“There are so many songs that want to be written. Getting them down is a small sort of thing, but everything depends on acts of obedience like that.”
For Matthew Joel Vanderkwaak, songwriting is an act that tugs at the boundaries between what is seen and unseen. Matthew is best known for his resonant voice and songs that reveal the cosmic in the ordinary. He considers himself just a vessel, “but really, that is true for all of us.”
Merging East Coast folk influences with West Coast indie-rock sensibilities, Matthew was born in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia, and now calls Halifax home. He has been writing, recording, and performing for 15 years, and has shared the stage with Andy Shauf, Teen Daze, and Jordan Klassen.
Matthew also has a PhD in Philosophy. His research focuses on the most ancient and enduring traditions of mysticism and metaphysics. The same interests appear in his songwriting which is ever seeking the universal in the particular. His songs are personal and honest, but always rooted in the mysteries at the heart of things.
Matthew’s recent single, “The Grey Line” eulogizes the long-lost Greyhound bus lines that were shut down across Canada in 2021. The song tells the story of four significant bus rides Matthew took in his early twenties—the ride up North for his first seasons of treeplanting, the trip back South three long months later, a journey East in search of a broken heart, and a 24-hour ride West with the one who would be the love of his life. The bus lines represent those grey lines of transition all of us must walk. What will be in store for us if we continue to lose the means of moving slowly from one place to another in those liminal moments that make us who we are?
