Stevo started out in the mid 80’s, playing around Amherst at University parties ; where he was a school chum of Dinosaur jr.’s J. Mascis. He was sometime member of Watch the Teeth Kate, a band that never got off the ground but included future members of Buffalo Tom and the Gypsy Stretchmark Orchestra. In 1985 he released the single “Killer Loaf of Bread”, which was picked up as the theme for the local Los Angeles cable TV series, Heavy Seven, but later was attacked by the L A Times as a celebration of marijuana use. The song was pulled when area teenagers gave the song credit for their habit of blowing “hits” into bread loaves in order to conceal getting high on the schoolbus.
Music writer Craig Johnson asked Mathewson about that flap in his recent book Unsung Heros of the Rock Underground: “ The L A press are quite ruthless in pursuit of a story,” Stevo said, “They’ll tell any amount of lies and they don’t care who they sacrifice. It turned me into a paranoid little recluse. It helped me spawn Genius Driveway.
Accompanied by guitarist Steve Westfield, Mathewson started recording curious pop songs in a home studio and releasing them on cassette under that moniker. His thoroughly charming, eminently American songcraft was evident early on. Packed with touching lyrics, sighing harmonies, chiming guitars, and lying under it all indelibly lovely melodies, Genius Driveway were a foreshadowing of the “lo-fi indie” style that blossomed by the mid-90’s.
Looking back on that music from his much upgraded studio of 1999, Mathewson attempts to define that style. “The vaguely autumnal musical style which I belong to is not actually a movement as such but it’s a belief in a certain way of songwriting. I share this neglected garden with people like Bill Callahan, and a number of other people….Another thing we share is a defiant determination to press on in that great songwriting tradition which was all but abandoned in the late seventies.”

Mathewson did indeed press on. Throughout the 90’s, he and Westfield released Genius Driveway cassettes at a regular clip to a fan base that was steadily growing by word of mouth. Of course, Mathewson wasn’t comfortable actually taking any money for Driveway tapes, so at one point he attempted to swap them with fans for groceries, a noble but impractical plan.
Over time, the sound quality of the Driveway recordings improved, and Mathewson’s songwriting became even sharper and more multifaceted. The Driveways lyrics tended to be about girls, weed, and freedom, but they also sent off salvos of cleverly worded antiestablishment vitriol.(Consider the anthem, "Tight Pants Rule"). Yet no matter what the subject, his verses were always couched in infectious songwriting of the highest order.

By 1995, Westfield had moved on to his Slow Band; recording four supermournful masterpieces with the help of Massachusetts pals, Lou Barlow and Joey Santiago as well as Stevo. Mathewson himself was working with songwriter/visionary Mark “Liquid Smoke” Perreta from Deluxxe Folk Implosion fame and his prospects were looking up. Their band’s work, ( the ironic Blitnekoff), was being recorded on real equipment, albeit in garages and basements; Mathewson’s crowning pop acheivement, “Crystal Rainbow” was released as a flipside on a Slowband single from Switzerland to critical acclaim; Blitnekoff was playing live shows in Boston, supporting kindred spirits like Elliot Smith, and their stage appearance,( just two electric guitars, huge smiles and matching beige jumpsuits), started drawing crowds. It seemed a small measure of success was just around the bend, but Stevo would have none of it. He parted ways with Perreta, moved to Vienna, formed a new duo, Stagehog, with Thorsten Machtel from Hamburg, and retreated to his 4 track.
In Johnson’s book Mathewson described that transition: “It was like a homemade log raft and a pair of underpants for a flag when me and Smoke set sail into the shallows of the music business. After awhile we became a schooner or something like that. And instead of the pair of tattered underpants as a flag, we’ve now got at least a pair of open-crotch panties up there. But it was killing me. I kind of went back to being in a good old beatup rowboat. Less people on board too.”

Mathewson’s preference for low budget home recording has resulted in his being cited- along with R. Steve Moore- as a patriarch of the lo-fi movement. But while Mathewson shares that movement penchant for autonomy, the songs of Stagehog underscore that he isn’t a true practitioner of lo-fi musical aesthetics. Where lots of subsequent dabblers have indulged in self-conscious amateurism and unedited rambling, most of Stevo’s recordings are robust and smartly played. Although pop gems like “Until the Dawn” and “Two Fingered Handshake” are audibly made on the cheap, they clearly attempt to transcend technical limitations rather than wallow in them. Mathewson’s last cassette release unfurls nearly 60 minutes of astonishingly smart, hooky, sparkingly arranged post pop that’s clearly the product of a craftsman.
Sadly, Mathewson has banished himself from musical activity as of late. After a long Stagehog/Slow Band tour this winter he has holed up in Austria, where he’s devoted himself to oil painting, making a living as a poet and restoring Baroque ceiling murals. He’s apparently willing to make another LP, but only on his terms.
“ I think that if I had the time, a modest budget, and a kickass thrasher for a drummer, and some cheerful compatriats/assistants, I could go into an 8 track studio, and make an album every bit as quirky as anything I’ve ever done”, he says in a recent internet missive. And I have to agree with the interviewer’s response, addressed to the head of the Matador Records: “How’s about it, Gerard Cosloy? Two thousand to Stevo and eight thousand to the charity of his choice and you’ve got yourself a deal.” 4/99.