Since footing it out on my own playing music by myself over the past two years, I’ve struggled a bit over what to “call” myself.

Should I go by my family-given name (Matthew Loiacono….) ?

Should I make up a different “person” name (Unkle Jeb….) ? (terrible… just kidding…)

It was easy to start out by playing under my own name — for people who already knew my name. As I started to play more shows and meet new folks, it became more difficult to tell people how to find my music, find my websites, find me anywhere. Since “promotion” these days is best accomplished by word-of-mouth, how can I expect someone who enjoys the music I create to tell someone else about it if s/he can’t spell, let alone pronounce my name.

After much thought and friend-idea-bouncing, I’ve decided that from now on, my “solo music project”, which involves anything from playing songs alone with a mandolin, looping and stacking layers of guitars and vocals, singing over a sampler and much more will be known as Matthew Carefully. There may be “side projects” from this solo music project that are more specifically named, eg: “Matthew Quietly”, “Matthew Sleepily”… whatever adverb makes sense at the time. But from here on out — Matthew Carefully.

Why “Carefully”?: well… I like the ring of it, and it will remind me to NOT be so careful about everything.

The website which has existed at Heartstack.org will continue to exist, however, I will be pointing people to the Matthew-Land.com URL, since, hey — Welcome to my world!

I haven’t quite figured out whether it’s worth the effort to re-name the music that exists on iTunes, eMusic, etc… but for now, please update the following bookmarks:

Matthew-Land!: http://matthew-land.com
MySpace: http://myspace.com/matthewcarefully
Flickr: http://flickr.com/matthewcarefully
Twitter: http://twitter.com/m_carefully
NoiseTrade: http://noisetrade.com/matthew
BandCamp: http://matthew.bandcamp.com

( above photo by Rich Orris )