noten van een banjo of piano of gitaar. Het werkt ! Carve It Out is een mooi duet met Jolie Holland. Titelnummer Wasps And White Roses is nog indrukwekkender. Dit keer is Mariee Sioux de tweede stem maar is de hoofdrol weggelegd voor de ruimte tussen de noten. De kracht van de stilte is harder dan de gitaarsolo in Child In Time.

Wasps And White Roses is een ep met 7 nummers, waarvan 2 instrumentaaltjes en 2 flink bewerkte traditionals. Muzikaal lijken de liedjes op oude mountain ballads maar het is zo hedendaags als 16 Horsepowers of Gillian Welch. Donker als een ijskoude kelder, licht als de eerste lentezon. De emotie die loskomt als Bauer met dat eerste zonlicht de kelder wat laat verwarmen, is, in al zijn eenvoud, explosief. www.mattbauermusic.com (Patrick Donders)

Wasps and Roses blijft intrigeren, ook na vele draaibeurten. Hoog tijd om de maker van al dit moois eens beter te leren kennen.

1.What's in the name/what's in the title?
It's an image from the title song. The song is about those roadside crosses. Do they do this over in Europe? Over here you'll see a small cross on the side of the highway as a memorial for someone who has died in a car wreck. I was thinking of wasps buzzing around flowers left at one of those memorials.

2. What's your first musical memory?
My first musical memory is my mom singing me to sleep when I was little in Morehead, KY. At the time I was just a few years old and shared a room with my older brother and younger sister. I remember the moon casting a shadow of the mobile above my sister's crib on the wall in the dark.

3. First cd/lp you bought?
Wow. I think it was a cassette tape called "Dimensions." One of those compilations of pop songs. I just googled it to see what songs were on there. Pretty scary:
KOOL AND THE GANG Celebration
STYX Too Much Time on My Hands
REO SPEEDWAGON Keep On Lovin' You
SANTANA Winning
RANDY MEISNER Hearts on Fire
JAMES TAYLOR & J.D. SOUTHER Her Town Too
AIR SUPPLY Every Woman in the World
HALL & OATES Kiss on My List
OAK RIDGE BOYS Elvira
TERRI GIBBS Somebody's Knockin'
CHAMPAIGN How 'Bout Us
HARLEQUIN Innocence
ROCKPILE Teacher, Teacher
JOURNEY The Party's Over (Hopelessly in Love)
HEART Tell It Like It Is
FRANKIE & THE KNOCKOUTS Sweetheart

4. At which moment did you decide that your music had to be heard?
I don't know if I ever decided it had to be heard. I don't think it doeshave to be heard. There's plenty of music out there already! But I like doing it.

5. What was the biggest musical step you took so far?
I think when I started to play the banjo a few years ago. I'd played guitar for a long time, but I was never in love with it the way I am with the banjo. I wish I'd found it earlier.

6. Biggest wish?
Maybe to time travel to the 50's and hang out with Bill Monroe? Sing a duet with David Bowie? Eat donuts every day yet lose weight? This is a tough one. Barring time travel and magical occurrences, I'd wish that I couldcontinue to make music and sing and spend time with great musicians and friends. I feel prettylucky to basically wish for what I have right now.

7. Best concert you ever saw?
The five or six times I've seen Fugazi are probably all in the top 10 shows I've ever seen. They give everything they have at every show. It's kind of superhuman. Seeing Gillian Welch open for Son Volt back on the tour for "Trace" really knocked me off my feet too. I'd never hear her before and I just couldn't believe it. That's the best feeling when you've never even heard someone before seeing them live and then they become one of your favourite artists.

8. Who would you chose to sing "Love Hurts" with (and you can't ask for Emmylou)?
These are great questions. There are a few people. Jesse Sykes would probably be my pick. Her voice carries so much emotion, it's just beautiful. I could really hear her singing that. My friend Suzi Pritchett, who I sing with when I can, would be great too. We do "That's How Strong My Love Is" together. I think she'd be great on "Love Hurts."

9. It's the end of the world and everybody knows it and they ask you to sing one more song for the whole wide world ! Which one are going to pick?
Pressure's on! The first thing that pops into my head is Nina Nastasia' "That's All There Is." Such a sad and hopeful song all at once. Maybe it would be better to sing something happy? Maybe I should learn a happy song or two in case Armageddon comes around.

