Bio

Matt Bentley (vocals, guitar, piano), Cris Anthony (lead guitar, keyboard), Matt Wootton (bass), and Brett Fitzer (drums, percussion) have been friends since high school and have played music together on and off over the years. Somewhere in the early part of this decade, life took them away from making music, but not from maintaining their friendships.

Then, in the late summer of 2007, they determined that the friendships were OK, but what they really missed was making music. So they got together for a jam session and before they knew it, an album was written.

They recorded demos for 9 original songs in the fall before deciding to go ahead and make it into a proper record. They reunited with their old friend, producer Rick May, and began tracking in February of 2008. Rick sat in on drums since Brett was unable to attend the sessions. The entire record was tracked, mixed, and mastered over the course of 10 days. However, those ten days were spread out over 5 months.

Once the album was finished, the question was what to do with it. They began rehearsing for potential shows and discussing how to get the record pressed. They arranged a brief photo session with their friend Jennifer Schaaf and set up the very necessary myspace page. However, pressing CDs, making press kits for booking shows, and rehearsing for those shows take up a lot of time and energy that the guys would rather spend writing new material.

Interest in playing shows was rekindled in late July 2008 when the band submitted their song “Shadowlands” to local radio station CD101 as part of a contest. The station would select 5 songs from local bands all around Columbus and put them up on their website. The band who attracted the most votes from listeners would be selected to open up CD101’s Summerfest Concert in August at Lifestyle Communities Pavilion in Downtown Columbus. “Shadowlands” was selected as one of the finalists. 

Being a new band, they had yet to establish a following. Though they had played hundreds of shows together in the past, they had yet to play as “One Car Motorcade”. Because of these things, they assumed winning was a long shot. They didn’t end up winning, but appreciated being nominated and getting the exposure. After initially feeling the motivation to get back to rehearsing for future shows, finding time was an issue and it has yet to happen. Thanks to the convenience of email though, they have managed to record some new music and hope to “release” it in the very near future. As of Summer, 2009, most of the second album is complete.

In the meantime, they set up this website to serve as the “pressed CD”. You can download the album in its entirety, look at their beautiful pictures, and read the very vague album credits to learn very little about who did what. You can also look forward to new music in the coming months and perhaps, that ever elusive, first time ever, debut One Car Motorcade musical concert performance… to be continued…