Biography

Welcome to JCM's Official site

It all started like this... José Carlos Matos was born on the 29th of June 1973, Johannesburg, South Africa. His father was a musician [drummer] and as you can imagine, this had a profound effect on his life. He grew up listening to Santana, George Benson, Queen and Earth Wind & Fire and frequently assisted his father´s gigs. JCM had piano lessons at the age of 8 and that gave him some basis in music theory. The family decided on leaving South Africa due to the crisis that was headed towards the country during the mid '80s. They arrived in Portugal on the 4th of Febuary 1984 and have been residing there ever since. As a teenager he played keyboards at home with his father and the joy of jamming was taking over him very quickly. He then discovered a band called Europe that blew him away, and after that he was already air playing electric guitar on a tennis racket. After that he started listening to Bon Jovi, Whitesnake and eventually stumbled onto a band that changed his life forever... the band was Van Halen.

He just flipped out with Eddie's guitar playing and wanted to be just like him, so he went to a Musical Instruments' shop in the summer of 1990 to search for an electric guitar and found an Eddie Van Halen's "Frankenstein" replica [Vester] and bought it. He spent about 2 years literally locked in his room practising and jamming to Van Halen records. During this time he discovered Joe Satriani, Nuno Bettencourt and Steve Vai. He considered these musical giants as his virtual teachers and set out to learn the best he could off "Surfing with the Alien", "Flying in a Blue Dream", "Pornograffitti" and "Passion and Warfare". He spent hours and hours playing with the albums from begining to end, perfecting his interpretation of the songs and was living the dream he set out to do, so he basically taught himself how to play guitar from records, music books and listening carefully to all types of music, learning the sense of phrasing, improvisation, dynamics and music theory.

Playing live...


JCM founded his first band called "Black Sheep" that was influenced with Van Halen, Whitesanake, Extreme and Iron Maiden. They played at schools and did a couple of shows at Gávea [Arrábida] and Zona+ [Lisbon] but eventually JCM left the band in search of other goals. He co-founded a covers band with some RAMP and PROCYON members called Penishmen. The band grew successful in the Lisbon covers' circuit and had already a huge fan base that would follow the band. JCM wanted more because he knew that his band members would always give priority to their native original bands... so he left once again while the band was reaching it's peak [note: after 5 years of playing with the band]. During the cover years, he was invited by Sigma 3 [Audio/Visual Producers] to do a Score for a TV show called "Alta Voltagem" for RTP1. They wanted a guitar driven song for the intro and ending credits and he also provided tracks that would be used during the program. It turned out to be a success, specially with the youth population, which was their main target. It lasted about two years ['96-'97] and in the end they did a Summer Tour thru out the main beaches in Portugal but this time he was performing his songs live with a power trio... This gave him credit and was a wonderful opportunity for reaching out to more fans. In 1999 he was then invited to record with Sérgio Duarte [GANG] for his upcoming debut solo album. Besides Sérgio and JCM, Ricardo Mendonça and Paulo Martins from RAMP also joined forces to produce one of the "must-see" concerts of the year 2000, they toured Portugal during a year and a half and played about 75 gigs [Carlsberg Portugal Tour, Motorcycle events, Sol Música "Sines 2000", mid sized venues, etc...].

The preparation...

Besides playing already in great venues, something was missing in JCM's life... he was'nt playing his own music and that made him hibernate nearly two years in preparation for his solo album. He could only be seen performing live in a pub called Carpe Diem [Feijó] on Monday Nights dedicated to "Jam Sessions". During this time he also founded a Design company called Fiction4Real, Integrated Design Solutions [note: He graduated as a "Interior Architect / Designer" from IADE in 1998]. JCM invited friends to work on what he called "The Nomad Experience" in late 2001. He invited Carlos Sanchez [Jazz Guitarist], David Wahnon [Classical Trained Violinist], Nuno [Percussion], José Neves [Bass, Sitar and Guitars] and Marte Ciro [Drums, Percussion]. JCM played Guitars and Keyboards. The project was to create music with different instruments, almost with a "World Music" flavour. They recorded some sessions and rehearsals and that was that. In the beggining of 2002, he started rehearsals with Marte Ciro, Noah and Pedro Martinho for playing live on a project that will begin officially his solo carreer.

As he was preparing for a small tour - Tribute to Steve Vai & Joe Satriani, he formed a cover band called KU4TRO with fellow musicians: Anita on vocals, Paulo Martins on drums and Mário Carreira on Bass. They played a few clubs for fun and decided to end the project about a year after. The Tribute gigs drew many guitar enthusiastics as one would expect and was a thrill to see those classic instrumentals interpreted. [One of the Tribute to Vai & Satch posters]

In 2004, he was invited to play guitar in a Musical called "Kiss Kiss", which was a huge production for portuguese standards and it lasted for a year... almost 140 shows... playing for aproximately 1500 people per night. During this period (2004 - early 2005), he did some workshops with guitar virtuoso Luís Moreno, teaching some of the basics of guitar techniques to younger pupils. He is currently working with Rui Drumond on a project yet to be unveilled and has an acoustic group ensemble with Rui Drumond, Mané Crestejo and Llília Matos called Nómadas (Nomads). They are preparing material for a possible recording which crosses world music with pop and traditional portuguese music. They will tour soon... Besides this project, JCM is also working with Luís Portugal (ex-Jáfumega's vocalist) and touring with him too.