10. What's up for the next couple of months?
Just got back from a west coast tour. I'm playing shows in NY (where I just moved in February) and around the Northeast, doing some recording, planning tours for the Southeast and the West Coast again. Thinking of trying to get over to Europe. We'll see. Also, I have an ongoing project where I'm recording covers of friend's songs, which is sort of loose and fun.

Aquarius Records review of "Wasps and White Roses" EP

A familiar face around this neighborhood -- you might recall his debut cd Nandina a couple of years back -- Mr. Bauer caught us off guard recently when we received a package from him addressed from New York. He'd pulled up anchor and moved across the country! Fortunately his brother still lives around the corner from our shop and can supply us with Matt's latest cdep. It picks right up where he left off on the final somber strains of Nandina's closing track "Jordan In A Plastic Bag". Such achingly beautiful, weathered folk melancholia, this time with the added pleasure of female vocals accompanying Matt's on a pair of songs. Who might those ladies be? Why, noneother than Ms Jolie Holland ("Carve It Out") and Ms Mariee Sioux ("Wasps And White Roses"). Each voice compliments the other so well! Also making a couple of appearances are fiddle player Alisa Rose ("White Horse" and "Poor Robin"), and Nathan Wanta guest sings along on the last number "Poor Robin" too. Seven songs of which five are originals (three with vocals, two without), plus two traditional numbers. Wonderful!

Hear an interview and an exclusive live performance from Matt Bauer on a fine radio program on KZSC, "Silverfish In the Kitchen" in Santa Cruz.  Recorded on April 14th, 2006

Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Matt Bauer [4/14/06]

Sparse, intimate and often haunting, Matt Bauer's songs are as much mood as music. His first album, Nandina, caught our attention and received high praise from Silverfish listeners. Now Matt has released a new EP, Wasps and White Roses - it's gently compelling, the kind of album you stop everything and pay attention to without realizing it. We were very happy to welcome Matt Bauer into the studios for a stunning live solo performance.

Bellingham, WA's "What's Up! Magazine" profile and review of "Wasps and White Roses" April edition

by Ian Chant

Growing up in the bluegrass state of Kentucky, singer/songwriter Matt Bauer had plenty of exposure to all sorts of old country and bluegrass music. So much, in fact, that he took his sweet time learning it.

"I grew up in Kentucky, so a lot of it was around"; Bauer said. "But we had MTV and Top 40 radio like everyone else" Which is something you can hear in Bauer's music, a vibrant blend of traditional bluegrass and folk updated with a more contemporary lyrical sense.

"The music I'm drawn to tends to be older, but I grew up in the South of the 1970's and 80's, not the 1870's and 80's. So when I write about it, I write about my own experiences."

Bauer's introduction to traditional country music styles came while he was attending college and took an interest in alt-country bands like Uncle Tupelo. This exposure led Matt down the country road, as it were, discovering as much as he could about the music that had influenced the alt-country genre. Alt-country led to older traditional country, and eventually to more obscure genres like bluegrass and mountain music.

The older country styles seemed to speak to things that Bauer was already getting a feel for in his own music. "Sometimes, you find yourself influenced by a certain sound," Bauer said, "and sometimes, you're already doing something, and you listen to something else that you identify with and that gives you more places to explore with your sound."

For Bauer, this was what happened when he picked up the banjo and gave the sounds of the mountains and the bluegrass fields a whirl. "I probably relate better to the darker, more lonesome sounds of mountain music," he said.

Bauer had been playing drums and guitar for years before picking up a banjo, his current instrument of choice. Since then, the guitar has mostly laid around in the corner, gathering dust. "I used to hear people talking about finding their instrument, and I didn't get it until I picked up the banjo," he said. "I love the guitar, but getting better at it was always something I had to sit down and work at. With the banjo, it's like I'm just compelled to play it"

After self-releasing his debut album Nandina in 2004, Bauer hooked up with the good people at burgeoning No-Cal folk label Crossbill to put out his latest album, Wasps and White Roses, a sevensong EP available now through CD Baby or Bauer's website at www.mattbauermusic.com.

A young label out of Davis, Calif., Crossbill was founded by folk radio DJ Mike Leahy, who brings live folk and country acts to his radio show, "Cool as Folk"; every week. After Bauer played the show, he and Leahy became fast friends, sending music back and forth to one another.

