Matt Flinner & His Real-Time Online Mandolin Instruction Classes

Photo by Eleanor Wilkie Matt Flinner was touring nationally in a bluegrass band as a pre-teen.  Around 1980, Ted Shupe of Ogden, Utah formed a band of 10-year-olds around his fiddle-playing son, Ryan (now with Ryan Shupe and the Rubberband) and they called themselves the Pee Wee Pickers.   The band’s talent earned them spots performing at festivals far from their Utah home.  I caught the band’s show in 1982 at the Festival of the Bluegrass in Lexington, Kentucky.  They were a very impressive group of young pickers. Matt, now known for his mastery of the mandolin, was the banjo player in the Pee Wee Pickers and in 1990, at the age of 21, won the banjo contest at the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas. He went back in Winfield the next year and won the mandolin contest.  Since those early days, Matt has gone on to tour and record with many top-notch bluegrass groups and has recorded a couple of solo CDs and three Matt Flinner Trio albums for Compass Records.&nb