Meet This Artist: Music Producer and Coach Matty the Chéf

The Chatham Arts Council is investing in artists through our Meet This Artist (MTA) series, introducing you to 12 Chatham County artists each year in a big way. The fine folks at Hobbs Architects in downtown Pittsboro are powering our Meet This Artist series this year. Architecture is art, and the Hobbs crew values art in our community. So, take a look. Meet your very inspiring neighbors.

Matty “Matty the Chéf” McCaskill is a musician, producer, and coach who brings a deep well of experience to his craft. In this interview, Matty dives into the challenges of balancing a creative life with the demands of family and work, sharing insights on how to stay focused and inspired even when time is scarce. He emphasizes the importance of understanding your why—the driving force behind your creativity—and using that as fuel to push through obstacles. Whether discussing the grind of performing an album live, creating music alongside your life partner, navigating strong personalities in the studio, or finding ways to create in the margins of a busy day, Matty offers wisdom on how to maintain your artistic fire while living a full, balanced life.

When did you first realize that you were a creative being?

When I was about eight years old. At that time, my parents – true story: they actually met at a party that Marvin Gaye was throwing back in the seventies. And when they moved back to DC, I was born. By the time I was about six years old, my parents had already divorced and I was living in a house with my mother, my grandmother, and my sisters. My grandmother had a Chickering piano. Being the only boy in the household at that time, I had to have an outlet. The girls were so mild mannered and the older ladies were just not understanding of that young male energy. My outlet ended up being the Chickering piano.

So you found a space for yourself in that piano?

With the piano in the basement where no one was there. That’s where I found my first bit of focus. We didn’t have a lot of really big backyards growing up Black and middle class in DC. It gets kind of boring. And so sitting down at the piano was a great way to harness my attention.

You grew up in DC?

I did. I’m a Washington, DC native. I lived on Shepherd Street about five minutes up the road from Adams Morgan. So, growing up in Washington, DC, we have a music style called Go-go music. It’s really great for live musicians. So that was my musical upbringing. Go-go music is authentically DC. It is not necessarily funk, it’s not necessarily rap, it’s not necessarily remix music. It is all of those things and it requires live instrumentation. So, if you wanted to be cool, if you wanted to impress ladies back in the day, you needed to be a Go-go musician.

My mother was extremely supportive, was very attuned to the fact that I was the only male in the household and how difficult that was to navigate. She bought me keyboards, bought me my first drum set, bought me my first guitar, pretty much everything that I needed. And me and my buddies, from age 14 to 16, would get together almost every day and practice our craft, practice our Go-go music.

Our parents were Black middle class. A lot of my friends’ parents were doctors and lawyers and stuff. So they’re like, “all right, this is fine. This is a cute little hobby, as long as you guys are being creative and constructive.” That was my core nucleus of friends, until college broke up the band. But that was when I knew, “Oh, wow! I absolutely love this!”

So, it sounds like you are comfortable, or at least familiar, with multiple instruments. Is that what led you to music production?

Well, fast forward to about 19 years old. I’m graduating high school and I’ve got some older friends and they’re like, “Hey, let’s start a band.” And I’m like, “Okay, cool! But this time, I want to get paid from this music. It’s all fun to be popular, but this time I’m really serious.” I played bass on the keyboard, and helped produce songs.

I didn’t know at the time, but I was essentially helping the band as the music director. Unfortunately, some of the guys were really unprofessional. There was a lot of infighting going on. I found out that the lead band member, who was an old buddy of mine, had just wanted to start a band to get girls and to be popular. So I left. I was like, “this is wasting my time.” At 19, I was already getting very serious. I wanted to know how to actually make money from this. How can I have this be sustainable?

How do you navigate strong personalities now? As a producer, how do you direct the vision for an album?

Over time, I’ve learned how to be a better music producer. I realized some things, especially working with Deja Belle. (We’re longtime collaborators.) She’s not going to like this, but it’s true: she’s extremely stubborn with making music. So it’s not as simple as just telling people what to do directly. You are inspiring something. You’re inspiring them to almost come up with it themselves. And from that space, then I can help craft something.

I’m always like, “Where do you want to go with this idea?” I try to get into a musician’s head and use the information and the understanding that I have to expand on it. The process is about exploring it together and letting them have the epiphany moment. Like coaching, it’s about helping someone become a better artist.

What sorts of projects are you currently working on?

More recently I’ve been playing a lot with Deja and the band that she’s working on. In 2019 we released her album independently. It’s done really, really well for an independent album with no money behind the marketing. That album, the U.N.I. album that we put so much energy into, she only just recently started performing in September of last year.

And because I have that experience with leading a band, I’ve been sort of playing music director, helping Deja and the guys with honing their sound. I’m playing the DJ back, but I actually know how to play the drums, and how to play the bass, and play pretty much all of the other instruments. So whenever there’s a difficulty, I’m like, “Okay, here, pass me the bass real quick” or “Lemme show you this on the drums.”

