ACFE Manager by Day, Rocker by Night

If you're in L.A., there's a real good chance that restaurant waitstaffer or even the bank president is an aspiring actor or playwright. But in Austin, the "Live Music Capital of the World," your co-worker might very well be a veteran musician. During the day, Matt Kinsey is the laid-back shipping manager at ACFE headquarters. But at night, he becomes the lead guitarist and singer for the widely popular band, Li'l Cap'n Travis. 

 

Matt shows low-key modesty, but his "alternative-country-pop-rock" band has reached a level of regional notoriety that few musicians have earned. LCT's fourth album, "Twilight on Sometimes Island," landed on a number of "The Best Albums of the Year" lists. NPR Music says the group "owes much more to a Cal-Tex tradition that lost its way in the mid-'70s: Think Gram Parsons and the Flying Burrito Brothers. ... Using steel guitars and vintage synthesizers, the Austin quintet glides from twang to torch song, weaving a near-perfect desert-island disc: romantic, atmospheric, and occasionally mesmerizing." 

 

Michael Barnes, reviewer for the Austin American-Statesman, said he detected on the album "the Beatles, Beach Boys, progressive country, contempo pop, early rock, all in a cycle of personal songs that shine like the golden sun over (Austin's) Lake Travis. These are savvy musicians who know how to manipulate songs into supple pseudo-memories, as though you'd heard it all before."