Mat is a professional musician who teaches harmonica and has been playing the instrument for over 30 years. He plays chromatic, diatonic, tremolo, bass harmonica, flute and Irish tin whistle! He started playing harp when, at the age of 15, he heard a Sonny Boy Williamson II track and asked for a harmonica for his upcoming 16th birthday, on which he received a Hohner Pro harp and never looked back. Born in Stoke, Mat moved to Manchester in 1989 to study zoology at university where, along with fellow students, he formed his first blues band Bad Dog. He says ‘We weren’t very good, but it was a great experience’. The allure of music was stronger than that of academia, and his career path changed to music full time. After turning professional, Mat was in a band The Moochers for 10 years, and they toured places such as Holland, Belgium, Germany, France and Switzerland, including a memorable tour of Italy. Mat says, ‘There was no order to the tour, we went from one random place to another. If you had charted our progress on a map it would’ve looked like a seismograph!’ He is also well known for another band, The House Devils, predominantly playing in the traditional Irish music style. Mat’s current collaborations include a duet with singer/ guitarist Alex Haynes: they are presently working on a duet and a full band album of original blues songs, scheduled to be released at the end of this year. He also plays with Dr. Tom Attah, who has a PhD in blues and is a regular on The Blues Show with Cerys Matthews on BBC Radio 2. A session musician, Mat has kept busy during lockdown by recording library work for film and television. Session credits include an 8 Out of 10 Cats episode where
MAT WALKLATE Dave ‘Dogfish’ Colclough, Editorial Team
