Meet the cats
The Trash Cats
The Trash Cats are Duluth’s premier acoustic cat rock duo. From foot stomping originals to tender 90’s alt rock covers, there’s something for everyone at a Trash Cats Show. The boys pride themselves on tight harmonies and great use of the space between the notes.
Matt Sjelin
Matt was born in the Twin Ports area of Duluth, MN. One of those rare birds who moved away to the Twin Cities and came back, he’s in love with the lake, and gets irritated when he lives in flatlands. By best recollection, he started piano lessons at age 6, which marks 2017 as his 30 year anniversary hunched over a keyboard.
Sean Mahoney
Sean was born and raised in St. Paul where he began playing saxophone at age 12. Sean moved to Duluth in 2001 to pursue a degree in music at The University of Minnesota – Duluth. It didn’t go great. Turns out that while invaluable lessons were learned in the fields of performance and theory, this was not the correct path for Sean.
Duluth, MN
On any given night there are probably in the neighborhood of 30 shows, open mics, hoedowns, hootenannies, punk rock mosh pits and various other performances. From big venues like Clyde Iron Works and The Rex, to coffee houses, restaurants and bar shows, to peoples basements, there is always something happening here.
The Trash Cats thrive on this. They are often found playing a 3-4 hour set at a Little Angies or Sir Ben's, but are equally as likely to be opening for rock bands at RT Quinlan's or....well Sir Ben's. With an ever-growing list of songs, The Trash Cats are one of those rare bands that fit in to almost any lineup.
Check Out Trash Cat Tuesdays Here
Silky Smooth Harmonies
Lotsa G and C chords,
Excellent capo useBlazing fast arpeggios
uses all 88 keysAlways on point
Upcoming Shows
Drop us a line, we'd love to hear from you!
Latest news
The Americats
#TrashCatTuesday – Episode 8 The best laid plans… Am I referencing our inability to learn the America songs we meant to? Or am I referring to the American Experiment itself. In both cases, things didn’t go the way they were meant to. We had high hopes of wowing you all with Simon & Garfunkle’s America Read more about The Americats[…]
Drinking Songs
#TrashCatTuesday – Episode 7 Pub rock? Bar band? Absolute perfection? We’ve been called ’em all. If you play an acoustic guitar it’s basically required that you learn a drinking song or 2. We know a lot of them, and have forgotten even more. This weeks selection is a few of our favorite drinking song. It’s Read more about Drinking Songs[…]
Radio Edits
#TrashCatTuesday – Episode 6 This weeks episode was born out of necessity. When you play as many dinner shows as we have over the years, you develop a keen eye for who is in your audience. Are we able to drop an f-bomb or 2? Or is that a 10 year old kid eating with Read more about Radio Edits[…]
Merry Misery
#TrashCatTuesday – Episode 5 Music has the power to evoke emotions in many different ways. Songwriters spend their lives trying to make a listener feel something with just the sound of a chord or melody. The fun can then come from matching these feeling inducing chords and melodies with lyrics…or sometimes mismatching This episode takes Read more about Merry Misery[…]
DADGAD
#TrashCatTuesday – Episode 4 DADGAD: Fun to say, and even more fun to play! On a recent live stream by Frank Turner, he spoke a bit about the alternate tuning he’d used to write and record a couple of our favorite tracks of his. Realizing that we had a couple of extra guitars laying around Read more about DADGAD[…]
The Dropouts
#TrashCatTuesday – Episode 3 One of our favorite tricks to pull out is to take the paws off the instruments for a second and just sing. There is a certain rush that one gets from singing A Capella, especially when you know you have to hit the chords on the instruments soon and simply hope Read more about The Dropouts[…]
Stuck Inside
#TrashCatTuesday – Episode 2 Welcome back Cats and Kittens! This weeks theme was Stuck Inside. We are all living in this weird space right now in which we are all a little more bound to the house than perhaps we would like. Especially now as we pass the 2 month mark of COVID Restricted life, Read more about Stuck Inside[…]
The Classic Open
Welcome to #TrashCatTuesday! Each week we will be going live on Facebook at 6pm CST to play a short themed set! Our goal is to make this content available on as many platforms as possible, so keep an eye out for more details on that! While this idea was, of course, born out of necessity,it Read more about The Classic Open[…]
Persephone’s Playlists Volume One
There is a pure joy in being a musician and a father – the fun I have in introducing the girls to music has been a wild ride. Persephone, 4 months old now, has something special going for her. I’ve played piano by her countless times (her pack and play is right under the keyboard), Read more about Persephone’s Playlists Volume One[…]