And what did we just do? We just performed at The Pour House in Raleigh.

It’s a great old school venue. Lots of memories made that place. I’ve seen some great bands there.

Yeah, it was our first time there and – Listen, I have trauma from performing venues in Washington, DC where they’ll say, “Oh yeah, we’ve got this, we’ve got that.” And they have none of it. So I just got used to bringing cords, microphones, auxiliary cables, and all that with me. But Pour House had everything. I didn’t need one piece of extra equipment.

Good. Oh, that’s fantastic. Very nice.

Anyway, the idea was to start creating and recording new music right around this time. So this is kind of an incubator period, wrapping up a year of performing the album. We never got to perform when it was recorded in 2019, because then it was –

2020. Yep.

Yeah. In between, we had some serious struggles where we couldn’t even think about music on a professional level. Since that time, I’ve taken a job in the automotive industry on top of my music and coaching business. By the time I’m home, my son wants to play with me, my family wants to engage with me, and then you gotta sleep, and then it’s time to do it all over again.

It’s either that or you go back to being a struggling artist. You end up putting so much strain on yourself. I mean, I’ve taken my family through some really rough times, trying to put everything into music. That’s irresponsible for a man, a family man. It’s okay for a young 18-year-old single guy or girl. Listen, coming to grips with that wasn’t easy. And so, essentially, my role has been to finance our household.

But I still have to play music because I’m a musician. I’ve still got my guitars and I’m like, if I didn’t have anything, I would still play music even just for myself. So, somehow, it’s all got to fit in. I learned a lot from this book called Limitless by Jim Kwik. He talks about getting into flow. He says it takes about two dedicated hours to get into a flow state. For the first 15 minutes you turn on that proverbial water spigot and mud is coming out. For the next hour and 45 minutes you’re in there, clearing that water up until finally you’re in the flow. Well, who has two hours these days?

Who has two hours?

Who has two hours? Right. So getting into the flow can be difficult, but my brain is always looking for solutions. More recently, I’ve decided I’m just going to have to ‘do it ugly’. How do I produce something during the hour commute to Durham back and forth? Well, I’ve set up the video camera in my car, and I’m doing a lot more vlogging and coaching during the commute, just going through lessons and pre-recording content. I have to be creating.

I’m definitely interested in finding pockets throughout the day to be creative. 

This is one of the hacks: Time is going to pass anyways. Five years is going to pass and you’re going to wish you had done something with that time. I took an entrepreneurship class for about nine months. It was worth every penny to be around other entrepreneurs while I was incubating my coaching and consulting business. One of the guest speakers in that class said, “A year from now you’re going to wish you started today.”

Human beings are natural procrastinators, period. People are natural procrastinators. Every now and then we’ve got to be pushed over the edge to be great. And the majority of us do have greatness in there somewhere. Sometimes you need a cheerleader. And that’s where coaching and consulting comes in, the support system. Sometimes you just need to have a roadmap of what to do.

I believe time is the most important resource that human beings have. You can get every single thing back except for your time. 20 years ago when you had all the time in the world, what did you do with it? There’s this old phrase-

“Youth is wasted on the young.”

Yes, yes, yes. The worst thing about youth is that it’s wasted on the young. I heard that when I was a youngster. And the saying has continued to expand and gain interest on itself. And so now I’m just like, “We’ve got to do it ugly.”

If you are a creative person, if you have that fire, you have to find a way to balance it all – I mean, the time and energy it takes to create something against the demands of living in the world.

It’s all about understanding your why, right? And your why will fuel you when you’re tired. I’m not the best musician in the world, so that’s not my why. I don’t need to be making a whole bunch of money. That’s not my why. Weirdly enough, the process exposed some deep stuff. When I asked myself what my why was, it wasn’t immediately my family. I was like, “Well, why isn’t it immediately my family? What in the world is my why? Why don’t I have the same why as other guys? Am I doing it for Black people? I mean, I love that. But gosh, that’s not strong enough either.” I chewed on some big questions for over a year, just trying to understand my why.

I think most of the time, it’s for that specific musician that I was who had messages to get out. I’m one of those, “speak to the people”-type of artists. When I would perform my music, my original songs, I would speak to the people. And so I want other artists to understand their why first. Then I can help them to get out a message, because to do that, you actually need to know how to put a business together.

Yes, if you want your message to have reach, of course.

If you want people to hear your message, you need to have a great set of abilities and skills, because nothing’s guaranteed, right? It’s not guaranteed a runner’s going to win the race. But if you’ve been coached, if you know your running style, how you take off, how you pass the baton, know your stride and your posture, if all of those things have been honed to the best of your abilities, you have a thousand times better chance to win that race than you would have had with no direction or coaching.