Matt Backer - Red Guitars

Format: LP
Catalogue No.: SRL420V
Barcode: 5035980700195
Release Date: 27 Feb 2026
Genre: Blues/Rock

Matt Backer is a leading guitarist and songwriter, having performed and toured with a wide array of artists including Emilia Mitiku, Aimee Mann, Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, Kim Wilde, Laura Mvula, Swing Out Sister, Elton John, Cher, Bananarama, Joe Cocker and Alice Cooper, amongst others. 

Matt’s  new blues/Rock album is produced by Matt and his long-time collaborator Ian Shaw (Nick Heyward, Julian Cope). The album features special guests including former Shakespear’s Sister Marcella Detroit, Rumer,Sarah Jane Morris, (The Communards) Miles Backer(Son), Randy Stindt.

Matt has composed music featured in hit television series’ such as NCIS, Law and Order and Date My Mom, films like Domino and Horton Hears A Who, and adverts for household brands including Carlsberg, McDonaldʼs and Chrysler. 

He has toured the world with artists including Belinda Carlisle, ABC (with whom he sold out the Royal Albert Hall performing an orchestral version of their seminal Lexicon Of Love album) and Rumer, on whose double platinum debut Seasons Of My Soul he performed, as well as its follow up Boys Donʼt Cry. But the pinnacle of his recent accomplishments is new album Idle Hands, which he wrote and recorded. 

Mojo described a previous album, The Impulse Man, as having ‘the chunkiest riffs and licks you wish youʼd learned to play wrapped around songs reeling with fat choruses and wry humour.’ 

Track Listing:
Matt’s insight for each featured song:

Side A:
1) Red Guitars
      (Who doesn’t like red guitars? Electric, acoustic, shiny, faded?)

2) I Can’t Stop Myself
(Who doesn’t like vampires? The victims, I suppose. And the familiars. And…well, if you were a vampire, you could stop any time you wanted, right? Right…?)

3) Sugar and Cotton
(I read a letter in The Times arguing that the slave trade contributed to only a small part of the British economy in the 18th and 19th centuries. But those commodities, which we now take for granted, couldn’t have been harvested without it. We have a lot of reckoning to do.( 

4) Lord of the Things
(How much is enough? Big Up for Sarah Jane on "Lord Of The Things" People might remember Sarah Jane Morris as Jimmy Somerville's co-lead vocalist on The Communard's  UK number 1, "Don't Leave Me This Way", but she has done her own thing straddling jazz, soul, art music and opera for over four decades, and I've been privileged to be a part of it along the way). 

5) Slow Limousine
I’m starting to catch up with my old friends at funerals now. There will be more.   And there is at least one that I won’t be able to avoid. 

Side B:
1) The Next Big Thing
     (It’s the talk box!)

2) Chemistry
(I can’t remember what a covalent bond is, but that’s my son Miles providing the programming, the groovy wah and the lead. His mother Elisa is on BVs (as she is throughout the album). Biochemistry, innit?) 

3) Still Alive And Well
(As foolish as it may seem to cover a song made famous by Johnny Winter, it seemed appropriate to start playing it live after Covid, and it went down rather well. And it's loads of fun. When the writer passed away earlier this year, the underrated Rick Derringer, I just had to record it.) 

4) Your Mind Is on Vacation
(Mose Allison, one of my heroes, wrote this in 1963. Scarily prescient. Another UK chart topper, the           gorgeous  Marcella Detroit (aka Marcy Levy) did me the honour of singing it with me as well providing the BVs. She also supplied the awesome harmonica solo. Oh yes - and recorded and engineered it all. What a talent. Thanks also to another icon, Nick Heyward, who lent me his Telecaster for this.) 

 5) Everything Is Not Enough
      (I wrote this a quarter of a century ago, but it took an awfully long time for me to heed my own advice.     That's Miles Backer again on electric lead guitar. We get to have little father-son acoustic- electric interchange.)

6) Running Away From Something
     (Wherever you go, there you are).