{"id":2200092,"date":"2025-12-15T18:14:21","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T18:14:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2200092"},"modified":"2025-12-15T18:14:21","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T18:14:21","slug":"new-bern-mourns-the-music-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/new-bern-mourns-the-music-man\/","title":{"rendered":"New Bern mourns The Music Man"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Howard Matthews, known as New Bern\u2019s beloved \u201cMusic Man,\u201d died on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>Matthews was a familiar sight downtown, often strumming his guitar and singing outside Baker\u2019s Kitchen on Middle Street.<\/p>\n<p>In March, after an unprovoked assault, the community rallied around him\u2014showing just how loved he was.<\/p>\n<p>Mayor Jeffrey Odham shared: \u201cOur hearts are heavy as we mourn Howard. If you\u2019ve ever been downtown, you\u2019ve likely seen him playing with a smile that will be missed. Rest in peace.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>His family has set up a GoFundMe to help with funeral and burial expenses. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><script>\n  window.fbAsyncInit = function() {\n      FB.init({\n              appId : '1008767806385081',\n          xfbml : true,\n          version : 'v2.9'\n      });\n  };\n  (function(d, s, id){\n     var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];\n     if (d.getElementById(id)) {return;}\n     js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;\n     js.src = \"https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/sdk.js\";\n     fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);\n   }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));\n<\/script><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.publicradioeast.org \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Howard Matthews, known as New Bern\u2019s beloved \u201cMusic Man,\u201d died on Friday. Matthews was a familiar sight downtown, often strumming his guitar and singing outside Baker\u2019s Kitchen on Middle Street. In March, after an unprovoked assault, the community rallied around him\u2014showing just how loved he was. Mayor Jeffrey Odham shared: \u201cOur hearts are heavy as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2200093,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2200092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/New-Bern-mourns-The-Music-Man.com2F1f2Ffe2F52ee80cf494d8113f1759ce964b82Fhoward.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2200092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2200092"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2200092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2200094,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2200092\/revisions\/2200094"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2200093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2200092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2200092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2200092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}