Matt Suggs began as one and blossomed into three (and sometimes as many as five, depending on the season). Revolving around the pop songs of Tony Paglia (that's me), a songwriter who plays the guitar and sings, Matt Suggs could be described as an experimental-pop recording project that encompasses a group of friends who are multi-instrumentalists.

It was during the summer of 1998 that I became a songwriter. Living alone in Rochester, NY, having recently graduated film school there, and with no desire to relocate to NY or LA to become part of the Hollywood movie-making machine, I did a lot of typing to make ends meet. I also spent a lot of time listening to the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Simon & Garfunkel, and the Velvet Underground, and I worked on crafting melodies, penning lyrics, and recording songs in my bedroom.

In the next few months, I discovered two bands that forever altered my perceptions of music. One was Of Montreal; the other was Olivia Tremor Control. I found myself tremendously inspired by these bands, their 60's inspired songwriting, the multi-instrumental performers and especially their use of non-traditional instruments. My songwriting fervor increased.

I began haunting local coffeehouses and performing my songs, both in Rochester, and Hermitage, Pennsylvania, the town where I grew up. During my trips to Pennsylvania, my good friend Jeremy Zipay, a friend since childhood, began performing with me, singing harmonies, playing a toy xylophone, slide whistle, and kazoo.

One fateful Tuesday in November 1998, I met Kimberly Chase, a multi-instrumentalist and a college friend of Jeremy's. Three days later, Kimberly and I were making music. A month later, we were performing shows together. About a month after that, we fell in love. That summer, I moved back to Pennsylvania and Kimberly and I were married.

Jeremy, Kimberly and I spent much of 1999 performing, mostly at coffeehouses and colleges. Our friend Elisha Elliott joined us in the summer of 1999, adding her percussion skills.

In the first months of the year 2000 came a shift towards our interest in recording these songs . Kimberly and I spent our first winter together recording songs in our little farmhouse in rural western PA.

In May of 2000, we independently released our first CD, a sad-but-sweet song cycle entitled Mayfly. Featuring 13 original songs, with Kimberly and I each playing over a dozen instruments, the CD also featured hand-assembled packaging, featuring the paintings of my great-grandmother, Sylvia Holzen, made when she was a girl in 1919. Reviews of Mayfly hailed the album as "perfect pop", "haunting", and "a beautifully sophisticated listening experience." We supported the album with a variety of performances across the state of Pennsylvania, in both Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

December of 2000 saw the release of Matt Suggs second CD: the limited edition Christmas EP, To Drive the Cold Winter Away. These recordings found us stepping away from the pop sounds of Mayfly and exploring our folkier roots. At the same time, we created a record label, Whirlygig Records, under which we would continue to independently release our homemade music with handmade packaging.

During the winter and spring of 2001, we worked fervently on a set of new recordings with the help of Elisha and our friend Abe Harris, who was a member of the band for a short time. These new recordings resulted in the album Chutes and Ladders, released in July 2001. Somebody who wrote a review of this album for Splendid called it "one of the most entertaining pop listens of the year."

Also in July 2001, with our drummer Elisha, we assembled our friends Jeremy Zipay and Chris Snyder and took Matt Suggs on our first tour, an 8 day trip up and down the east coast to promote the new album.

About a week after we got home from the tour, Kimberly got hired to be a music teacher in Winder, GA. We packed up and zoomed south so she could start her job. As I write this, it is September of 2001 and we're living in Athens, GA. We're planning to record and release an album of Kimberly's songs and another album of my songs in the next year.

And this story continues to be written.