Editor’s Note: Costa Mesa resident Matt Mauser is the founder of Tijuana Dogs LLC. This Leader Board, as told to Executive Editor Peter J. Brennan, accompanies the Business Journal’s annual report on Small Businesses, starting on page 23.
When I was 8 years old, my mom drove a 22-year-old Chevy clunker that everyone made fun of. She was a single mom raising three young boys; we were broke, relied on food stamps and lived in the lower income area of Huntington Beach, known as the Slater Slums. Once, at a stop light on Beach Boulevard, I saw a quarter in the gutter and told my mom, who asked me to pick it up. I got it and was embarrassed. I cried and I promised myself that I would never be poor.
Since then, I’ve built my business, Tijuana Dogs LLC, to become one of the most popular and hardworking bands to come out of Orange County. The Tijuana Dogs perform as many as 180 shows a year for all kinds of events, from concerts to weddings, corporate parties and clubs. Over the years, we’ve performed for former U.S. presidents, vice presidents, senators, legendary sports athletes, celebrities and many Fortune 500 companies.
Perfect Pitch
My dad came from a long line of classically trained pianists. His mother once played for Theodore Roosevelt in the White House. My father was a soulful guitar player who would sing songs for us. Music always brought our family together. My mom could sing on key. I remember Dad once stopped our singing to tell Mom that I sang on pitch. I was 5 years old.
At 7 years old, I got a job selling speakers with my uncle at the Anaheim swap meet. My uncle would play all the classic rock bands—Aerosmith, Queen, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles—and by the time I was 9 years old I knew all the lyrics to every song and would sing for passersby. While a teen, I worked at a music store where the owner, who was an outstanding musician, taught me jazz standards.
Growing up, I loved baseball. I was quick with a good arm. At age 12, I had a .585 batting average, which earned me a trophy as the best hitter in the league. I had a wonderful Little League coach, John Beaubien, a big-hearted guy who made me work.
I didn’t have the right body type to pursue baseball beyond high school like some of my teammates, such as Jeff Kent, the Thobe brothers and Jonny Martin, but through baseball I developed a heck of an arm. I was built like a swimmer but had a great throwing arm, which I discovered was a great skill for water polo.
I transitioned to swimming and was recruited by Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, where I earned All-American in the 100- and 200-meter backstroke. My degree was recreation administration, which means I had a knack for business and planning parties. When I was 18 years old, I began working as a lifeguard for the city of Huntington Beach. It was a rewarding job that allowed me to help thousands of people over my 22-year career.
Singing Desire
Throughout my life, one thing that drove me more than anything was the desire to be a performer. In the summer of 1995, I took an ad out in the Penny Saver and found a bass player. The music repertoire consisted of Elvis, Johnny Cash, The Beatles and Jimmy Buffett.
I knew how to pack a club and broke a few rules by driving up and down the beach in my lifeguard truck, distributing flyers to every pretty girl I came across.
Around that time, I went on a surfing trip to Mexico where I saw stray dogs roaming the streets—I thought Tijuana Dogs would be a cool name. The only problem was that people used to think we were a mariachi band and performed only Latin music. It took a couple of years, but we established ourselves as one of the tightest OC rock bands.
When the lifeguarding season was over, I had to get a day job, so I decided I’d be a substitute teacher. At one school, the regular Spanish teacher suffered a heart attack, so I was asked if I wanted to teach Spanish. I said yes, but the problem was I didn’t know the grammar!
Like everything in my life, I figured it out. I parlayed my experience as a Spanish teacher into a full-time teaching position at a private school in Corona del Mar. I saved every dime I had to buy a $400,000 home and moved three lifeguard buddies in—they paid the mortgage!
When I would perform at clubs in the evenings, we would take breaks where I’d sell T-shirts, CDs, stickers, etc. I was always hustling. One of my closest friends told me a girl would one day walk in and change everything. He was right.
I met Christina at a bar called Hurricanes in Huntington Beach after we finished playing our set. Our first date was a romantic outing to the Del Taco drive-thru. Eight months after we started dating, we were married.
We were both athletes at Edison High School, but I was 10 years older. Once, I showed her my Hall of Fame award for swimming. She smiled at me, and casually walked down the line, pointing out the three Hall of Fame awards with her name. She was a marvelous athlete.
One day on a field trip, Kobe Bryant got on the bus because his daughter was in my class. We began talking; he said I sang well and directly asked me “What are you doing teaching? Why don’t you do music full time?”
I told him I had to support my family and our three kids. I was doing 10 concerts a month. I’d do a show for 10,000 people and then be playing guitar for a kindergarten class the next morning.
By 2018, the band was making great money, so I stopped teaching. I’d earn more in one night than teaching a whole month. We developed loyal OC customers like Vinny Smith, Byron Roth and Warmington Homes.
I also started a side gig performing Frank Sinatra songs before a 13-piece tribute orchestra organized by big band director Pete Jacobs. Side note: My grandfather knew Frank and played a small movie role with him; Frank helped my grandfather get his Screen Actors Guild card.
Christina and I coached seventh and eighth grade basketball together for 10 years. She was recruited by Kobe to be the assistant coach for his Mamba girls basketball team. On Jan. 26, 2020, Christina and Kobe were in that helicopter crash that killed all nine onboard.
AGT
After a year of not singing, my agent John McEntee convinced me to perform on America’s Got Talent. After discussing it with Christina’s family, I decided to show our three children that we had to keep living.
I sang Phil Collins’ “Against All Odds” and all four judges gave me a standing ovation. In the semifinals, the producers wanted me to sing Roberta Flack’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” I chose instead to sing the Sinatra ballad that I sang to Christina at our wedding, “The Way You Look Tonight.” While I got booted, that performance opened a lot of corporate doors as millions of people saw it, including about 7 million on YouTube.
Legendary producer David Foster also heard my Frank Sinatra performance, and I’ve had the honor of traveling and performing with him at various concerts and events.
Nowadays, I have about 10 contract employees. The biggest challenge is retaining good talent and keeping them happy and engaged. Musicians inherently want to do their own thing. Having them buy into a team concept is hard. We’ve been through five different drummers. I’ve learned to pay top salary to keep a solid group.
My winning formula is to keep people entertained and dancing. The best way to do that is to keep the music going. The minute you stop, the audience will lose interest.
Sometimes I will add portions of my original music to the end of other songs. I’d like to have at least one hit song, and every day I’m in the studio or sitting at the piano. But for now, I’ll just keep people singing, dancing and having the time of their lives. I love performing. I want people to know there is life after grief.