Miles of Music.com Reviews Matt Bauer's "Wasps and White Roses" EP...They guarentee it's great or your money back!

"Carve It Out" unfolds like a mourner`s haiku. There is hushed solitude in the delivery of Matt Bauer`s haunting material, and this opening track - a duet with Jolie Holland - feels like a 100 year old still life from some remote Kentucky locale. Bauer`s core accompaniment is the banjo, mostly, played in such a way as to suggest authentic field recordings from ages ago. But his hushed, intimate delivery bridges the past with the immediate. When this 7-track EP has concluded you`ve felt transported by not only the chilling music but through his keen sense of lyrical imagery, both poetic and raw. Mariee Sioux is his vocalizing partner on the unhurried title track, and Nathan Wanta on the more uplifting final track, "Poor Robin". There are four traditional numbers, including "Heap Of Little Horses", which he sings as though it were the final lullaby. Wasps And White Roses will surely hit the mark if you find Richard Buckner and the Welch/Rawlings duo to your liking. -- Robinson, Miles Of Music (Crossbill Records)

The Stranger: Seattle alterntive weekly reviews Matt Bauer's "Wasps and White Roses"

- by Kurt B. Reighley  March 30th-April 5th

Border Radio Roots & Americana
by Kurt B. Reighley

Wasps and White Roses, the new EP by Matt Bauer, features enough flora and fauna for another remake of Doctor Dolittle—or a Robyn Hitchcock album. Over just seven cuts, Bauer mentions buffalo, cherry blossoms, bullfrogs, grass, raccoons, geese, wasps, roses, sea lions, daffodils, owls, snakes... and that only takes us as far as track 5. Yet Bauer, who plays Georgetown's Jules Maes Saloon on Wednesday, April 5, swears it wasn't part of an intentional scheme.

"Much of the material I've been writing of late, even new stuff that is not on this CD, is about animals," he says from his current home in Brooklyn, New York. Still, he sees nothing unusual about that; his muse likes to follow trends. "For a long time, everything I wrote was about trains and cars. Now it's all horses and birds and snakes." Stranger Personals

Other qualities distinguish the disc besides its affinity for the natural world. Although he is a gifted multi-instrumentalist (on the Wasps EP, he plays acoustic guitar, two types of banjo, piano, drums, flute, and glockenspiel), Bauer constructs these rough-hewn folk songs—including two instrumentals—from a bare minimum of materials, often playing single-note melodies or singing a cappella.

He is not, however, always singing alone. On the dusty opener "Carve It Out," he is joined in harmony by his former San Francisco neighbor, Jolie Holland. (She also loaned him her piano for the recording.) Such impromptu collaborations happened more than once when the two lived near each other, Bauer recalls. "I'd be going for coffee, and she'd be headed for the post office, and we'd run into each other, and someone would say, 'I have this thing I have to record...'"

Even with all its woodland denizens, Bauer's EP—the follow-up to his 2004 full-length Nandina—is hardly storybook fare... unless we're talking about the dark, twisted lore of the Brothers Grimm. On his rendition of the traditional "Heap of Little Horses," Bauer's voice sounds exhausted, almost like a condemned man singing in solitude to pass the time. Of course, if you're a fan of Tom Waits or Ohio outfit the Black Swans (Bauer toured with the latter), that's a good thing indeed.

Wasps and White Roses includes another traditional, "Sea Lion Woman," augmented with new, original lyrics. Under the circumstances, it was the most promising recourse available. "I learned that one off this old LP, Afro-American Blues & Game Songs, but it only had a snippet of two little school girls, singing just the chorus," he recalls. "I liked the song so much, but I wanted to sing something a little longer than 40 seconds."

Growing up in rural eastern Kentucky, Bauer had a pet horse, and his parents kept a vegetable garden, but music has always been his primary love. Except for that very brief period when he dreamed of becoming—surprise—a veterinarian. "That was just something I wanted to do when I was little," he laughs. "Doesn't everyone go through that phase?"

The musical exchange developed over the years, and when Leahy started his label, he promptly asked Bauer to sign on. He did, and with other area folk acts like Garrett Pierce, Jake Mann and Mad Cow String Band, they formed the opening stable of Crossbill performers.

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