By Mariah Lucas
This story originally appeared in the July 2024 edition of Town&Gown magazine.
For more than a decade, Matt and Tyler Greer’s music has echoed from the bars of downtown State College, where they perform as the Corner Brothers.
Toting an acoustic guitar and an electronic drum pad, the brothers play popular cover songs at the outdoor stage of their favorite venue, Café 210 West, every Friday night from 6 to 9 p.m. Their style, they say, is shaped by the people for whom they perform.
“We are a chameleon band,” older brother Matt says. “We adapt to different venues depending on what the vibe is. I think being in a college town naturally cultivated that.”
Describing their sound as “on the cusp of acoustic,” the brothers play songs across genres and decades, from crowd favorites like “Sweet Caroline” and “Country Roads” to music they grew up listening to from bands like REO Speedwagon, Journey and Styx.
Though they have their favorite songs to play, they most enjoy taking requests from the crowd.
“We try to keep our shows interactive,” Tyler says. “We play cliché bar songs, songs that people want to hear by the end of the night, but we take requests and sometimes learn a song on the fly.”
The Corner Brothers ask their crowd to direct-message them song requests on Instagram in real-time. Lately, the requests center around songs from what Tyler describes as the “trinity on campus”: Noah Kahan, Tyler Childers and Zach Bryan.
“We play what they ask for, and country has exploded,” Tyler says. “It’s a country push right now, and we’ve shifted to country to adapt to what they want.”
Largely self-taught on guitar, voice, keys and percussion, the brothers grew up appreciating art, music and theater. Both graduated from Bald Eagle Area High School and Penn State and reside in State College.
Matt is a mental health counselor for State College-based Centre Counseling & Wellness, while Tyler is a creative designer for Penn State and freelances as a graphic designer.
Despite what they describe as challenges in managing their busy schedules and having enough time for family and friends, they prioritize their shows and their time performing together.
“This is not work for us—this is play,” Tyler says. “For 10 years, it’s still play. When I come down to Café on a Friday night, or if we are playing at Doggie’s and the crowd is into us, and they’re having fun, we’re having fun. … It’s an irreplaceable feeling. That’s what keeps us into it. It’s the people.”
The brothers got their start in 2014 performing for tips near the entrance to Zeno’s on the corner of South Allen Street and College Avenue. They would start at 9:30 and play until the bars closed at 2 a.m.
Playing on the street corner—where they got the band name Corner Brothers—helped them gain confidence and experience as performers, they say, though their wheelhouse as a duo derives from their natural chemistry as brothers.
“We’ve tried to collaborate with other musicians, but it’s hard,” Matt says when asked if they ever considered adding another band member. “T and I have been so refined—we lived together for years. I know what he’s going to say or do and vice versa, whether it’s musically or joke-wise. It would take a lot of extra work to integrate someone else into that.”
“There’s a lot of brother chemistry,” adds Tyler, with a laugh. “We’re so unserious onstage. The show is really lighthearted for us—fitting someone else into that, who might not bring the same level of unserious we do, would be hard.”
The brothers credit J.R. Mangan, owner of Café 210 West, as being responsible for bringing them from the street corner to a mainstay at Café on Friday nights.
That gig led the Corner Brothers to invitations to play regularly at Doggie’s Pub and 814 Cider Works, as well as at weddings, graduation parties and bigger events like THON and Penn State’s Homecoming parade. The Corner Brothers will take the Allen Street Stage at the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts from 5 to 6 p.m. on Thursday, July 11, their first appearance at the festival.
When asked for highlights of their 10-year tenure as college-town performers, it is not the big events or the time spent together on stage that stick out to them most: it is the people they meet along the way.
“We tell the same story to students who talk to us before or after the show: we couldn’t do this if it wasn’t for them,” Tyler says. “We are forever grateful to have gotten to know so many people and have had the opportunity to perform for them.” T&G
Mariah Lucas is a freelance reporter living in Bellefonte.
