Matthew Melton (born November 10, 1982) is an American musician, songwriter, producer, and photographer based in Austin, Texas, originally from Memphis, Tennessee. He is best known as the vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter of Bare Wires and, currently, Warm Soda. In 2012, he started independent record label and recording studio Fuzz City where Melton is noted to have recorded and produced the majority of his music. Upon his arrival in California in 2007, Melton was repeatedly displaced before finally settling in San Francisco, California. There he released a string of singles under the moniker Snake Flower 2. In 2007 he joined with drummer Will Axe and bassist Donelle Malnik to record his first full-length LP Renegade Daydream. Described as \"the first batch of songs I wrote after I escaped from the South,\" the album was hailed as an \"overdriven, romping-in-the-red hot-rod rawk for kids whose minds were forever fractured by dog-eared, rifled copies of Nuggets LPs, Steppenwolf's gnarlsome guitar tone, Roger Corman cinematic cheapie sleazies, and the Standells' heightened snot levels\" by Kimberly Chun of the San Francisco Bay Guardian upon its release and later named one of the albums of the year by San Francisco's Aquarius Records and national punk subculture music magazine Maximumrocknroll. Having recorded the album on a Tascam 388, an analog multitrack recorder, Melton was prompted to purchase his own machine, on which he recorded the first LP for his next project, Bare Wires. Titled Artificial Clouds, the album marked his first foray into what he came to define as \"smooth punk.\" Its 12 tracks were mastered by the late Jay Reatard in exchange for writing, recording, and producing the Hunx and His Punx single Teardrops on my Telephone to be released on his label, Shattered Records. In the years following the release of Artificial Clouds, Bare Wires produced just as many records as it did line-up changes, the relentless touring schedule following each finally culminating in the band's \"meltdown\" during 2012's SXSW music festival in Austin, Texas. As a result of what Melton described to SF Weekly as the \"self-induced health-related concern\" that rendered drummer Omar Hernandez incapable of performing during the festival, Bare Wires immediately disbanded and cancelled the remainder of their tour. \"Bare Wires is over,\" he continued in his conversation with SF Weekly. \"Some things aren't made to go forever.\"
