Emperor X

Born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1979,[2] Matheny got his start in music when he was given a Casio SK-1 by his grandparents at age nine, and recorded his first album on a Tascam four-track before the age of 20.[3]

Matheny tours across the United States regularly and performs around the world as well, including tours in Mexico, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the European Union.[4]

In a self-described attempt to "address the diminishing utility of physical copies of music and the expanding role of marketing in the experience of art",[5] Matheny often hides or buries one-off physical copies and associated visual artwork of b-sides at GPS coordinates and posts them online as a part of a geocaching game to unlock MP3 copies of the audio. For the release of the 2011 Emperor X album Western Teleport, 41 "translucent purple audio cassettes" were buried across North America, many of which remain undiscovered. This received a feature on NPR's "Weekend Edition" program.[6]

In 2014, Matheny was commissioned by 99% Invisible to write a song titled "10,000-Year Earworm to Discourage Settlement Near Nuclear Waste Repositories (Don't Change Color, Kitty)" based on Françoise Bastide and Paolo Fabbri's concept of a millennia-long nuclear waste warning message in the form of a folk song about genetically engineered cats. Matheny wrote it to be "so catchy and annoying that it might be handed down from generation to generation over a span of 10,000 years".[7]

In 2020, Matheny and Christian Holden from The Hotelier started an artist-managed record label cooperative known as Dreams of Field Recordings.[8]

Matheny is a former high school science teacher,[9] and in 2004 he stopped his pursuit of a master's degree in physics in order to dedicate his career to music.[10]

Matheny is a testicular cancer survivor and has low vision, which makes him unable to legally drive.[11][12][13]

• "Weekend Edition" Story on Matheny's Burial Project
• L Magazine review
• Interview with Artist Connection Podcast