My First Band Podcast

As the energetic singer and spellbinding guitarist of Tiny Moving Parts, Dylan Mattheisen — along with his cousins/bandmates William and Matthew Chevalier — has toured the world over, built an impressive fan base that's grown with each of the band's seven full-lengths, and helped put his hometown of Benson, Minnesota, on the map. Before Mattheisen and company were bringing the small western Minnesota town to outward consciousness among fans of math-y Midwest emo, he and his future rhythm section were working at their family-owned grocery store, learning covers of Blink-182 and Sum 41 songs and holding no expectations of where they'd wind up. Last week, before the band was to start a nationwide tour in belated support of last year's "breathe," My First Band host Tyler Maas joined Mattheisen in the band's van outside X-Ray Arcade, where the frontman talked about growing up in Benson, his early artistic attempts in ill-fated projects with numerals in their names, when things really started to click for Tiny Movi