Tag: Matt Menefee

WATCH: The Golden Age, “Young Love Don’t Age Well”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: The Golden Age (Bryan Simpson and Matt Menefee)
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Young Love Don’t Age Well”

In Their Words: “‘Young Love Don’t Age Well’ seems appropriate as one of the first two songs we release off this new project as The Golden Age. It’s a wild ballad about the fervor of the young at heart: full of conviction, careening carelessly into the cosmos…without the careful calculations of the once wounded. The Golden Age is me and Matt’s chance to return to that feeling before we knew music could be monetized or manipulated into a career; back to that place and time when we first were swept away by music. And while not resurrecting that moment, perhaps reinventing it. Perhaps in hopes of enjoying it a little more this time.

“A last-minute decision to dip our bodies in hot gold, including Matt’s sunglasses, rendered Matt blind to his banjo for the entirety of the song. Surrounded by such otherworldly musicians playing on the song — like Jake Stargell on guitar (on the far left/off-screen), Geoff Saunders on upright, Billy Contreras on fiddle, and Emily Kohavi of the band Wildeyes singing the duet vocal — it certainly was a raucous affair that resembles a rambling wreck more than a sleek machine. That probably defines me and Matt and the Golden Age pretty well. ‘YLDAW’ was filmed at Nashville Beard and Barber in Nashville, Tennessee, and captured by Joshua Britt and Neilson Hubbard of Neighborhoods Apart Productions.” — Bryan Simpson, The Golden Age

Photo credit: Joshua Britt

The Hit Points, ‘Guile’s Theme’

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Bluegrass, as a genre, is built upon nostalgia. Especially in its contemporary iterations. Modern bluegrass plays like a primer of the form itself, referencing the genre’s founders, its historical moments, its popular songs, and all of its favorite themes and buzzwords, no matter how trope-ish — because nostalgia is a commodity.

But, what’s that sound? It’s not pining for the hills and home, it’s nostalgia for an entirely different time, place, and feeling. The feeling being a creeping dread at the inevitability of your loss at the hands of Ryu, E. Honda, or Chun-Li. The decadent, joyful nostalgia that The Hit Points — fiddler guru Eli Bishop (Lee Ann Womack, the Deadly Gentlemen) and banjo wizard Matt Menefee (Cadillac Sky, ChessBoxer) — conjure on their blazing cover of “Guile’s Theme,” from Nintendo’s iconic video game, Street Fighter, will send you careening back in time. You’ll land on a couch, or high pile carpet, or flimsy futon in front of a TV, where as youths (or as youthfuls), you consumed hours and hours of video game entertainment. And with it, you also consumed hours and hours of incredible music, without ever realizing that the otherworldly, impossibly complicated tunes could actually be performed by human beings. Let alone by bluegrass musicians, on bluegrass instruments, with such ease and aplomb that it would nearly strike listeners as just another new acoustic, Dawg-grass tune.

The Hit Points’ debut, self-titled project is chock-full of nearly note-for-note covers of 8-bit music, crafted with loving care and aggressive creativity — and surrounded by a talented cast that includes Jake Stargel (Mountain Heart), Sierra Hull, Royal Masat (Billy Strings), and Paul Kowert (Punch Brothers), it shouldn’t be a surprise. This is instrumental acoustic music and bluegrass pickin’ at its best.