New longform – Dispatched from Darkness
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Tag: East Lansing
Matt Borghi: A Journey Through Song and Sound
Singer/Songwriter Shaped by Americana, Meditation and the Spirit of the Grateful Dead
Matt Borghi is Michigan-based singer/songwriter whose evocative music resonates deeply with fans of the Grateful Dead and Brian Eno-alike. Growing up immersed in the rhythms Detroit and steeped in Canadian radio that drifted across the border, Matt found his inspiration early in the storytelling tradition of classic folk and the improvisational spirit of the Grateful Dead. These influences became the cornerstone of his songwriting style, blending poetic lyrics with captivating melodies that transport listeners to a place where tradition and innovation harmoniously coexist.
Matt’s journey as an artist began with a guitar in hand and a love for communal music-making but took an unconventional detour when he was struck with a rare heart condition at the age of 19. While he was on a course towards fulfilling his goals as a working singer/songwriter, his musical goals and focus changed as he was pulled towards contemplative and meditative music that aided in his recovery.
As the years passed, Matt became known for his meditative ‘ambient guitar’ music with features on NPR, BBC, CBC, Music from the Hearts of Space and Echoes with John Diliberto, as well as numerous licensing placements and dozens of record deals; his singer/songwriter work continued quietly in the shadows.
While Matt spent more than two decades working within the high-resolution production world of ambient guitar and drone-based music, he never moved away from his love of folk and Americana, specifically the Appalachian music traditions – His first guitar lesson took place on a porch during a cool fall evening, overlooking the foggy hills of his ancestral home in Van Lear, Kentucky—the hometown of Loretta Lynn—while he was visiting from Detroit.
Through it all, Matt has remained committed to his singer/songwriter work and in recent years has elevated its prominence and focus in his creative output.
Inspired by the acoustic richness of bluegrass, the heartfelt richness of Americana and the improvisational spirit of the Grateful Dead, Matt’s songs and live performances reflect both personal introspection and collective experience. His work often explores themes of wandering, belonging, and the search for meaning—echoes of the Grateful Dead’s own musical explorations.
Over the years, Matt has released dozens of albums that showcase his mastery of blending genres. Whether performing solo or collaborating with other musicians, his live shows are celebrated for their warm intimacy and improvisational flair, inviting audiences to become part of the musical journey. Matt’s dedication to authenticity and connection shines through in every performance, earning him a loyal following across folk and Americana communities.
Today, Matt Borghi continues to write, record, and perform with the same passion that first drew him to music. His work pays homage to the roots of American music while carving out a distinct voice that honors tradition and celebrates the spirit of artistic exploration.
Message originally posted to friends on Bandcamp in ‘Remember a time’ release announcement – Join us there, if you haven’t already.
Hello Friends,
I don’t get into talking about my creative process as much as I once did, but with this recording I want to say a few things. First off, this recording was completely improvised and recorded live yesterday, April 3rd 2026. I lost myself in it. My best ambient work, and much of the work that I share with you, is improvised. Sometimes, often actually, it’s not good and gets put in the trash, but other times, the best times, a sublime state of flow is achieved, sounds flood my brain and the world falls away – ‘Remember a time’, or as I call it on my hard drive: ‘04032026 – Guitar Improvisation’, was one such occurrence and now I’m sharing it with you.
I hope you enjoy it.
matt
Announcing my new ‘songs’ recording, Towards the Western Sky. It’s naked and stripped down; there are no big ambient textures or dense guitar drones supporting the melody or a voice buried somewhere in the mix, rather this recording is a folk recording, the songs taken down to their most basic essence: Guitar and voice. Get it here on Bandcamp for free/name your price.
I’ve recorded and released some of these songs before, but I had always wanted to do stripped down ‘folk’ versions of the tunes. Until now, and probably now, too, I’ve lacked the confidence to put these songs out there in that way, whether as the singer or the songwriter, probably both, I hid behind big production burying the tunes.
As I’m sure you’ve gathered, this is a very different recording, one that I’ve tried to record a hundred times over the course of the last twenty years, beginning around 2003. Hell, if I’m honest, I began making this recording with my first recording session and my first studio-recorded song in 1994, but I wasn’t very good and the song wasn’t very good either, but it was a start and through ten thousand start-stops, a lifetime, here I am releasing a recording that serves as a snapshot of my songwriting work, a collection that’s well into the hundreds at this point.
Folk songs are known for covering some dark territory, the yearning of the human spirit, the struggle of the human condition and everything in between. I’ve alluded to these subjects in abstract and poetic longform titles, but here they’re delivered by me without pretense and with a rawness that oftentimes has been too precious to for me to share; there’s a darkness, always just beyond on the edges – with these recordings, I try to tame it.
There are light moments in this recording, too, because after all, life is a balance and I’ve tried to embody that balance in this recording. To be sure, this isn’t an ambient or a drone recording, some of the songs on ‘Toward the Western Sky’ are thirty years old and some, barely thirty days old, but they all have something about them that begged inclusion in this humble collection of songs from a middle-aged Michigan songwriter fumbling towards self-actualization through song and story. Again, you can get it here on Bandcamp for free/name your price.
I hope you enjoy it!
-Matt
Mini bio –
Matt Borghi is a Michigan-based singer/songwriter fumbling towards self-actualization through sound, story and song. Matt is also a founding member of The Deadly String Band, an East Lansing-based Grateful Dead and Dead-adjacent cover band who approach the the music as an acoustic old time string band covering the whole of the Grateful Dead’s song catalog as well as their influences, including tunes from the old time blues, folk and bluegrass songbook.
I haven’t posted in a while as I’ve been heavily involved with The Deadly String Band, a group I formed in early 2025 and is described thusly:
The Deadly String Band is Michigan’s premier acoustic old time Grateful Dead tribute band; playing Grateful Dead and Dead-adjacent tunes in the style of an old time acoustic string band. The Deadly String Band strives to cover the whole of the Grateful Dead’s song catalog, as well as their influences, including tunes from the old time blues, folk and bluegrass songbook.
Apparently, this concept was something that there was an appetite for as it really took off beyond what we thought was even possible in the Mid-Michigan/Lansing area. Having never been part of a cover band, I thought it might be fun to take some of the Grateful Dead songbook and their respective Americana influences and approach it in the style of a 19th century string band; being a Grateful Dead cover band also seemed like the perfect opportunity to inject the music with a lot of improvisation and exploratory jams. We’re slowly bringing all of this together.
I’ve managed to keep producing ambient recordings at a rate of about one per month which seems just about right; a good break from practicing guitar and learning songs to get back in the drone state.