The record setting heat wave that crashed Tucson, AZ's summer of 2003 provided ample inspiration to head for the indoors and hit the fans, sync up the old Tascams and make use of the red buttons and battered Music Man amplifiers. With heat stroked back drop, Mark Matos' early song crumbs, and rhythm section provided by the wonderous Golden Boots, The Campo Bravo Family was born a celebratory, if premature, birth.
Mark Matos' first demos, packaged as 'Electric Jumping Horses', began circulating the cozy confines of Tucson's adobe abodes in 2004 and soon he was gathering a rotating collective of sympathetic freaks and art rockers and opening for the likes of M. ward, Smog, Akron/Family, and Okkervil River. Eventually headlining capacity shows at Tucson's best venues and traversing America's fractured landscape in the kind of vans that had mechanic's cringing, all the while willing to take our meager road funds for services exchaged.
By 2006, uder the Campo Bravo moniker, Matos had released an EP and a full length on KEEP Recordings and was touring nationally with Darla Records' The Lowlights and Side Cho's Charlamagne. In Madison Wisconsin doses of LSD were administered and time was stopped, matters considered. In a fit of barefooted vision, MM pulled the plug on the Tucson model of Campo Bravo, packed his suitcase and headed home to San Francisco to reform the band in it's spiritual and musical home on the edge of the continent.
Mark Matos now performs with his band, Mark Matos & Os Beaches which includes contributions from Matt Adams (Blank Tapes), Ben Reisdorph, Joe Miller, Joe Lewis, Dave Mihaly, Kacey Johansing, Jeremy Hootin', Steve Spar, Aaron Keirbal, Tom Heyman (Court & Spark), and others of the CB Family. They have a new record, "Words Of The Knife" due out Oct. 6th on Porto Franco Records.
