When Matthew Jacquette tells a crowd he has only been playing guitar for nine months, he gets a laugh, because the riffs that follow make the claim absurd. It has become part of his act, a jokester’s bit wrapped around real skill. In truth, the guitarist who has been turning up at Callaghan’s, Cobalt, Manci’s, and other respected coastal venues has been playing for more than two decades, with a resume that runs from Paris stadiums to Gulf Coast barrooms.
The first time many locals noticed him was at The Book Cellar in Fairhope on a Friday night, where he played a two-hour set that held the room from start to finish, his banter as fun and surprising as the music. The sound is all his own, built on influences everyone recognizes, delivered with an infectious high energy that audiences cannot resist. He half convinced the room he had just learned the instrument. It was also, he told the room, his birthday, which was true in spirit: it was his birthday month, the extended celebration helped the tip jar, and he played it up accordingly. “You’ve got to keep going,” he says of birthdays and everything else. “When people retire, you’ve got to keep moving, or you’ll lose it.”
From Miami to Jamaica to Mobile
Jacquette’s road to the Gulf Coast was long even before it was complicated. Born in Miami, he grew up between there and Jamaica, then chased a girlfriend to San Diego. When that did not work out, he moved to Los Angeles for a few years. The move that mattered came by phone: “My Uncle Steve, who’s really not my uncle, who lives in Daphne, called and said he needed a guitar player, so I moved to Mobile.” Uncle Steve, as it turns out, is a doctor with a band, Pikki Head, a folk-and-reggae mixture that plays regularly at The People’s Room in Mobile.
He is the last of three boys, and he credits the order of his birth for his sense of strategy. “I watched what they did and tried to emulate what worked well and stayed away from what didn’t,” he says. “I don’t have to try everything to have a full life.” His musical start was humbler than most: he mastered the recorder until he discovered it was not a real instrument, then in the seventh grade faced a choice between taking what he considered the worst art class ever or learning guitar on a computer. “It just clicked.” He won every class competition in a guitar class of more than 40 students.
The instrument that mattered most arrived when he was 12. His mother, a performer herself, a good singer and a professional dancer, scraped together enough money to buy him a Carlo Robelli guitar for his birthday. “It was the biggest surprise and greatest joy!” he says, and he has been playing it for 23 years. Her encouragement never stopped, and neither did his. “I entered every talent contest I could find. I played for treats. I played Spanish songs and played the teacher’s favorite songs.”
Stadiums, Contests, and an Unlikely Resume
The road since has been genuinely international. Playing a version of “Can’t Help Falling in Love” in the style of Chris Isaak, he performed in front of 15,000 people in Cologne, a night he still calls amazing. In his junior year of high school he joined a Venezuelan reggae-cumbia band, a five-piece that spent ten years playing all over the United States, Argentina, and Costa Rica. Together they won a Telemundo television contest and ended up performing on the show nearly every week.
After the band broke up, the resume took an unusual turn: a stretch working at a Cold Stone Creamery in Miami, which he describes with the same enthusiasm he brings to a solo. “It was awesome. The ice cream is wow!” he says, and the riff that follows is worth the price of admission. Tired of not making money, he then formed a corporate band called Shine Down, playing weddings and events for three years, including performances with stars like Marc Anthony at the Casa de Campo Resort in the Dominican Republic. The band stayed together until 2019.
That is about when the touring life with Aaron Jones began, a run that has now lasted four years and taken him to packed stadiums in Paris, Detroit, and beyond; Jones, notably, opened for the Rolling Stones in 2022. His playing draws from a deep pool of influences: Jimi Hendrix, Lenny Kravitz, Metallica, KISS, and Guns N’ Roses. “If it wasn’t for music, I’d be making PB & J sandwiches for everybody,” he says, which is both a joke and, knowing him, a pretty good sandwich.
New in Town, Right on Time
Everything changed in early 2025. In January, the Palisades fire tore through Los Angeles, and Jacquette was among its victims, forced to sell many of his guitars to survive. In late March, Uncle Steve’s phone call brought him to a house in Mobile. What he found when he started poking around the local scene surprised him.
He started playing sidewalk gigs in front of the Soul Kitchen Music Hall once a week, and people took notice. He listened to music at the Brickyard, where he met Gabe Willis, Dalton Muse, and others, along with, he laughs, “a lot of drunk people talking about music when I didn’t even drink.” The breaks started coming. John Thompson at Callaghan’s took a chance and booked him one night; Matthew was late setting up, and Gabe helped him figure out the sound system. He has since gotten to know Noel Broughton, plays the Brickyard once a month, and has shared stages with Merideth Hicks, whom he calls a real talent.
His local gigs have already spread across Mobile, Daphne, Fairhope, Gulf Shores, Orange Beach, and Pensacola, and recording is next. “Technology has come so far,” he says, describing how he can mix his guitar with drums tracked by a friend in Los Angeles until the sound is exactly what he wants. He has written 40 songs so far.
Ask what he thinks of the coastal area and the answer comes quickly: “I’m supposed to be here.” There is something special happening along the Gulf Coast music corridor, he believes, and his reputation as both musician and entertainer is spreading fast. “There’s something special happening here.” For a guitarist who has played three continents, survived a fire, and never stopped believing the journey is the point, Mobile Bay looks a lot like an arrival. Catch a show while the rooms are still small.