Cover photo © 2026 Joseph A. Rosen

Another member of the talented new generation of blues musicians, guitarist Matt “The Rattlesnake” Lesch has followed a familiar path to get to this point in his career. He has worked hard, been mentored by several veteran blues artists, and is starting to be acknowledged for his efforts.

Born in 1997 in High Ridge, Missouri, about 20 minutes south of St. Louis, Lesch was 11 years old when he started learning how to play guitar. His inspiration came from an unusual source.

“Believe it or not, what got me in into guitar was the video game Guitar Hero, which my dad bought me when I was about 10 years old. Then, on my 11th birthday, he got me an actual guitar, a cheap electric Epiphone Les Paul. I started to play that and it quickly became my passion, something I wanted to do for the rest of my life. There was definitely something about the guitar that spoke to me in a way that other instruments didn’t. I was just more drawn to it, having that gritty feeling of the strings. I played that for many years, my only guitar for a long time. About four or five years later, I got my first acoustic guitar.

“These days my main guitar is a Gibson ES-335, and that’s pretty much the guitar I play everywhere. I have multiple instruments, as all guitar players do. The Gibson is the one I love the most. I just feel like I can play everything with it, no matter what kind of gig I’m doing. Blues or jazz, that thing can cover it all. It feels the best too, the most comfortable. I got my first ES-335 when I was 16 years old, an inexpensive, red Epiphone Dot model. That was my main guitar before I got my Gibson.”

In the early days, he started off playing a lot of classic rock like AC/DC, and even some heavier stuff like Metallica. His dad made sure he heard Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan and B.B. King.

“You know, it was the blues-rock guys that really drew me to the blues, started me down that rabbit hole, mostly with Hendrix and Stevie Ray. Then I kind of worked my way back to the originators of the electric style blues, artists like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and all the Chess Records artists.

A lot of it was word of mouth from other musicians, people I was sitting in with at the time. They would tell me these guys to check out and I would go do my research, see who was playing on what, who influenced who.

“I will say one thing about Jimi Hendrix. To this day, whenever I listen to him, he’s one of the few guitar players that I pick up something new that he’s doing with each listen. It doesn’t have to be exactly what he’s playing, but it could be his tone or the way he’s phrasing things. There’s just something different every time I listen to him.”

Starting out in a cover band. Lesch built up his chops before forming the first blues band under his own name. He was 15 years old, playing locally and trying to make a name for himself in the St. Louis music community.

“I just used my name and at that point I was having a hard time keeping the same members, because with the blue scene, everybody plays with everybody. So a lot of times the band was a mix of whoever I could get at the time until later on, when I ended up getting a steady band that I could rely on.”

A year or so later, he had one of those fortunate experiences that took his career to a new level.

“One night I went to BB’s Jazz, Blues and Soups here in St. Louis to watch Big George Brock play. I knew a couple members in his band. They had told him that I was coming out. I went up to say hello and shake his hand. George was almost completely blind at this point. I shook his hand, saying, it’s nice to meet you, I’m a big fan. Big George goes, “you bring your guitar with you?” I replied, yeah, I got it. He tells me go get it. That was the end of that conversation.

“About halfway through the night, around midnight or so, he called me up and had me start off some songs. Ended up keeping me up on stage the rest of the night. After the show, he told me that he was going to take me down to Clarksdale, Mississippi with him, and I’ll be damned if he didn’t do that the next year. From then on, I became his main guitar player for the next seven years, up until he passed away in 2020, right at the start of COVID.

“Big George was around when all these classic and monumental songs were being made. It’s just a different feeling you get being with somebody like that, like you’re playing directly from the source. I learned so many lessons from him. Guys like that, they wouldn’t tell you what to do, bit by bit. If you weren’t playing something right, they’d be like, nope, that ain’t it. I learned to really play by following him and keeping my ears open. I really paid close attention to everything he was doing, how he was talking to people, how he handled the business side of things, and also how he would handle himself on stage.

“It was very much a privilege, an honor to be able to play with somebody like that, especially at a such a young age. He was definitely my mentor. After about three years, we just became really close. I looked at him more as family than anything. We’d call and just be on the phone for hours talking about random stuff. It really became more than just being the guitar player in his band. We were really, really close until he passed.”

That year continued on a downward trajectory for Lesch, as it did for so many of us. It certainly had him reevaluating his future.

“When COVID hit, everything went to shit. A lot of my gigs went away. I wasn’t really doing a lot of traveling for a while. I focused on doing some live streaming a little bit on Facebook, doing some gigs here and there whenever they would pop up. It was a struggle for me and a lot of other musicians. Once everything started picking back up, I was really thinking about what I wanted to do, did I want to keep doing this after so much has changed. That’s the other thing, you know, COVID really changed a lot of what the blue scene was, with venues closing, not just in St. Louis, but everywhere. It did not help the business at all.”

