Matthew Hartz is a champion fiddle player with scores of fiddling trophies from competitions around the country. So you might expect him to have scores of books, records, posters and other fiddling oddments.
You’d be wrong.
It’s not exaggerating to say that Hartz is a world-class musician. He’s won the Grand Masters Fiddle Contest at the Grand Ole Opry three times. He’s won the World Fiddling Championship in Texas and recently became a member of the multiple Grammy-winning roots group Asleep at the Wheel, playing venues throughout the U.S. and as far away as Switzerland.
But his other passion – the one you wouldn’t expect – has nothing to do with fiddling.
He’s a diehard, lifelong Beach Boys fan.
With the Beach Boys memorabilia to prove it – enough Beach Boys memorabilia to fill three rooms.
“I’ve been collecting it my whole life,” he said. “Some of it dates back to my childhood.”
Hartz, 54, became a Beach Boys fan when he was three years old.
“I was raised on Dixieland jazz and Simon Garfunkel. Those were my Dad’s records. But Mom was a Beach Boys fan.
“I didn’t understand their music because I was just a little kid, but there was something so resonant about it that just stuck with me. It was so enveloping. I’m a Beatles and Rolling Stones fan, too, but it doesn’t go to that depth. I appreciate it all, but nothing as much as the Beach Boys.”
He was such an avid Beach Boys fans that his older cousins brought him programs and photographs whenever they attended a Beach Boys concert.
A Boisean since he was 16, Hartz grew up in Blackfoot and Pocatello and has been playing music virtually all his life. His father started him on banjo and guitar, which he still plays, and, when he was eight, gave him a violin.
“He said I could probably use it to play in the school orchestra. I joined the school orchestra at Syringa Elementary School in Pocatello, then got some private lessons and did classical competitions. Then one night Mom and Dad took me to an old time fiddle contest.”
The contest changed his life. He was in third grade then and has been playing old time fiddle music ever since. He started small, playing at rest homes, never dreaming that one day he’d be knocking them dead at the Grand Ole Opry.
As much as he loved fiddling, his love of the Beach Boys music never dimmed. He refers to the three rooms that house his Beach Boys collection as a “sanctuary.” Each room is dedicated to a specific era of the group’s long career – an early 1960s room, a late 1960s room and a 1970s-and-beyond room. Expecting to see records, photos and a modest assortment of other Beach Boys memorabilia, I was amazed at the scope of what he’s assembled.
In addition to scores of records and photos, he has a Carl Wilson signature Rickenbacker 12-string guitar. (For those unfamiliar with them, three of the Beach Boys’ original members were brothers – Brian, Carl and Dennis Wilson.)
He has replicas of the Pendleton shirts the group wore for photos on two of their early albums.
He has a surfboard signed by Brian Wilson, who wrote virtually all of the Beach Boys songs and according to Rolling Stone is the 12th greatest songwriter of all time. (Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney and John Lennon are the top three.)
He has dozens of books about the Beach Boys.
He has the set list from one of their concerts.
He has a picture he drew of the Beach Boys – when he was seven.
And a whole lot more.
Hartz has seen the Beach Boys in person about half a dozen times. At an age when most Boys his age are excited to go to a movie or a ball game, he’d attended two Beach Boys concerts. His first was in in Salt Lake City. He was ten and living in Pocatello then.
He knows things about Beach Boys concerts that happened before he was born, including one I attended at Boise High School in 1963.
Or so I thought.
“It wasn’t ’63,” he said. “It was in ’64. That was during the time when the Beach Boys were touring and everyone thinks of as the classic Beach Boys tour with everybody, including Brian. What most people don’t know was that it only lasted eight months.”
A troubled genius, Brian Wilson stopped touring in 1964 after having a nervous breakdown. He resumed touring much later in his life, though, with a large band and multiple backup singers. I was fortunate enough to attend one of their concerts. Wilson was in his 70s then and showing his age. He couldn’t hit the high falsetto notes he once sang so effortlessly – but the backup singers could. And he sang and played everything else perfectly. It was a great show.
Occasionally the Beach Boys’ influence shows up in Hartz’s fiddle music.
“It’s there, no matter what kind of music, even when I’m with Asleep at the Wheel. There are guys that are hip enough to ask about a note choice I play that other people wouldn’t play, like ‘Wow, how come you used that?’ like in the context of the blues. It makes it a softer sound to use to shape a passage.”
To hear him discuss the Beach Boys’ music, check out the In My Beach Boys Room podcast, hosted by his Harts and his friend and manger Adam Schreiner.
Given the myriad items in his “sanctuary,” it’s surprising to learn that he only started it a short time ago.
“I’ve been collecting my whole life, but it’s just been two years since I started putting it on display in these rooms,” he said. “And this isn’t all of it.”
He had to be kidding.
He wasn’t.
“It’s not all out yet. Some of it is still put away. It’s sort of a work in progress.”
Tim Woodward’s column appears every other Sunday in The Idaho Press and is posted on woodwardblog.com the following Mondays. Contact him at woodwardcolumn@gmail.com.
Tim Woodward 