Maverick Matthews was born Matthew Denton Carvalho in Hilo, Hawaii on August 9, 1979.  

     Maverick's family, on his father's side, has lived in Hawai'i since 1881. (Carvalho) They arrived as immigrants  from Europe to work on the plantations during the great sugar boom which eventually forced the Kingdom of Hawai'i into The Union.  Traveling on the British sailing barque Suffolk,  a giant wooden ship which made the journey in 3.5 months, they carried many wooden trunks and entered the fields and plantation life of The Big Island.  The family began in a modest plantation home and soon rose to enough prominence in the community for Maverick's great grandfather, Virginio A. Carvalho, to be elected to the Territories' House of Representatives in 1938, and then subsequently to the Senate in 1940 and 1942.  

     Maverick's father was a doctor who ran his own family practice until his death in 1989.  

     On his mother's side, Maverick can trace his lineage (West) back to the birth of the country and the Jamestown Settlement in Virginia.  Explorers and Frontiers people by nature, these massively successful lumber and tobacco barons of the Virginias eventually found their way to Texas.  

     Maverick's mother was born in Corpus Christi, TX and became a highly lauded early childhood educator.  After her 30+ year career as a teacher and pre-school director she retired and returned to Hawai'i where she passed in 2018.

     Growing up Maverick lived in Hawai'i until the age of 14, when he, his brother and mother moved to Texas to be closer to his mother's family following the death of his father.  He attended Westlake High School in Austin, TX.   After turning down a prestigious appointment to Virginia Military Institute and a career in the military, it was during his freshman year at St. Edwards University, also in  Austin, when he discovered his passion for the arts.  Becoming a Theatre Major, and participating in as many performances as he could talk his way into, he did every musical the college put on, leaping and prancing his way towards his future.

While majoring in Acting at St. Edwards, Mav scored his first film role as ‘Football Player Number 39’ in Robert Rodrigues' The Faculty.  While neither credited nor featured for more than a few seconds at a time, the opportunity began the process of chasing art that still continue to this day.

Other film roles during this period included:

“Bar Guy Number 2”  in Miss Congeniality  

Mav Says:

“After sitting down next to Sandra Bullock at the lunch table, a serious violation of film set decorum, I spent 3 days chatting her up about snakes and her boyfriend at the time.  He was the lead singer of The Ugly Americans, an infamous Austin Band which survives incarnate to this day.  Coincidently my best friend was dating the guitarist at the time and they happened to be getting all their cannabis from me.   I managed to leverage this into a Green Room invite with the band at the legendary Antone's music venue in Austin where they played many times in 1998 as The Scabs.” 

"Civil War Soldier" in American Outlaws   

Mav recalls:

“Lots of hot days in the sun and zero rewards aside from the camera time.  But wearing the uniforms and carrying the gear was a pretty cool history experiment.” 

“Bus Rider Exiting Bus” in Where The Heart Is  

Mav explains cryptically :

 “I dunno.  I have never really been ‘star struck’ or had much trepidation when it comes to meeting people.  I said 'hi' to Natalie briefly.  That's all I am allowed to say.”

     Obviously it was a list of stunning performances.

Mav adds:

     “An event worthy of note during this period was the time I was asked directly and personally to audition for the first ever cast of the broadway musical Angels In America, because of contacts and my performances in musical theatre at St. Edwards University.  The show became a wildly successful broadway play of course.  And confidently I declined the opportunity, citing the fact that “I was done with musicals.”  I still regret shitting on this opportunity to this to this day.  In entertainment the golden rule is never act too cool to do something unless it is an obvious step backwards or in the wrong direction.  Besides the fact that a paycheck is a paycheck, you never know where it might lead.  Everything, and I mean literally everything cool that I have ever done, came serendipitiously in this way.  When The Universe says “Hey how bout this amazing opportunity?” the overwhelmingly correct answer is almost always to respond “Yes Please”.”

     Seeking a variety of experiences from which to draw on for his artistic expression (and chasing a woman) Mav transferred from St. Edwards University in Austin to The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA.  There he studied nothing but sailing for an entire semester, learned to smoke Cannabis properly, and starred in several episodes of a show that would be passed around on vhs (this was pre internet) for years called Sasquatch Hunter.  

     Then he returned to Austin.  Next was an enrollment in a wilderness leadership training program called Colorado Outward Bound School.  So his rucksack was packed and he headed up to Leadville, Colorado to begin the Wilderness Leadership Semester of 1999 where he spent 3.5 months in the Deep Wilds studying Camp and Bush Craft. 

     Then  again it was back to Austin.

     While working as the head waiter in a fancy restaurant and trying fruitlessly to land auditions, Maverick was offered a job as a guide for the adventure tour company Trek America, based out of Los Angeles, California.  This was his first trip to the City of Angels and he would return to work a large part of each year as a guide for the tour company, eventually becoming a Senior Tour Manager who had led trips in all 48 contiguous states and most of Canada west of Calgary.

     While working as a guide for Trek America part of the year, the remainder of the first few years was spent back in Hawai'i, where Maverick spent 2.5 years as the First Mate  and Cetacian expert on the snorkel and dive charter BodyGlove in Kailua-Kona.   It was durring this period, on a fishing trip with the captain and crew of this boat, that Shawn “Sharky” Michal Kay gave Maverick his hard earned nickname.  Soon a name tag appeared reading “Maverick” on the BodyGlove and the rest is history.  He has worked and played under that name ever since.

