Barby Matthews has had a long and varied musical journey. From her early youth through college, culminating in her graduation from the Crane School of Music, Barby has always been drawn to music.

It began with the violin in fourth grade and continued as she taught herself first the mandolin, then the guitar after finding her grandfather’s old acoustic in a closet. In the eighth grade when her older sister Betsy’s rock band “The Lost Souls” needed a bass player, Barby begged her wonderfully supportive parents for a bass. Once she had the bass, she played with the group for a couple of years, then with her high school jazz band for four years. She tried her hand at orchestration, arranging the Chuck Mangione tune “Look to the Children” for the jazz band which performed the piece in concert.

After college, she and her sister Betsy formed the duo “Little Sister”. They performed in the Rochester, NY area at various venues such as coffeehouses, local festivals, including the Park Ave Festival, and even at a rodeo.

When Barby moved to the Albany region, she concentrated more on writing than on performing. Then she joined “Female Songwriters You Wanna Hear”, a group founded by Nancy Walker, a singer/songwriter with many recording and collaborating credits. Together with another local singer/songwriter Lani Richards, the trio performed at many regional venues including Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs, NY where they had their own shows and had the pleasure of opening for Lowen and Navarro.

Barby is now performing solo shows and has rejoined her sister Betsy to resurrect “Little Sister”. Throughout her career, Barby says her two loves are songwriting and harmony. “I’ve written so many songs I’ve lost count!” She reaches to capture the emotion of a particular moment in her songs. “I’ve performed in many weddings over the years, and I’m often asked to write original wedding songs. After moving to Albany, three of my friends were married in one summer, and I wrote and performed original songs at all three weddings. I also wrote another song for a couple who was married in the fall of that same year. I went into the studio to record it for them so they could dance to it at their reception. I heard there was not a dry eye in the house which is a songwriter’s dream. Not to make people cry of course, but to make them feel the emotion of the song.” She loves making the audience laugh and cry with her.

She grew up on “singable songs” as she calls them. “Nothing makes me happier than to play a song and have someone tell me a week later that they’ve been humming it all week long”.  She grew up with influences like Neil Diamond, Burt Bacharach, the Beatles, Linda Ronstadt, America, and Crosby, Stills and Nash. It’s hard to narrow down her list of favorite female singers, but she counts among them Emmylou Harris, Bonnie Raitt, Melissa Etheridge, and Tricia Yearwood. Her love of widely varying types of music is reflected in her original songs. From the revealing “Fear of Flying” to the sassy “Little Miss Innocent”; from the rockin’ “Clear After Midnight” to the humorous “So Long, Farewell, Adios, Later-Much Goodbye”, she interprets the world around her with her own unique style.