When Matt Luloff isn't fulfilling his duties as a city councillor for Orléans East-Cumberland Ward or as father of two young children, he’s pursuing his passion for music.

Before he got elected to city council and before he served in the Canadian military, the Afghan War veteran was the lead singer in a number of different bands based in Orléans

As a young boy, Luloff sang in the choir at Good Shepherd Parish. When he was 15, a cousin asked him to sing lead vocals in a pop punk band called Federal Blue.

Around the same time, he decided to enter a music competition put on by the Algonquin College student radio station CKDJ. The group taped a song on a store-bought tape recorder in the basement of Luloff’s parents’ home and sent it into the station. Much to their surprise, they made it to the finals at Barrymore’s playing in front of a packed house.

“I was 15 years old in Grade 8 and play-ing at Barrymore’s. They wrote big Xs on our hands because we were underage,” recalls Luloff. “It was insane – we thought we had made the big time.”

The band ended up placing second and won a day-long recording session in a local studio. Luloff, who wrote poetry throughout his teens, went to work writing 12 songs which ended up on the band’s first CD called “A Day in San Diego”.

“We printed 300 copies. It was pretty rough,” says Luloff.

Luloff sang with the band while he was a student at St. Matthew High School. During that time he learned how to play guitar by watching the band’s lead guitarist and learning the chord changes by sight.

His father bought him a second-hand guitar one Christmas and Luloff began a writing a bunch of new songs.

After high school, Luloff joined the Governor-General’s Footguards and even-tually enlisted in the army. Throughout his basic training and his tour of duty in Afghanistan, his guitar was his constant companion, as was his notebook in which he jotted down ideas for new songs.

After he received a medical discharge in 2009, he kept writing as an outlet for his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) which lead to the formation of Hearts&Mines, a play on the policy of meeting with village elders to win the hearts and minds of the locals in Afghanistan.

The band played dozens of gigs in Ottawa and even toured along the 401 corridor. They also recorded four albums before breaking up in 2016 when Luloff was elected to city council.

Luloff played a solo acoustic set last May at the Stray Dog Brewing Company. He has recorded three EPs since then in his basement studio and is putting the finishing touches on a fourth one which he expects to release in April. He sings, plays guitar and bass, and adds his own percussion beats on every track.

You can find a number of Luloff’s songs and Hearts & Mines tracks on Spotify.