     After this period in Hawaii during the ‘off season’, while continuing to guide trips for most of the year for Trek America, Maverick spent 8 winters as a certified snowboard instructor in Angel Fire, New Mexico.  This is where he would start his first podcast, The Powder Rapport, in the back of deviant snowboard shop called Experience Snowboards with his best friend, co-host, and shop owner Michael Johnstone.  The show lasted 3 seasons and generated little revenue.  Most eposodes are barely listenable but often hysterically funny.  The entire collection is made available in the Private Members' archives.

     After the mountains and the road it was back to Hawaii again, this time to work as an Interpretive Guide for Hawai'i Forest and Trail, one of the highest rated activity providers in the entire state.  After working for 2 years as a guide Maverick was asked to help open a new zip line project called The Kohala Zip Line, or KoZi  far up at the north tip of the Big Island in Hawi.  Eventually he was promoted to Course Supervisor and placed in charge of the rigorouse KoZi Course Safety School. 

      It was while helping to manage this project that Maverick made the decision to return to the realm of film and television full time.  But how?  Three days after he had vocalized this intention to his family and friends, the Writers, Director and Executive Producers of the television show Duck Dynasty walked in to his office and asked about scouting the zip-line for the Season 3 finale.  Although the.zip-line course proved to be to logistically difficult and would not be featured, Maverick talked his way into working for the production as a Production Apprentice (PA) for 5 days.  The crew and producers were so impressed with his impact that several monthas later he was hired to work as a field producer for the show, flying to West Monroe, Louisiana in the spring of 2012.

     Maverick was billed as an Associate Producer with Duck Dynasty for seasons 4 and 5, when the show was at the peak of its fame, the season finale posting over 14 million viewers, quite impressive for the times.

     Returning to Los Angeles in the spring of 2013, Mav then set out to develop his network.  This took about 7 years of hard grinding but eventually his tenacity paid off and he was fully employed with respectable day rates.  Counless commerical projects, films, radio voice overs, festivals  and several tv shows now stock his resume.  

     Throughout this period Maverick worked ‘behind the camera’, usually as the Lead Man in the Art Department.  This position is basically the supervisor who handles and directs builders of the set and manages its dressings (the stuff on the set).  But his work in art also began to expand during this time, allowing him to work in the industry as a Sculptor, Greensman, Set Dresser, Prop Fabricator, Voice Over Actor, Stand In, etc.  And again Maverick felt it was time for a change, so he again vocalized his intention to step back In Front of the camera.

High Points:

     Montblanc presents ‘TimeWalker Collection’ - Art Director and Lead Man for Art Dept. - Maverick Matthews

     This was one of the moments, while walking around the set and chatting casually with Hugh, while wearing a backpack filled with watches that I was told were worth more than half a million dollars, that I had to take a moment and just absorb and appreciate the rarity of the experience.

     But for some reason Maverick felt this transition should happen organically, just like it did for Harrison Ford or Antonio Banderas.  Their luck in prusuit is legendary and Maverick decided to wait for his 'Harrison Ford' moment.  It came on the set of a commercial  for the TBS television show Wrecked.   Maverick was billed on the call sheet as ‘Lead Man’ yet again when, after building a complicated and wild set at Point Dume in Malibu, the director suddenly approached him.  “I hear you are an actor?”, he asked.  Maverick replied that he was.  “Well one of the principle actors for this shoot didn't show up today.  We can't get a hold of him and we have to shoot it.  It's a part with lines and it's fun.  Do you want it?”

     Of course he did.  

     This was the start of Maverick's return to workin In Front of the camera and several national commercial television spots followed, including one for the Amazon audiobook company, Audible, which he anchored and which aired so frequently across the country that  Maverick got to experience being recognized on the street for the first time. 

     Once again it was time for a brief hiatus to build an off grid ranch in North Idaho and start a family,

 Like the proverbial pendulum, Maverick has again returned to the stage and screen and again wearing the many hats of the entertainer.

     Maverick's third podcast project after The Mav Mixes has been the still ongoing, Pepper For Your Steak.  A roudy and occasionally iconoclastic endeavor, it combines introspective diatribes and cultural commentary with electronic music designed to put you in the flow state for exercise.  The show has trended in the top 200 of more than 20 countries around the world. 

     Maverick also  produces and releases original compositions in the genres of both acoustic guitar and electronica.  

     As a non-academic Historian and Counter Culture Expert, Resident DJ and EthnoPharmacologist, Maverick speaks regularly on podcasts around the world which consistently report view-counts in the hundreds of thousands.

     Maverick is currently developing several secret retreat properties in the Mid-Florida, Gulf Coast area, including “Gardenia Manor” a hidden, beach-adjacent bungalow near Tampa, and “The Blue Swamp Grass Inn”, a members-only Cultural Salon.

     In addition he is currenlty curating a collection of rare and antique books, along with various  artfacts from Hollywood and beyond, in a project called Cranston's Cloakroom.  This collecion grows constantly and is available to view and purchase by Private Members of the site.

     Maverick would like to thank all parties in their participaiton in his artistic journey.  You attention and consideration are sincerely appreciated!