We're doing something pretty cool for the inside of the cover of my new album 'First Offerings' (Launching June 2012).  It's your chance to be part of the creation of this project, and also a literal representation of how much your support over the years has meant to me.

All you have to do is choose an old pic of yourself, or snap a new one, and send it through* to photos@ardmatthews.com - from there our crazy design elves will be assembling the design and will release the finished product online to co-incide with the physical release of the album in June.

Peace, Ard

(*By sending through photos of yourself, you agree to allow us to use it in print and digital as part of a graphical design project in the album artwork.)

And here it is folks!  My music video for the track "Bolder" off the new album 'First Offerings'.  I shot this on an iPhone while in India recently, and I'm super happy with how the concept came out.   The track has been sent to radio stations this week, throughout South Africa as well as abroad, and I'm really excited for everybody to hear it.  Thank you all so much for your support so far and allowing me to do what I love!  Please share on facebook, twitter, and all those other weird and wonderful platforms if you dig it.

WASHING THE SLATE CLEAN

Welcome to 2012 friends, fans, and family. Hope the year has started with a (positive) bang for you all.

If I were to re-cap my year in 2011 it would certainly be a bittersweet one. I began the recording of my solo album in the middle of the year which has been a labour of love with fitting in a rather busy touring schedule, and relocating my life to Durban. I must say that taking my time with this album has given me a really great insight into where I wanted the musical direction to go, and it's also given me the freedom to put down a truly 'Ard Matthews' sound.

In the midst of getting the first single "Fire Within" out, and having had it adopted by the South African rugby team as their world cup song, the now infamous anthem bungle occurred. After a grueling mental process and a long period of reflection, I'm happy to say that it's all been put behind me now, and a large part of that is because of the incredible support I received from you, my fans. A big thank you for this and all the love you showed.

AIRBORNE MUSIC

Some incredible developments have been achieved in the music distribution industry in South Africa recently, which myself and my team, have very bluntly termed the best invention since the MP3 itself. This new platform is called Airborne Music...

A very basic explanation of what it's about is that for just $1 per month you can 'carry' me as an artist on Airborne, and in return get access to each and every new track that I record - delivered straight to your email inbox. Yip. Just like that. And the best part? You can share these tracks with your friends as a link and we actually encourage you to do so. As a 'carrier' the benefit is that you can choose what format you want the track in - from a low res MP3 to have on your phone, right up to the highest quality wave file possible (the kind that they use to make album CD's). The other benefit to a carrier is that all of this is available to you 24/7 from either your computer or smartphone - everything is mobile compatible.

Where you would have paid up to $15 to buy an artist's album in the past, and the artist themselves only receiving about 20% of the revenue at the most, with this service you can feel good about the dollar you spent knowing that 70% of it went to the actual artist who is making the music for you. No brainer right? As soon as this platform takes off I think that the old record label formula will be truly obsolete. I've always been of the opinion that the most important people in the music industry are the artist and the fan who is supporting that artist. That's it. And these Airborne guys feel this in spades.

Whatever you decide to do, please have a listen to the music and let me know what you think, and also make sure you share this with all the people you know - this is not just for my sake but also all the other hardworking musicians out there.

Below is a basic guide to getting set-up with Airborne written by my dog Jeff.

(Twitter - @JeffreyDingoDog - kid you not)

Howdy Humans.

Please support my Ard. Looking for some rad dog food upgrades in the next few months and I need your help for this.

First thing to do is sign-up for an Airborne Music user account. You can go to https://www.airbornemusic.com/signup/step1 to do this, it's super easy.

Once you have registered and put your plastic money card details in, you should get a confirmation email which you will need to click to complete the process.

You will then need to buy airborne credits to support my talented little human. This is important. To do this you need to sign in to your account at http://get.airbornemusic.com (top right hand corner of page - click 'log-in')

You will then see your account page - click on your icon on the top left - this should open up your account details.

Scroll down and click on 'Account Top-up' - the minimum is 6 credits. Once you have confirmed your details click 'top-up' at the bottom.

Once this is done - all that's left to do is to 'carry' the artist - go to www.airbornemusic.com/ardmatthews and scroll down on the right hand side of the page until you see the 'carry this artist' button. Click it and you are now in business.

If you are at all unsure about something please send an email to info@ardmatthews.com and I'll literally chase one of Ard's techies to help you.

Thank you, that is all.

Jeff.

Well there you have it folks. Straight from the doggy's mouth so to speak. Hope to see us connecting on Airborne in the future, but please also stay in touch on twitter - @ardmatthews - and on facebook - Ard Matthews Music.

Thanks again for your support.

Peace

Ard.

Hello Ladies and Gents,

Apologies for the radio silence, things have been a tad on the manic side in the Matthews camp of late, but getting back into the swing of things for silly season, so expect lots of awesome content flying your way in the next couple of weeks!

