Local CD review: 'Broken Strings and Beer Specials' by Matt Woods ---Maryville Daily Times - by Steve Wildsmith - 12/31/08

There's not a lot of reward being a singer-songwriter in the local scene.

Sure, locals appreciate a fine lyricist and nimble-fingered guitar-picker. But there aren't many true listening rooms -- venues where the sole focus is to absorb every lick and every phrase. Most places, like Two Doors Down and Downtown Grill and Brewery and Preservation Pub and Barley's Taproom, book singer-songwriters, and there's usually a good turnout -- but unless you're on a bill with a luminary like R.B. Morris, most of the time those singer-songwriters end up being background noise.

In other words, they play good music and strum a mean guitar while everybody drinks beer and eats and conversates.  Occasionally, a song will turn heads; most of the time, patrons won't remember anything other than they had a good
time and the music made for a nice backdrop during a night out on the town.

And that's a shame for a guy like Matt Woods, who rocks hard with his various bands (including Plan A) but writes some great songs that need little more than an acoustic guitar to lift them up. Fortunately, he has a new album --
"Broken Strings and Beer Specials [An Acoustic Retrospective]" -- that will hopefully bend more ears than a week's worth of solo shows on local stages.

The songs are solid, and Woods has a voice that's as sturdy as oak planking -- strong and true and never faulty.  He plays with passion -- in a live setting, his eyes are slits as he channels the emotion behind each song, and he does an amazing job of getting that emotion across on disc.

The themes are nothing out-of-the-ordinary -- love and loss and girls and death and regret, the things that haunt most of us -- but Woods manages to mold them into new and interesting shapes with his voice and his guitar. A few tracks stand out as beyond beautiful -- the dark story-song of "A Company Town," which is as bleak as the title suggests, and "Fall Together," a stripped-down version of a Plan A song -- but more than anything, "Broken Strings and Beer Specials" will hopefully give casual listeners a new respect for a guy who often has a thankless job -- entertaining you while you sit with your back to him.