Before there was a band, there was a kid from Harris County with a voice. Matt Johnson grew up singing — he performed with the Columbus Boys Choir and rose to head chorister, leading the whole ensemble before he'd finished growing up. At Harris County High School he was first-chair trumpet; a year ahead of him, on the drum line, was a snare drummer named Jason Holt. They became fast friends. The instruments would change — trumpet to guitar, snare to bass — but the partnership never did.
The first band came around 2004. It was called Old James — Matt and Jason with friends on guitars and drums, playing around Columbus: house parties, local stages, even the Harris County High auditorium. They were a cover band, and a genuinely good one. But somewhere in those years, the guitar Matt had been playing since he was fifteen started producing songs of his own. The people who heard them remember the same thing: being startled by how good they were.
The songs moved with him. Matt landed in Atlanta, sharing an apartment with Jason, Jason's brother Josh, and their cousin Thomas. When the apartment gave way to a house — one with a room fit for a band — jams turned into rehearsals, and rehearsals turned into a decision: these songs deserved a stage.
The stage turned out to be The Loft in Columbus, at a 2009 songwriter showcase. One problem: no drummer. So Matt made one — his younger brother Adam, a Georgia Tech student across town in Atlanta, got a pair of sticks and a two-week crash course from Matt and Jason. With Michael Clements on guitar, they were the only full band on a bill of solo acts. They won the whole thing. That night is the reason the rest of this page exists.
From there it became real. Adam moved into the house for his last year at Georgia Tech — three of the band under one roof — and it became regular practices, songs built together as a group, demos sent to venues around Atlanta, and a name: The Dirty Souls. When Michael moved on, the band found Alex Slinin through a Craigslist ad and were blown away on the spot. Berklee-trained and a sound engineer by trade — with credits including Dr. Dre's The Chronic 2001, where he's in the liner notes, name misspelled and all — Alex brought theory and technical prowess to match Matt's raw creativity, and no shortage of creativity himself. He said it to Matt more than once: what you have is a gift. With Alex on lead, the band recorded and released its 2012 EP, We're Called The Dirty Souls.
When life eventually pulled Alex toward his growing family, the band found Mike Gracey — and knew right away he fit. He meshed from the first rehearsal, and with him The Dirty Souls kept playing shows and kept refining and recording songs — including six that never made it out the door.
Matt passed on September 5, 2016. Ten years later, the band is finishing what it started: those six songs, released as one record, with everything they earn going to a scholarship in his name at the high school where it all began.