Cover photo © 2023 Nathanial I. Kieser
Over the last fifteen to twenty years, it has been often heard that young artists do not seem to embrace the blues. Luckily, a group of young blues artists, including several under thirty years of age, (such as King Solomon Hicks, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Dylan Triplett, and Jontavious Willis) intend to prove that assumption wrong. Joining that group is an extremely talented 21-year-old guitarist, singer/songwriter from Houston named Mathias Lattin who is well-spoken and appears wise beyond his years.
Many might have assumed Lattin would have turned toward sports, with his grandfather being the NBA Hall of Fame legend David “Big Daddy” Lattin. In fact, he is the only musician in his family.
“Everyone in my family is an athlete. My brother runs track and field professionally, another sibling plays basketball, and my sister just came back from being overseas playing volleyball. I’m sure they would have liked me to be in sports, but when they saw I wasn’t really doing that great in it, they let go of that expectation.”
Lattin has reported that his family tells him he has been singing since he was able to talk. He started piano lessons in the first grade and picked up the guitar for the first time at the age of only seven. He initially studied classical guitar in elementary school. However, as he was entering middle school, his mother enrolled him in the Summar Jazz Workshop, so his role models turned to artists such as George Benson, Wes Montgomery and Sonny Rollins. Then his grandmother introduced him to the blues, beginning with the music of BB King, and he has been playing blues and jazz ever since.
“When I was ten years old, my grandmother showed me a video of BB King. I went down the BB route and then learned about Little Milton and Lightnin’ Hopkins. Also, Milton Hopkins—he was BB’s guitar player for about 35 years and he’s from Houston too. Houston has such a wealth of artists, but it often gets overlooked. If you look at the history of the bigger bands, like Stevie Ray Vaughan, BB King and Little Milton, they all have Houston artists.”
Lattin graduated from the Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. Throughout high school, Lattin was unusually focused for his age and did not concern himself with what most high school students might find important.
“I missed all of my high school dances, but I didn’t care. There was one I was going to attend because I hadn’t been to any of them, but then I got a gig and that was more important. I’ve always, for the most part, done my own thing. It’s always been me figuring things out. Well, with the help of my mother. My mom has been supportive the whole time. She helped book the gigs and nobody has sacrificed as much for me. I’ve also developed somewhat of a minimalist lifestyle which gives me time to focus on what I really want to do, which is the music.
Lattin was fortunate enough to be mentored by such artists as Jonn Del Toro Richardson, Al Campbell, Shawn Allen and Annika Chambers, and released a five-song EP during his senior year of high school titled Let’s Start Here, which contains the impressive original slow-blues number “All on My Own”. In 2020, Lattin joined the Keeshea Pratt Band and played for several years as her guitarist.
“While in Keeshea’s band I learned a lot of teamwork skills and some about the tour lifestyle. I learned some of the skills of how to stay active and healthy on the road and how to mingle with people and properly position yourself as an artist.”
Lattin participated in the IBCs three times prior to his recent win. The first time he participated as a sideman for the Sarah Grace band in the youth showcase. The second time was also in the youth showcase with his band called “Untitled”. The third time was as a sideman for Cris Crochemore in 2022. The 2023 International Blues Challenge was the first time he entered as the Mathias Lattin Band. He noted that it felt like things had come full circle given that he went from a sideman to a frontman participating as a youth, and then again went from a sideman to a frontman as an adult. In 2023, he not only won the award for best band but was also named as the best guitarist. These honors led to him receiving several writing gigs for other musicians and being booked at many more festivals. For example, he was almost immediately booked on the Legendary Blues Cruise, the Big Blues Bender, and the Telluride Blues and Brews Festival. He was equally excited about all of those opportunities.
The Bender was amazing, particularly because there were seven winners of the best guitarist award present in the lineup. And I love the Legendary Blues Cruise because I always get to see a lot of great artists, the food is great, and there is non-stop music. Additionally, Telluride is coming up and I’ve heard great things about that festival.”
