Meet Matt Smith | Musician and Founder of Virtual Band INTERCONTINEN7AL

We had the good fortune of connecting with Matt Smith and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Matt, what led you to pursuing a creative path professionally?
Regarding founding our band INTERCONTINEN7AL, it basically formed out of a creative necessity back in 2020. Before moving to Colorado, at that time I was performing guitar in a local band on the East Coast. Once COVID struck, our group searched for new ways to keep working together in a remote environment. I discovered this application BandLab, which allows musicians to record and share different musical concepts. I then decided to post some of our draft song ideas to the whole BandLab public community, to see if anyone outside the band would be interested. We quickly made connections with various future bandmates, to include Australia’s Robert James Shoveller, Rieneke from the Netherlands, and Marcin Nawrocki from Poland, who all started contributing their unique talents to these songs. After noticing we were beginning to form a musical supergroup out of sheer luck, we were inspired by the Foo Fighters’ Sonic Highways concept of writing and recording music with artists from various cities in the United States, and expanded it to now focus on recording globally with musicians on all 7 continents! The most difficult aspect was locating musicians in Antarctica, which required various Google searches for active research stations in Antarctica and countless emails. We were finally able to get Belgium’s Aymar de Lichtervelde, stationed at Princess Elisabeth Station, and Stijn Thoolen from Netherlands, stationed at Concordia, onboard for our virtual band! Since relocating to Castle Rock in 2022, I have continued focusing on developing INTERCONTINEN7AL with our group growing in numbers as well as our discography: we now have five albums released to date, including Volume 5 which came out in July 2024.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
INTERCONTINEN7AL is the first rock band in history to record music across all 7 continents, and is comprised of over 30 musicians from 15 different countries. Our songs “Manor Hill”, “Puerto Aisen”, “Night Shift”, and “The Chamber” are the only original compositions to ever include instrumentation recorded on 7 continents – to include percussion and/or guitar from research stations in Antarctica. The band’s music spans a multitude of genres, including alternative & hard rock, folk, pop, blues, jazz, Latin, funk, metal, gospel, prog, classical, reggae, bluegrass, bossa nova and even showtunes. We also want to give back, so all proceeds from streams go towards various humanitarian causes and non-profit charities.

Regarding challenges, one of the most difficult aspects was getting our music heard initially. From an artist’s perspective, I would offer the advice to a fellow musician to never give up and never stop trying…it took many, many emails and attempts to reach out to music magazines and blogs to cover our project and review our work, seeking to promote our band. Sometimes you may feel defeated if your music isn’t selected for a playlist, or your email goes ignored, but the small successes are well worth it.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Great question! I just had a friend in town in April, and I made sure to take him to Garden of the Gods, downtown Golden, as well as touring Red Rocks (to name a few spots). As for food, some of my favorite places include Blue Pan Pizza, Farmhouse Thai in Lakewood, and the Ginger Pig. For beers, can’t go wrong with 105 West in my town of Castle Rock, or grabbing a Juicy Bits IPA from Weldwerks in Greeley.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I would love to recognize my parents for all that they have provided for me, and supporting me when I was first getting interested in playing music. Between assisting me in purchasing my first Yamaha acoustic and electric Fender Stratocaster guitar, and also putting up with me playing loud rock guitar blasting from my amp, they went through a lot!

Website: https://www.intercontinen7al.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/intercontinen7al/

Twitter: https://x.com/intercontinen7

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@intercontinen7al503

Image Credits
Picture of me (Matt Smith) was taken by Lindsey Giffey.