Winning an award at the annual Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas is a pretty big deal. First, it has the potential to rocket your career with the kind of attention every songwriter needs. Secondly, it adds your name to a prestigious list of past winners: Steve Earle, Patty Griffin, Slaid Cleaves, Nancy Griffith and Lyle Lovett, to name a few.

Matt Nakoa is one of six winners from the 2014 Kerrville Folk Festival. He's a singer-songwriter from New York who studied classical piano on a scholarship at Berklee School of Music in Boston. But his latest album is full of guitar-centered songs with a folky-pop feel, even though Matt doesn't think of his music fitting into any particular musical genre. A Dozen Other Loves was released in 2014 and the response has been great.

Matt is currently touring mainly as a pianist, accompanied by his friend Tom Rush, but Matt says that Tom lets him get out from behind the keyboard each night to show off his acoustic guitar chops.

Nakoa and Rush are at the Dakota Jazz Club in Minneapolis on Friday, Sept. 25. Today on Radio Heartland, let's meet Matt Nakoa.

Songs Performed

"You Are My Moonshine"
"Stormchaser"
"Where on Earth is Heaven?"
All songs appear on Matt Nakoa's album, A Dozen Other Loves.

Hosted and produced by Mike Pengra
Engineered by Corey Schreppel

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