San Diego Surf-Jazz Duo Mattson 2 to Play Hotel Palms in Atlantic Beach

We’re stoked to welcome world-renowned surf-jazz duo the Mattson 2 to Jacksonville as part of our JME Presents Music Discovery Series. The San Diego based duo, made up of twin brothers Jonathan and Jared Mattson, will perform at the Hotel Palms in Atlantic Beach on Wednesday, April 12. 

Over the last decade-plus, the Mattsons have consistently displayed a kind of casual alchemy that likely owes much to the fact that identical-twin brothers Jonathan (drums) and Jared (guitar, bass) Mattson are steeped in the ‘60s-era cosmic jazz of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme (they even covered Coltrane’s opus on 2019’s Mattson 2 Play A Love Supreme).

• Get tickets to see the Mattson 2 at Hotel Palms

While the Mattsons have earnestly followed in the footsteps of the jazz artists who sought to transcend the connections between the physical and spiritual during the cultural decade, they’ve also consistently pulled on the threads of other ‘60s Southern California sounds – from the pyrotechnics of Dick Dale and the Deltones’ Rendezvous Ballroom surfer stomps to Bud Shank’s scores for Bruce Brown’s Slippery When Wet and Barefoot Adventures, the brothers are steeped in the cultural milieu of their home region.  

Those conscious and subconscious nods to the past are evident on the 2009 album Ray Barbee Meets the Mattson 2, a collaboration with the pro-skateboarder-turned-guitarist. Barbee and another skater-musician, Tommy Guerrero, lent licks on the Mattson 2’s debut full-length, 2011’s Feeling Hands, a singular collection of expressive, tight-but-loose instrumental compositions. The follow-up to Feeling Hands, the 2014 EP Agar, is more sonically expansive, and arguably more experimental, as the duo reaches for cosmic, Pharoah-Sanders-esque transcendence on the EP’s title track.

The duo’s 2019 full-length (their second for Chaz Bear, aka Toro Y Moi’s Company Records), which charted at #1 on Billboard’s Contemporary Jazz Charts found the brothers experimenting with more traditional song structures and even vocals, explorations they’ve continued on subsequent Mattson 2 releases, collabs with other artists and Jared’s upcoming debut solo album, Peanut (due out in April 2023). 

• Read more about the Mattson 2 from The Washington Post and Pitchfork. 

You can hear The Mattson 2 on JME’s music discovery station, The Independent 89.9 HD4. Aside from Jared’s new solo music currently in rotation, you can hear the brothers backing D.C. producer and multi-instrumentalist Toro Y Moi on the song “Millenium,” (also in regular rotation). 

The Mattson 2 plays Hotel Palms in Atlantic Beach on Wednesday, April 12. Tickets are on sale now.