chambers & broadstreet

And the hands begin to take their form, one sliding, one firm. With only the simple riff ears shift in part from bar-room conversations to the luring rhythm that fills the room. Yet another hand lifts the microphone and heads begin to turn as if a voice from Heaven whispers through the room, "you're my destiny…oh oh oh ohhhhh…." And as the gentle progression segues into energized harmony of notes and measure, heads turn, feet tap to the swelling tempo: life enters into the room and hearts enter into life. "Is this love my destiny?" 

"Is this love my destiny?" is one of the first songs, Matthew Chambers and Brenda Broadstreet first composed together yet separately. Brenda having written the lyrics when she was in her teenage years, Matthew having composed the riff while sitting on the couch in front of the TV, but still the lyrics and music joined together as if they were written for each other encapsulating how Chambers and Broadstreet, themselves, joined together as AltoSham as if they too were written for each other.

The angelic yet soulful voice rising from Brenda; and the sultry, depths that resonate from Matthew, both always in measure with the pulsating strums from the guitar leaves all in their midst with the same question, is this love, is this music, their destiny?

Singing since the age of three, music and its harmony have always been Brenda's first love besides her 14-year-old daughter, Megan and this love has kept her dreams moving. Working with songwriters from Julliard, the Art Institute of Atlanta and the Shenandoah Conservatory of Music, Brenda never found that one writer with whom she "clicked"…until she met Matthew. Born in England and a world traveler by the age of four, Matthew always surrounded himself with music though much of his high school and college years were spent on the football field. Led Zeppelin covered his bedroom walls right beside his athletic awards just as Dave Matthews Band now spreads across his desktop and walls. But until Matthew picked up a guitar and began to make music, he had never known such ease at the _expression of his heartbeat within. This harmony of lives and music was first discovered as Chambers and Broadstreet wrote their first song together for a group of teenagers who were raising money for World Vision. And in that moment of creation, the soul of AltoSham was born.

Their passion for life, grown from years of struggle, is expressed in all that they write and how fervently they play. Lyrically this passion cannot be missed whether pensively in the title track: "One moment you're here - then the next you're gone/It happens in the twinkling of an eye/ Here right beside me - I'm not alone/Life is precious - don't you see/ Slow down enough to taste your dreams" or cheerfully in I Remember: "Blue skies after the rain/a high five after the game/Moonlit water below, a childhood long ago/A wet kiss from your dog/A snow-cone mountain fog/ A long drive through the snow/A valley deep below/I remember the good times." Their ardor for life extends, though, to the depth of the human condition as they sing of their friend and producer who battles Parkinson's and of a homeless man who plays his heart out on his six string on 2nd Ave, downtown Nashville. Life in it's fullest: it's beauty and pain; it's joys and tears; its riches and poverty, are the notes and words that usher forth the harmony and music that Chambers and Broadstreet create. And through this, hope is born not only in their creation but into the world around them.

AltoSham, who has played in and around Nashville, TN. at the Exit Inn, 3rd & Lindsley, Guido's, Shoeless Joe's, Gibson Café, Anchor High and Four Corners Marinas, Elysian Inn, Sherlock Holmes English Pub, Lady Godiva's English Pub, The Boro, French Quarter, City Pub in Knoxville TN, and at the Spring House in Woodstock VA is not only the union of notes and measures; of lyrics and rhyme; of rhythm and melody but is the union of two hearts and spirits; garnered by their passion for music and life: "Two alone, waiting for their place, up in the stars/Waiting, watching, hoping for their place, up in the stars/One from now and One before/Waiting for what life has in store/ Here and there and everywhere/The Tie That Binds is present here."