Matt Joe Gow

Matt Joe Gow has built a reputation as an earnest performer to go alongside the authentic alt country tones and many accolades. Don’t miss out on his amazing act, buy your tickets now to the 2025 Wairarapa  Music in the Country Festival.  

A producer and consistent songwriting collaborator, Matt grew up in the deep south of New Zealand in a town with bad weather and good music: Dunedin. Surrounded by music, he was encouraged to pick up a guitar at an early age. After traveling the world, Matt signed with Liberation Records and in 2009 released his debut record The Messenger, produced by multi-Aria award-winner Nash Chambers. As Alternative Country continued to grow in popularity, Matt toured and supported acts such as The Jayhawks, Marlon Williams, Kasey Chambers, Delaney Davidson, Grant-Lee Phillips and Melissa Carper.

Whilst regularly working on other projects in the studio, it would be his 2018 album Break, Rattle and Roll, an ambitious self produced sprawling Americana record which would go on to win the Music Victoria Award for Best Country Album, solidifying his place on the independent Country music scene in Australia. After the rewarding but demanding process of making and touring that album, Matt headed back into the studio in what became the fateful year of 2020, with the concept of this time making a stripped-back album. As the process of making the album was stalled by the pandemic and in uncertain times, Matt moved back to base himself once again in New Zealand to spend time with his Mother who had sadly fallen ill, and the album was finished remotely.

The result is a unique record which, although laborious to make during a dark time, went on to be perhaps the purest expression of Matt’s songwriting. The album, Between Tonight & Tomorrow, went on to chart on the ARIA Country, AMRAP and Independent Release charts in the first week of its release, with feature spots and high rotation on ABC national radio, whilst garnering five-star reviews in New Zealand, such as in the Otago Daily Times. The album once again went on to win the Music Victoria Award for Best Country Album, but the critical acclaim didn’t end there. Matt also won the prestigious MLT Songwriting Award at the New Zealand Country Music Honours and in 2024 was nominated for an Aotearoa Music Award
fort Best Country Artist, delighting longtime fans and supporters in his home country as the accolades continue to roll in for the Dunedin troubadour.