THE SUITCASE JUNKET: Over the past twenty years, intriguingly single-minded songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Matt Lorenz has earned snowballing acclaim for his achingly poetic dark folk as The Suitcase Junket. A solitary artist with an organic yet ornate vision, his seventh album, To Go On is his most acutely profound yet. Created in the wake of losing his sister, singer-songwriter Kate Lorenz, it’s a tender, beautiful, and arrestingly moving record; an internal dialogue and conversation with the departed, enormously resonant to anyone who ever loved anyone. “Kate’s more on my mind than she ever would have been if she was alive, so there’s something sweet in that sadness,” Lorenz mulled from his family homestead in western Massachusetts. “When I’m singing and performing, I feel closer to her.”  Raised in rural Vermont and initially homeschooled, Lorenz and his older sister were unusually bonded even for siblings. Kate taught him to sing and was his first musical collaborator. Her little brother would scavenge and dissect old electronics, bikes, appliances, and watches, building instruments from the parts (he already played piano, violin, saxophone, and guitar). At Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts Lorenz furthered these parallel passions, studying music and adaptive instrument design. After graduation and a year of busking in Europe, he returned to Amherst and formed the band Rusty Belle with his sister.

The Suitcase Junket