Matthew Jay

Matthew Jay was born 1978 and grew up in a family that loved music. His parents, Tony & Hilary worked as semi-professional country and folk artists. His older brother Edward now works as a professional musician travelling the world playing accordion and keyboards, and his younger brother Peter, recently graduated in Music and specialising in trombone, is just beginning his career.



In his teenage years, Matthew proved to be a very able sportsman playing volleyball for Wales, Badminton for his County, and cricket and football for his Town, Abergavenny.



Matthew also played music, beginning on violin but moving over to electric bass and guitar. His main musical outlet in his earlier years was playing in the ‘Jay Family Ceilidh Band’ for countless weddings and other events.



In 1997 he prepared for his ‘A’ levels and his school predicted that he would not do well at all, not surprisingly, because he was always out playing sport or music, or with his friends - and not studying. In fact he surprised his school and did very well exceeding their expectations by far. but because Universities offered places on predicted grades rather than actual results, his immediate further education prospects did not look good. As a result he took a fateful decision to take a gap year so that he could apply to University the following year with his actual grades.



His plan for his gap year was to write and record songs and send his demos off to recording companies. There was great excitement amongst his friends when major recording companies started to compete to sign their own ‘small town boy’. Click here for more!