Matt Turino has been playing music for most of his life, starting at a young age playing fiddle with his Dad and family friends and later teaching himself guitar. He gained a passion for playing for dancers early on and continues to seek the connecting moments between music, dance and people from the stage and the dance floor. As a musician he has primarily done this by playing contra and Cajun dances around the country, but has also played for other less defined dance events in his home town of Urbana, IL. In the contra dance world Matt is best known as part of The Mean Lids but also plays regularly with contra dance bands Meadowhawk and Euphor. His fiddling is heavily influenced by old time and Cajun music and tends to sit somewhere squarely in between these two styles of music. Matt’s rhythm guitar style pulls from different traditions and pop music but is generally defined by a strong pulse and warm chord voicings.