Artist Information
Matt Combs is a Nashville fiddler, multi-instrumentalist, and producer whose nearly three decades on the Music City scene have made him an in-demand session player. His credits span GRAMMY-winning pop and country records, motion picture soundtracks, and the Grand Ole Opry stage, with a short list of collaborators that includes Kacey Musgraves, Dan Auerbach, Sturgill Simpson, Johnny Cash, and Wynonna Judd. He is the 2012 Grand Master Fiddler Champion (traditional category), the 1996 Rockygrass Fiddle Champion, a GRAMMY-nominated member of the John Hartford String Band, and co-author with Greg Reish and Katie Hartford Hogue of
John Hartford’s Mammoth Collection of Fiddle Tunes, a 176-tune anthology drawn from Hartford’s personal journals.
Fifty Years of Clown School, his first solo record, is self-released through his Nashville Collective imprint. Composed across a single month of meditative playing, the all-original collection emerged from his love of resonant overtones generated by drone strings and double stops. The sessions, recorded in March and April of 2025 at Combs’ Radio Enterprise Studio in Inglewood with Chris Sharp co-producing, were captured live to one room (no headphones, no click, mostly second takes) by an all-star cast including Brittany Haas, Natalie Haas, Brìghde Chaimbeul, Jason Carter, Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, Allison de Groot, Dennis Crouch, and Dominick Leslie. The result is a subtly virtuosic, healing record that redefines how traditionally minded fiddle music can live in a modern world.
