The New York City Marathon, which made its way through all five of the city’s boroughs on Sunday morning, is a perennial source of quality social media content. From heartwarming success stories to photos of amusing and provocative signs to clips of vexed delivery drivers guys trying to cross the street with someone’s hungover Seamless order, there’s no shortage of great marathon content floating through feeds this week.
But one marathon video in particular has captured the focus and curiosity of music fans: the keyboard solo guy. In a clip that has racked up millions of views over the last three days, one marathon runner—hair sweaty, numbered marathon bib on his chest—rips a blues keyboard solo on the Allman Brothers Band‘s “Southbound” with a band busking along the race route.
Thankfully, that guy—NYC resident Matthew Lee—reached out to Live For Live Music to fill us (and the marathon content-loving Internet public) in on the details of his mid-race jam session.
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If your first reaction to the viral clip was that it had to be staged, well, you were right. The band in the video, Lee explained, is his own local blues group, Muddy Wine, which regularly shows around the city. As the race approached, Lee, a first-time marathon-runner, saw an opportunity to channel both his musical and athletic pursuits into one piece of marathon content to rule them all: Guy stops mid-race to play a gig, then leaves to finish running.
Lee and the rest of Muddy Wine picked a spot near the race’s 18-mile mark at 87th Street and 1st Avenue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side to stage their performance. As Lee explained, “I essentially let them know the night before, ‘Hey, this is my start time, this is when I’m projected to get there given how fast I expect to run.’”
While the band was aiming to be set up and ready to go when Lee reached the Upper East Side, his brisk pace in the first three-quarters of the marathon briefly complicated the plans. “I guess I actually ran a little bit faster to the 18th mile point than expected,” Lee said, “so when I got there the piano wasn’t even set up. So there was I think 5–10 minutes where I was kind of just standing in place and waiting for them to set that up.”
After earning himself bragging rights at band practice in perpetuity (i.e. “I can finish 18 miles of a marathon faster than you can load in”), the band finished setting up and Lee joined in for what he estimates was around 20–30 minutes. In addition to “Southbound”, Lee got his licks in on another Allman Brothers Band classic, “One Way Out”, before making his way toward the finish line in Central Park.
“[The band] played for another hour or so afterwards after I left,” he added. “But I wanted to finish the race before it got too late, and before I was cramping a little bit on my lower leg by that point, so I was like, ‘I gotta get going.’”
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As a runner, Lee called stopping a marathon on mile 18 to jam on Allman Brothers tunes “highly unadvisable.” Lee said he was told ahead of time that the plan would ruin his race. “It kind of did,” he reflected, “but I would do it again at every marathon I do in the future. It was worth the excitement—and worth the video, of course, as well.”
Despite the roughly 30-minute pitstop to play a concert with his blues band on a street corner, Matthew Lee wound up finishing his first marathon with a respectable time of four hours, 46 minutes, and 22 seconds.
Lee hopes that those who enjoyed his mixed feat of athleticism and musical ability will come out and catch Muddy Wine live in a more conventional setting. “If anyone has a venue that they want us to play at or has a party or something like that, we’re more than happy to show up and give a great show to everyone and appreciate everyone for watching the video,” he said.
If you do book his band, Lee promised, he’ll even run to the gig: “I’ll run as fast as I can. I’ll kill two birds with one stone for sure.”
Hats off to NYC Marathon keyboard solo guy Matthew Lee for going the extra mile 26.2 miles to promote his band. Go catch Muddy Wine at one of the band’s upcoming free shows around New York City:
Muddy Wine – Upcoming Tour Dates
November 9th – Rockwood Music Hall – New York, NY – Free Show
November 16th – Gun Hill Publick House – Brooklyn, NY – Free Show
November 21 – Stitch Bar & Blues – New York, NY – Free Show
December 6 – Gun Hill Publick House – New York, NY – Free Show
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