Full Name: Matthew Lawrence Joseph Wight
Born: Dieppe, New Brunswick
From MP: "Wighty and I first met in University, taking our Commerce degrees (both in Finance) at Dalhousie University in Halifax, starting in 2001/02. Since we were both always late to an early morning Business communications class, we always ended up sitting near each other in the back row. Not being a shy guy, Matt started up some conversations and we found we had a mutual love of music, and desire to get something going around town. He introduced me to his roommate Kevin Salter, and I started jumping in on some tunes they were working on - it was really cool stuff with lots of weird timings, and unconventional riffs.
We had initially thought it would be cool to play some local shows as an Incubus cover band, but the original music took over instantly. They were jamming with this cool lefty-drummer named Max, but with him leaving town for the summer we were in search of another stick-man. On a whim Wighty, in his upfront nature, called hometown friend Nick Michaud from Moncton (apparently he heard Nick was thinking of selling him drumkit, as the story goes) ... and asked Nick to move to Halifax to start a band ... pretty bold ... but Nick went for it. That summer (2002), the newly formed "Sketch Cab" played tons of shows, and grew as writers.
Mainly used to publicize shows for our band, Wighty and I started our own business "Megaphone Promotions". It was designed in a business plan to satisfy the requirements of a co-op work term for our program. We met with club owners, booked gigs, made posters, customized drinks for our events and played tons of shows.
The next project I was in with Wighty was an Alternative, Metal ... kinda hardcore, but not screamo band - Hurt the Lion ... www.myspace.com/hurtthelion ... It was me, Wighty and Michaud on drums. We really went all out and used a lot of Wighty's off timing, "Tool-type" riffs ... it was pretty grungy and filthy - drawing comparisons to System of a Down, Tool ... Pantera ... whatever people were hearing ... needless to say we weren't very radio-friendly.
After HtL ended there was a bit of a hiatus altogether, until I went to Nick and Matt about playing on my abum idea I had for "Matthew Pickup & the Movment" with a bunch of songs I wrote. We crammed in some sessions and created very nice accents and backdrops to the music. A lot of the songs were very 'singer-songwriter' sounding, but were given a nice boost of musicality by the duo of Wight and Michaud. I wouldn't be lying if I said Wighty probably sold more of the 'Pursuit of Symmetry" cd's than I did; he remains very loyal to the cause.
Wighty's still keeping with the heavy tunes, playing bass in a local band called "Ultra-Mega". And we're also working on lots of new material for MPATM, and pursuing the dream ... just like we set out to do, during those early morning business classes, many years ago."