On the album front things are going well and I’ll be entering into final tracking and mixing in the next couple of weeks so that I can get this labor of love to you, my friends, as quickly as possible going into 2012. We have some incredibly exciting things planned with regards to the actual roll out of the music and we will be using some never seen before technologies and platforms to host the audio which we think you are absolutely gonna love. More about that soon.

As some of you may already know my canine companion Jeffrey managed to hook up his own twitter account recently, using the latest in ‘bark to text’ technology. Go ahead. Laugh. You don’t have to believe me, but please check him out at @JeffreyDingoDog. I for one find his random ramblings quite interesting.

For those that follow my own humble twitter account and facebook page, you will know that Just Jinjer is also still very much alive and kicking, and we are planning a new record in the first quarter of 2012. There you go, I said it, the secret is out.

We recently travelled to the amazing city of Perth in Australia for a show over there and had an absolute blast. Incredibly friendly people and an awesome vibe, but like I’ve said a million times before, there is nothing like home…

Please also remember that there are only a couple of days left to enter the Ard Matthews Experience competition which has been going for the last 2 months. You can win… well me… in your living room… with your mates… with us drinking your beer.  Sounds good to me and I can’t even win it. Click HERE and click on the competition tab on the left to enter if you haven’t already done so.

Please check up on the show listings to see when I’ll be in your town next, can’t wait to see you!

Pretty soon after I moved back to Durban, young Ross decided to take a break from his equally mad schedule and came to give me a visit. We had a cracker few days running around town, causing havoc and doing some counterpart band bonding stuff like booking massages together etc etc. All very rock n roll!! Haha. Anyway, he asked if I could help him get in the water and perhaps learn how to surf. Here is video of his first day ever on a board on one of our surf charters hosted by the one n only legend, Jason Ribbink on his boat Ocean Experience. I think it was a brave effort cos, as you can see, we were quite a way off shore in the most shark infested alley in Durbs fondly called Dead Mans Point. We all look forward to having our good friend back in town to continue this good streak Well done son, baby steps!

The first of many videos showing how I meant it to be sung, I'll continue to sing our anthem - sometimes with little stumbles along the way, sometimes without. Human, and with heart is all I can promise.

Dear South Africa,

On August the 23rd, you trusted me to sing our national anthem, nKosi Sikelel' at the live announcement of our 2011 Springbok Rugby World Cup Squad on SuperSport. What I did with this given task and honor is, I failed, very badly.

I was completely overwhelmed by the enormity of the occasion and I not only flubbed most my lines but I also completely desecrated a moment that was meant to send the Boks off on their next mission with pride and confidence.

Today has been the darkest and longest day of my life. I have spent every waking hour apologising to any and all media and so herewith my final apology, in writing.

To the haters: I get it. I would be mad too, though not quite as murderous as some have expressed, but, I get it, you're angry and rightfully so. I am truly sorry. It was a genuine, nightmare of a mistake.

The SARU: To think that I have not only been likened to but may have even surpassed the last embarrassment you had to endure makes me sick to the stomach and words will never express my shame. For this, I apologise.

To SuperSport: You trusted me to handle this task on live television and, for the first time in my life, I froze and completely messed it up at the expense of your stations credibility. Thank you for allowing me to say sorry in person, on film this morning.

To the Boks: I am honored to call you friends and I am sorry if you in any way feel I disrespected any of you on this most momentous of occasions. Very respectfully, I hope my 'scene' has taken some immediate pressure off you and given you some time to chill away from the negative limelight that has unfortunately consumed me. Congratulations on your selections. I believe each and every one of you are beyond worthy and you have an amazing team of help and guidance to help you go all the way.

To my fans: You have been so amazing and I am lucky to have you in my life during this time. Your combined love and understanding has literally saved me today.

Lastly, to you, the diverse, beautiful people of SA: Please know my heart. I am truly gutted. Theres nothing I wouldn't do take last night back but its done and I pledge that I will do all I can to restore your faith in me as a patriot. Let's focus on the job at hand with our boys abroad and pour positive energy out towards them throughout this campaign and beyond.

Going forward, I will endeavour to correct this mistake. I will sing the anthem again, many times and for the rest of my life. If I flub the lines ever again, know that my heart is singing with the confidence, accent, diction and conviction of every language represented in this most beautifully diverse song.

And now, I'm moving on. What will be, will be. My actions will continue to be my loudest voice and I pray that we continue to live and strive for freedom, peace, love and tolerance ;)

Thanks for reading this.

Peace

Ard

Here's the video of the first night I met Killa Kella. I was invited to a very late dinner after our recent show with INXS in London and did NOT feel like going but boy am glad I did. There was this fantastic 2 piece band playing and they were killing it, rocking!! After their last set the group of friends I was sitting with encouraged Killa to get on stage and bust a move. Here is what transpired...

Needless to say, we made a plan to do a collab the very next day and the result is the taxi jam clip I recently posted. Enjoy!