Player Profiles: Ard Matthews

Ard Matthews

The band Just Jinjer, comprised of Ard Matthews (Vocals, Guitar) Brent Harris (Drums, Vocals) Denholm Harding (Bass, Vocals), is the biggest selling rock group in their home country of South Africa. In just over a decade they have sold over a quarter million albums, toured with U2, Counting Crows, Live, Goo Goo Dolls, plus dozens of other massive artists. Their first international release, on Curb/Warner bros, is set to hit the airwaves and shelves globally towards the end of 2009.

Though Matthews grew up in a strict religious household with little popular music, what he did hear — Nat “King” Cole, Louis Armstrong and Elvis Presley — elicited an innate musicality that won a talent contest as a singer that he entered as a lark at the age of 12. In his late high school years, he sat down at a friend’s drum kit and immediately found a natural proficiency on the traps. He studied drums at the South African affiliate of Los Angeles’s famed Musicians Institute, also picking up the guitar partway through his courses.

Stepping onstage to sing and play guitar one night at the restaurant where he worked as a waiter in between sets by the evening’s entertainer, he was immediately offered a regular gig, and was soon making a good living on the Johannesburg circuit as a solo performer. He also honed his skills and appeal to listeners of all stripes busking on the streets of London and Paris. When he was befriended and heard by Harris, the drummer asked him to join his band Tri Funk Era, one of the Johannesburg’s most popular bands.

Just Jinjer relocated to London in 2000, signed up with Capitol Records in 2003 and moved to the United States. They recently returned to South Africa and plan to stay here for the next 12 months.