Make Them Dance

Written By: Donna Rhodes | Issue: 2015/01 - Winter

When Mitchell Metz was five years old, his mom enrolled him in a Colorado Suzuki program and made playing violin part of their daily routine.

It’s not easy holding a violin when you’re five years old. Heck,  it’s not easy holding a violin when  you’re 25. But Metz accepted the challenge and never looked back.

“All my life I’ve been drawn to sounds — make-shift kitchen drum sets, tape recorders, guitar, anything that made noise I loved,” he says. “I’ve never thought of myself as a violin player. I’m an artist — a junkie for the catharsis of expression. Violin just happens to be what I grew up with.”

From Colorado his family moved to Virginia, where he shifted from a classical approach to Celtic and old-time fiddle playing under the tutelage of Robbie Wells, Virginia State Fiddle Champion. “During that time I got my first real violin, practiced like crazy, and got all my songs under my belt,” Metz says.

He was a reserved kid, not drawn to sports, so it makes sense that music gave him solace, inspiration, and good ol’ downhome, foot-stompin’ enjoyment that continues to resonate deep in his bones.

At 10 he moved to North Carolina and returned to classical music. In his early teens he practiced an hour a day and played in orchestras with Duke University String School, Piedmont Youth Orchestra, and summer music camp.

“Around 11th grade I drifted away from music to painting,” he says. “By the time I got to college, my only art option was teaching. That wasn’t for me. So I studied film editing at Western Carolina University. I met up with Drew Duncan. In our junior year the film program took us to Wales. We carried our instruments and played a lot for other students at parties and pubs. Realizing we couldn’t live without music, we decided to come home and start our own band. We wanted to get people into clubs and bars and make them dance.”

So they came back to North Carolina and started Porch Forty.

“During my senior year, Drew and I filled every spare minute with music: playing, practicing, writing,” Metz says. “By graduation we decided we could be full-time performers. For the first time in my life I thought I could make a living doing what I’d loved since the age of five: play violin (the one with strings) . . .

and fiddle (the one with strangs).”

And play he has. Porch 40 travels all over the Southeast and has become one of Highlands’ most popular bands, playing often at The Ugly Dog Pub.

View Porch Forty’s calendar at www.reverbnation.com/Porch40 and at www.facebook.com/porch40.

Their album “Spread It Heavy” is on every major media outlet — Spotify, itunes, Bandcamp, and Reverbnation. Metz can be reached at [email protected]. And stay tuned for more band videos prepared for release by the multi-talented artist, musician and film-editor, Mitchell Metz.