Some background on Nancy is in order here.
She did gymnastics as a kid, and she was the first woman on the men’s gymnastics team in the City of Los Angeles, rated fifth overall in the city. But, as she puts it, “One thing led to another, and I was no longer able to do gymnastics, not by my choice,” so Matter started playing drums in a lot of bands, the whole circuit in L.A. That, too, didn’t last. “I got tired of doing that because I had a day job doing accounting, a night job of playing in a band and raising kids, and finally I walked out and went to recording school and became a recording engineer,” she says. The Disney gig followed, lasting 10 years.
She moved to Austin in April 2006, and got her own studio. How many groups has she worked with over the years between Burbank and Texas? How about 3,000 to 4,000. Her career in the recording industry is set.
Now, how about drag racing? Matter’s step-dad, Ted Wells, and mother, Kitty, raced when the family lived on the east coast. “My step-dad had a flathead dragster. When I was about three, they had relocated to California and started racing brackets, going to San Fernando, Fremont, Lions, Orange County, and later, when my step-dad wasn’t racing Division 7 in Super Stock, my mother was racing brackets locally,” Nancy says. When she was 13, the family was at Sacramento Raceway one day when she met Lou Gasparelli and company, “and that was all it took. Every race that they were at and we were at, I got to be with their car. There were times where, if we weren’t racing, they had a crew person to come pick me up ‘cause I couldn’t drive, and I’d go with them to the races,” Nancy says.
She would pack parachutes, do the fuel, and sat in the car to drive it to the lanes, and after Lou made his lap, she sat in the car and was towed back to the pits. It became a lifestyle. “I then got married at a young age and had babies, and my husband didn’t like racing, so I walked away from it for awhile,” Matter said.
She came back to racing about seven years ago. “I went to a few races and didn’t want to live vicariously through anybody, so I found Frank Hawley’s NHRA School of Drag Racing, got my Super Comp license and a Super Comp dragster, then realized about two years ago that I didn’t want to be in a dragster for very much longer and set my sights on getting a Funny Car. I went back to his school and drove the (school) car (a legal alcohol Funny Car) very successfully, but I didn’t finish my license there. They wanted me to come back, but I already knew at that point that I would get my license in my own car,” she said.
