Despite death being the saddest commonality we all share, it still doesn’t make it hurt any less when we lose someone we love and care for. Especially in the past couple of years when loss has been so prevalent in our headlines, a constant in our everyday lives. It has taken such a toll on our collective mental state, that healing – it’s going to be quite the process but thankfully artists like Matthew Liam Nicholson are willing to share their own tales of mourning to help people deal with their own like in his debut single, “Dusty Bones.”
Over the past year I’ve talked to a lot of musicians and very few of them were able to pen a song without referring to the devastation that followed March 2020. Tragedy often inspires art though, so it wasn’t shocking to hear. For Matthew Liam Nicholson, death hit too close to home when his friend Hefe passed away. He’d traveled to Los Angeles to help care for Hefe, and wound up spending only a month with his long-time best friend before he was gone. Moved by so much, Nicholson got to writing and from that, “Dusty Bones,” a song that offers a helping hand when dealing with the grand scope of life and death. A beautifully layered folk song that is reminiscent of singer-songwriters from the 1970s.
Matthew Liam Nicholson found himself writing more than just “Dusty Bones” though. In the end, he had enough material for his next release, ‘Universal Outsider.’ Since dropping “Dusty Bones,” this now Los Angeles-based maestro has dropped two more singles; “Nine Movements” and “The Publisher.” While we wait for ‘Universal Outsider’ in its entirety, you can check out all Matthew Liam Nicholson has available now on all major music and streaming sites.
Written by Kendra Beltran