THE REAL U.S. - American Matthew quit his day job to create stuff; now he's on a cross-country, crowdfunded tour

Matthew Nelson is an artist from Fort Worth, Texas who believes in himself so much, that he devised a plan to traverse the Northeastern and Southern United States playing free DJ shows for which he does not get paid. Belief: that’s the central tenet of his musical tour, called BIYDIY (for “Believe in Yourself, Do It Yourself,”) on which he’s embarking with his longtime friend Blue, Anthony Blue, Jr., sometimes called Stonie.

Matthew, 29, known by his moniker, “American Matthew”, currently lives with his business partner Wayne Wilson in San Juan, Puerto Rico—a jewel of a place, one that he says is lit up with clear waves, blonde beaches, palm trees—the kind of stuff you’d see on a faded poster in a travel agency. But from today ’til February 28th, American Matthew will be stateside, playing shows in cities including but not limited to: Philly, DC, Miami, Houston and Denton. The latter is a city in Texas that he pronounces with a marked twang, Deyntin, home to the Denton Arts and Jazz Festival, and the only place in the Lone Star State to ban fracking. Blue’s middle brother (also named Blue, which gets confusing sometimes), has a residency at a bar in Denton, and while Matthew and Blue were home for the holidays, they threw a party at said bar, then another one at a warehouse the very next night. Back to back shows, and they pretty much killed.

DJing those two nights ultimately planted the seeds for what would become BIYDIY, what Matthew calls an independent DJ show. Money: that’s the other essential aspect in this series of performances. Matthew’s what you might call a bohemian. But in actuality, he’s more political than that. He says everything has a financial implication, and that there is always a money conversation happening. He moons over things that won’t cost him much, because he says cash is complicated.

“The creative act has always been plagued by constraints,” the description for BIYDIY reads. “The king of constraints is profitability. Ideas are never executed because they can’t be financed…Ideas that are actualized are each inevitably held to the standard of whether…they can gross a profit and to what degree.”

For BIYDIY, Matthew and Blue decided to cut out the so-called middle man—money itself. Make the shows free. Don’t get paid. Quit your job. They have an IndieGogo campaign that’s helping to finance the trip.

Growing up, he was poor—very poor, he says. So when he graduated from Prairie View A&M University and came into a ton of money working for large corporate firms like Accenture and Pfizer, the pharmaceutical company, he saw the other side of the coin. He could suddenly call a cab and charge it to the higher ups with no issue—this, coming from someone who tripped over spending a couple dollars on the bus his entire life. But he decided, in the end, it wasn’t worth it to put on a clown suit and stay at hotels for weeks on end for a big check.

“This is not part of my 50-year plan.”

So he left, spent a year in Brooklyn, realized, again, money was fucking him–he was paying way too much for rent–and had a vision: he saw himself on a beach. He decided that beach was in Santurce, a peninsula in Puerto Rico that straddles the Atlantic to the north. There, he and Wayne do art and make music under the name “The Corporate Rebellion,” and also work on their app called HNGR, which is slated to come out within the month. HNGR geolocates food trucks near the user, while portions of the proceeds are donated to various charities and organizations that work against hunger globally. It’s his baby, a project close to him that he’s been developing in the capital.

He says San Juan is crazy, like the Wild West. Whatever rules exist there aren’t really enforced, and for a guy such as himself, that’s prime. Street artists have free rein, they tag anything. Tag the hospital. Tag the grocery store.

This Wednesday night, he’s with Blue in New York, playing a show at a bar in Manhattan’s Lower East Side called Spur Tree. Situated on a street with a number of watering holes, restaurants and vintage shops that have been featured in regional magazines, slinging specialized spiced drinks and a new take on bánh mì, Spur Tree is a nondescript spot with low lights and a balcony area in the back where he’s situated next to Blue behind a wooden DJ booth.

“Party?” The hostess asks, pointing upstairs.

Yeeahhh…The wallpaper’s covered in palm trees, and around 10 or 15 people mill around the space, wearing furry bucket hats and shoes from the ’90s with patent leather and silver buckles. Matthew’s focused intently upon the records and the screen on his laptop. His hair is fashioned in such a way that his dreads sprout merrily from the top of his head, leaning slightly to the right, as though they were a small plant reaching for the sun’s rays. Most of the attendees know either him or Blue, or both, and a few guys say they’re familiar with the man called Stonie from Nebraska, where they went to school. Right in front of the laptop sits a donation box, a “Fund Box” as it’s labeled. It’s still early in the evening, (around 11:30 p.m.) so Matthew and Blue play tunes of the smoove variety, you know…The new Theophilus. “Something About Us” and other slow jams of that ilk float from the speakers.

The red and green lights dim slightly. Soon, people start dancing to “Let’s Get Blown” with an echo thrown on it. They’re swaying back and forth, some with their hands up, suddenly transforming into a group of just kids, there to have fun. The constraints, the difficulties—everything that must be done, can be done tomorrow. Right now, there’s just life.