One thing that did help him continue on his career path was a relationship with a talented singer who was also making a name for himself around the city.

“Dylan Triplett and I both came up in St. Louis around the same time, playing together, doing some shows together. We would watch each other’s show. I wasn’t really in his band at the time when we were coming up, but we would definitely support each other whenever we could, being two younger people at the time. I mean, we really formed a great connection on stage.

“Every time we would play together, sit in with one another, it would be the highlight of the show. We would have so much fun. Later on, when Dylan released his album, Who Is He?, he called me to play his album release party with him. That kind of started off me playing with him in his band, when he needed me. It’s always fun whenever we play. We have a great working relationship and friendship.

“Most of the time when I do play with him, it’s out of town, at least a couple times a month. I know we’re getting ready to go on the blues cruise at the end of the month, so that’d be the next time I play guitar with him. We did the one in October this past year, which was my first time actually doing the blues cruise. It was so much fun, and I’m looking forward to this next one.

Every nickname comes with a story, and Lesch’s “ The Rattlesnake” moniker is no different.

“When I was about 15 years old, I was playing at, I think, the Blues City Deli here in St. Louis. At the end of a set, somebody had told me that when I’m on stage, I’m as unpredictable as a rattlesnake. And I thought, yeah, that’s kind of cool. It was just a small thing, but people started to call me that. It didn’t become a thing until I met Big George, and he heard that my nickname was “ The Rattlesnake.” He just called me that pretty much from then on. Every time he would introduce me, he’d just say, “Rattlesnake on guitar”. He was the one that took it and made a thing out of it, you know, the old blues guys and their nicknames.

“There was another St. Louis blues guy, David Dee, who wrote the song “Going Fishing.” He would call me that, too. I’m pretty sure he didn’t even know my real name. He just made me “The Rattlesnake,” but he was another person I was sitting in with a lot here, somebody else I learned from. Playing with him is actually where I learned more of the soul side, the R&B side of of blues. He’d do the Temptations and stuff like Bobby “Blue Bland”.

“Whenever I would walk in somewhere he was at, he’d just hand me the chord to the guitar. I’d plug in and he’d just go! I would have to look at the other guitar player to figure out how to play the song. That’s how I learned a lot of those classic songs. It was a learn on the job type of thing, which I’m also thankful for.”

His mentors did indeed teach him a great deal. In addition to his talent on guitar, Lesch can impress as a vocalist and as a songwriter. And don’t forget that he has been known to blow some down-home harmonica licks.

“George was a big influence on me wanting to learn harmonica. So I picked that up and it is just something I do at my shows. I always carry it around. If I’m somewhere, I can at least play harmonica if I don’t have a guitar with me. I very much love to do that, playing a lot in Big George’s style. Singing was something that I struggled with for a long time. It’s something I’m definitely the most subconscious about, I guess you could say. I continually work towards getting better, something I feel I have to put more work into than my guitar playing at this point.”

Not all of the guitarist’s education came from the stage. He attended Webster University in St. Louis, graduating in 2021 with a degree in Jazz studies and performance.

“Next to blues, jazz is my favorite thing to do. Of course, blues is my main thing I do, but every time I get a chance to play jazz, I love doing that. Jazz took a little bit longer for me to grab hold of than blues did. Blues came more natural to me, where jazz I had to really work at, study and practice these things, just the phrasing and the technicality of it.”

At the start of 2025, Blue Lotus Recordings released Blues Cuts Like Glass, the second album from Lesch, which earned a nomination for a 2025 Blues Blast Music Award in the Rock Blues Album category. More importantly for him was getting nominated, and ultimately being named the recipient of the 2025 Blues Blast Sean Costello Rising Star Award.

“That was something I was not expecting, but I was very, very happy and honored to receive that award. I had my name in there with my other friends like Stephen Hull and Harrell “Young Rell” Davenport in the same category. You know, it was an honor just to be included with all them guys, plus Jad Tariq and Jovin Webb, Tony Holiday. That’s a pretty talented group. I haven’t had the chance to meet Jovin yet. But yeah, I respect all of them guys. They’re amazing, amazing musicians.

“One thing that comes to mind is on that album, there’s several songs that have a three piece horn section. That was the first time I actually wrote and arranged those horn parts, the first time I had ever done something like that for an album. I’m definitely want to keep doing it as I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, how it sounds. Listening to our stuff, I, I know there’s things that could be better, but nevertheless, I’m happy with how those arrangements turned out. It really makes me want to do even more for the next album.”

While he is still a young man, Lesch has years of experience under his belt, and his own nickname. He also feels that he is headed in the right direction.

“Every time you hear me play, you’re just going to be hearing the rawness of my playing. There’s nothing that’s ever rehearsed. I really don’t play the same thing twice. It’s all improvised solos, which takes a lot of that influence from my my jazz side. I want every show to be unique in some way, shape, or form. I really hope that those people that will be listening to me in the future will feel that as well.”