Bass: Matthias Klein
Matthias Klein has been a professional musician since he was in high school. Born and raised in Buffalo New York Matthias got his start as a musician when he got a guitar for his twelfth birthday. He started playing the bass when he joined his junior high school's jazz band; they needed a bassist so that is what he played. He continued to play for the school band through high school while at the same time joining a few friends to form a cover band. The cover band was good enough that they were able to get a few paying gigs around the Buffalo area. This was enough to convince Klein that he could make a living as a musician.
Realizing that the job prospects for musicians in Buffalo where going to be fairly limited he decided that after he graduated from high school he would move to New York City. He ended up taking a variety of jobs in New York to pay the bills all the while auditioning for a number of bands. Eventually he would end up playing with a few different local bands. None of them ever really hit the big time but they did have a bit of a following around the clubs of New York.
Most of the bands that Klein joined tended to have a fairly short lifespan. Typically they would play together for a couple of years before the realization that playing local clubs was as far as they would go would set in. eventually somebody would decide to move on to something else and the band would break up. This pattern would go on for about a decade before Klein would join the High Street Band. This time things would be different and the band would stay together for many years.
Klein joined the High Street Band mainly because he had gotten to know guitarist Gene Evers when they were playing in different bands. They would run into each other at the clubs they played at. When Evers decided to start his own band he asked Klein whose last band had just broken up to join him. At the time the plan was that they would play original songs that Evers had written. That lead to rather limited success and it looked like the High Street Band was headed in the same direction as all of the other bands that Klein had played in.
Things would change however when the High Street Band were offered a job as a cover band. With no other prospects they had answered an ad looking for a cover band for a party. They quickly put together a set list and they got the job. It went so well that they were quickly booked for a number of other performances. All of a sudden the High Street Band had embarked on a new career as a cover band. Over the last decade they have become one of the most popular cover bands in New York.