We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Matthew Murias. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Matthew below.

Matthew, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you take us back in time to the first dollar you earned as a creative – how did it happen? What’s the story?

So I’ve got a fun memory about the first dollar I earned in music. I was around eight years old, and I was taking classical guitar lessons from an incredible teacher named Aaron Brown down in Miami, FL. He used to play guitar at a Spanish restaurant in Coral Gables on weekends and he invited me to come and sit and play classical guitar duets with him. It was so nice of him to let me sit and play with him when I was so young. But he was one of those amazing young teachers who was very inspiring. While we played, a guy came up and dropped a couple of bucks in the tip jar and he gave me half of that tip, which was my first dollar ever earned playing music. I still have that dollar!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m Matthew Murias, a half-Cuban (trying to learn Spanish) transplant from Miami, FL to Nashville, TN. I moved with my family to Tennessee about five years ago to pursue music at a deeper level. I’m a drummer and a guitarist and I have a band called “Tierra Vacía” which means Empty Earth.

I would say what makes me a little different from some other musicians my age is my focus is on the message of my songs, which is a biblical message and some of the songsit takes a pretty political slant at the same time. Tierra Vacía’s music is symphonic metal, so the music is pretty powerful and would have to be for the lyrics to work.

What I’m most proud of right now is the EP that we released this year. It’s called “Rumble” and I would love for everyone to give it a listen.

While I would love to be a studio drummer one day, and I’d love the experience of being a touring drummer, my passion right now is pursuing my own band and getting us out performing.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

I think most people may not realize how my independent artist are out there trying to make it. The big labels put so much money behind the handful that they select, and then there are all the rest of the artists, trying to get their music heard or their craft made known. I’m too young to have lived through the glory days of the decades when anyone could send a demo to a label and anyone could get discovered. But my mentors (teachers, producers) constantly talk about it. There were the days when musicians could earn a great living making music, touring, and could count on a long-lasting career. Today, I guess it’s just so much more difficult because of the way the music industry has changed. I’m not at all complaining about that, just noting it is being different than what it used to be.

There are fantastic musicians who are trying to promote their music and they are struggling to get their music heard just because of the volume of new music that is released every week. In general, if people carved out a little space in their world for indie artists, gave them a chance, followed their social media, put the ones they like on their playlists, bought some merch, etc., that would be a huge help to independent musicians trying to make it in the industry today.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Social media is huge for a musician of course, and my main focus has been on the social media for my band. My main philosophy has been high quality post that keep with my brand. There are so many philosophies (post every day, or multiple times a day, post a bunch of DIY vs post only professional content) and there seem to be a lot of experts in the area of social media. I’ve just tried to keep it manageable and keep it in line with my personality. I have utilized Instagram and Facebook’s tools for creating ads and that has worked well. Ironically, I have found that boosting a great post on IG or FB ad letting Meta use its AI to find new people similar to my band’s followers has been the most successful. When I’ve tried to hand select the target audience, I haven’t done better than when I let Meta do its thing.

I always try to interact with everyone who reaches out to my band through DM’s, comments or reposts. I think of how much I would love it if a band I loved replied to a comment. So I try to do that and answer every comment. My hope is that as the and grows in popularity, we will always give that high level of attention to our fans.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://tierravacia.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tierravaciaofficial
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tierravacia
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@tierravaciaofficial?si=tvXeL7_kc3jhtuSs
• Other: https://tierravacia.bandcamp.com

Image Credits
Katie Thomas, photo credit Jeff Brown, album cover art