Lattin’s next album is expected to be released October 27th on the VizzTone Record label, which was founded by Richard “Rosy” Rosenblatt and Bob Margolin and managed by Amy Brat, who is also a partner. Rosenblatt noted, “We are very excited to be working with Mathias. He’s not just a great player and singer, he’s a serious composer whose unique blues songs are laced with tasty jazz influences and thoughtfully produced for maximum impact.” Lattin expressed his excitement for this collaboration as well.
“I’ve been working mainly with Rosy and Amy, and I love them. They’re really passionate about what they do and are really hard-working. I wrote all the songs on the album, and I produced it from top to bottom—did all the engineering in my home studio. I picked up the engineering part earlier, in high school because I was always interested in the recording aspect of everything. I always loved arrangements and I just wanted to learn how to do it all. I’ve been lucky and had a lot of people in my corner teaching me how to properly record and set up microphones. I track guitar and bass and then retrack the bass again over the drums. I think Marvin Gaye has been the biggest influence on my songwriting. I will usually write the lyrics down and then the music. I like the more interesting chord progressions. Sometimes I’ll record myself scat singing the other musician’s parts for them to learn and send it to them that way. Right now, my band is a power trio with Jesse Gomez on bass and Nick Andres on drums, but I also called in a bunch of Houston guys for the album. I tried to keep the album all Houston-based musicians.”
“For my gear, I am mostly a boutique guitar person. I’ve been playing Paul Reed Smith guitars recently. I like those guitars. The guitar I had been using for the past three years, and what I played in the IBC, was a Sugi. That is a boutique builder from Japan and it’s a really amazing guitar. I use a Category 5 amplifier (the Andrew model), and a twin reverb, and then I have my various assortments of overdrive pedals. I mainly use the full tone of OCD and try to go wireless as much as I can. I also like half wound strings. Most people aren’t hip to those. I like them because they allow me the freedom to play between my jazzier tones and my brighter tones.”
Lattin also noted that he would like to produce albums for other musicians.
“I would love to produce albums for others. I find doing that to be very fun for me. I would love to see where their mind is at, and to see if could throw my spin on their music if they would allow me to. To throw in whatever stupid idea I might have. Like most of my music has key changes in it. That’s kind of the running joke in the band. There were three songs on the album with key changes. It can get complicated after a while. It’s a thing I like and it’s also something that is not really done anymore. It’s not really seen in today’s blues music.”
When asked about the commonly held belief that younger audiences don’t enjoy the blues, Lattin had the following to say:
“I don’t think that age group has lost the blues. It’s more so that it has been doing the thing it needed to do—it needed to evolve. Every other genre has been given that room to evolve. Jazz went from ragtime to straight ahead, all the way to free form and R&B evolved. Rock turned from one thing to another with Heavy Metal. Even pop music has evolved. I think Reggae is the only genre that has really stayed the same. But the blues is sometimes held to this standard where it’s not allowed to evolve. People say, ‘I only want to hear it like this.’ I think it’s doing what it needs to do. I think it will have a resurgence. But I do think most festivals don’t have a good balance. Some people might say that it is too far toward the rock end. We need more people like Marquise (Knox), and Fish (Christone “Kingfish” Ingram), DK Harrell, the Peterson Brothers, Dylan Triplett and Jarekus (Singleton) to balance that out. One thing I do recognize about the age group is that only people over thirty buy CDs. People my age only buy vinyl. We’re going retro. Or they are moving to the digital platforms, but they don’t realize that we get a really, really small payment for streaming our music, like .001. You need to know your business. That’s extremely important, especially in today’s age. Because we are making such little money off streams (and sometimes off of our own record deals) you need to know how to make money. If fans want to support an artist, buy their merchandise and tell a friend to check out their music. Introduce friends to that artist.”
You can find out more about Mathias Lattin (and check out his merchandise) at www.mathiaslattin.com. And you can soon see him on the October Legendary Rhythm and Blues Cruise. When you see him perform live you will soon realize why Frank “Lil Scrap” Robinson had this to say about him: “The future of the blues is in good hands with Mathias Lattin. He is a gentleman and a scholar and has proven himself worthy to be the frontman he is.”
