History

Maddydread was created when Matthew John Snyder's friend, Alicia, called him "Matty the Dread Pirate Roberts," because he was playing a role that required a thin mustache.  Eventually, Alicia morphed the name into Maddydread.  The name suited the music style of the singer/songwriter within MJS, not because he was dreadlocked and writing reggae music, but because he wrote songs full of woe and dread.  

Though Matthew John Snyder had been writing songs since the late 1980s, using the moniker Maddydread didn't surface until about 1998, when he was living in New Orleans, LA.  There he learned how to spin records, thanks to Sarah Lamb, and eventually began messing about with sequencers and drum machines.  Mixing records and using samples inspired the first 2 Maddydread albums, "Winkaripper" and "Sunshine Venus & the Devil", which were primarily electronic music.  Over the next few years, Maddydread created a few more EPs, slowly growing away from the electronic and into a simpler, more natural sound.  In 2008, Maddydread released "Mostly Live From My Closet", a collection of songs that were constructed by piecing together bits he recorded live in his makeshift closet studio, then adding some effects and, in some cases, sequenced drums, loops, or samples. This was followed up in 2010 with, "Your Shoes", an album made up entirely of acoustic songs.  In December, 2012, Maddydread released, "A Very Dreaddy Christmas", and that was the last album he released before diving back into the hobby of acting.

Over the next 10 years, Maddydread would devote his time to community theater, gardening, writing a novel, and eventually just dealing with a pandemic.  Somewhere amid all of that, he began writing again, though his style took on a slightly new flavor, leaning more towards humorous and sometimes cynical lyrics.  

Since 2021, he has gotten back into playing out, though the majority of it is as Matthew John Snyder, and mostly playing just cover songs.  Maddydread is currently working on writing an album, which he hopes to release in Fall of 2023.