After 15 years, Montz Matsumoto (Montz) has released a new recording titled Missing Home. Who is Montz? He is one of the premier banjo players in Australia. Missing Home is an eclectic mix of Montz originals, old-time and bluegrass standards, and Irish-flavored tunes. For example, Montz plays “Jerusalem Ridge” with his Nechville LC banjo in open E tuning while staying true to the Monroe melody. The title cut “Missing Home” features a wonderful flute accompaniment that follows the melody line beautifully.
Missing Home
Photo by Melanie Lunden
Montz is a fascinating character. He lives off the grid, four miles up a mostly gravel road on Cradoc Hill, which is approximately 30 miles southwest of Hobart, Tasmania. His one-room house with a loft is solar powered, and he uses a rocket stove for heat when needed. Montz is a wizard at clamoring up and down a ladder to access his loft. And, plenty of hot tea is available for his visitors. As Montz says jokingly, it’s his “little cabin home on the hill.”
Montz was born in 1962 in the Shiga Prefecture in Japan. In the mid-1970s, he had the very good fortune to be living in a part of Japan where country and bluegrass music were readily accessible, whether on the radio or in a music store. Montz remembers a music store in Kyoto selling 20 banjos in a month! A radio show in Kyoto played a variety of music and that is where he first heard the banjo. The band was The Natasha Seven, which was a Japanese folk band playing bluegrass instruments and singing
