February 28, 2025 • 65 mins
Known for his distinct blend of pop, folk, and hip-hop, Mat Kearney has created a unique sound that has led to hits like “Nothing Left to Lose” and “Trainwreck,” which contributed to his 2006 Dove Award win. He has toured with John Mayer, Sheryl Crow, Train, Mutemath, Keane, and more. His collaborations include artists like Trent Dabbs, Kate York, Paul Moak, Matthew Perryman Jones, Brooke and The Bluff, and Micah Tawlks. In this episode, we discuss his early hip-hop influences, life-transforming grace that informed his writing, working with Brooke & The Bluff, and listen to early worktapes of the song “Headlights Home.”
Find Mat
Listen to Headlights Home
Episode Sponsored by Eastside Music Supply
Worktapes is Produced by Brandon Carswell
Film & Editing by Shaun Carswell
This episode was filmed at Sound Stage Studios in Nashville, TN
Episode intro music written by Brandon Carswell & produced by Micah Tawlks - "Back To Us" Worktapes show cover art designed by Harrison Hudson
**All songs used by permission**
Find Mat
Listen to Headlights Home
Episode Sponsored by Eastside Music Supply
Worktapes is Produced by Brandon Carswell
Film & Editing by Shaun Carswell
This episode was filmed at Sound Stage Studios in Nashville, TN
Episode intro music written by Brandon Carswell & produced by Micah Tawlks - "Back To Us" Worktapes show cover art designed by Harrison Hudson
**All songs used by permission**
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode of work Tapes is brought to you by
Eastside Music Supply. East Side Music Supply is a music
shop in Nashville, Tennessee. It's my go to spot for
all things gear related, whether it's guitars, bass guitars. If
I need work on my gear, if I need to
buy a pedal, that's really cool and awesome, that's super unique.
They've got that kind of stuff there. They've got cool
merch audio gear, all the stuff. You're dealing with the
(00:22):
best people in the industry. Unlike those big box stores
that don't really care, east Side Music Supply cares. It
cares about your tone, They care about your experience. Go
to Eastside Music Supply dot com. If you're not local
to Nashville, they will hook you up. Tell them when
you go that Brandon from Work Tapes sent you you're good.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
I'm good.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
I'm trying to make sure I'm good. That's what are
you asking?
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Are you good?
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Are you good?
Speaker 3 (00:46):
We're good.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Welcome to work Tapes. This is a podcast where we
tear up ourt songs. Why was the song written, what's
it about, what's the context and emotion behind it? Where
were you at the time, what were you going through
How did certain lines come to you? What's the inspiration?
How long did it take to write? I'm Brandon Carswell
and I'm fascinated with songwriting and how songs are built
(01:16):
from the ground up. It's easy to hear a full
production song on the radio and dismiss its origin story.
I want to hear the rough draft of the song
or the work take. I want to explore the very
beginning of how songs that move us and make us
move our born.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
A crack of small boot leading inside rack of the
Mozzy me.
Speaker 5 (01:58):
Running down the Chima You stay in baddest time can
get you out of.
Speaker 6 (02:09):
You know ca.
Speaker 7 (02:11):
See run in a Flat Off, Dying Get Back Tennessee Teazon,
you know Killy.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Welcome to work Tapes everyone. I am Brandon Carswell. I
am joined today by a fantastic singer, songwriter artist I've
known for quite a while, and I'm happy to get
reacquainted with you today. Matt is known for his distinct
blend of pop, folk and hip hop. This unique sound
(02:48):
has produced hits like Nothing Left to Lose and train Wreck,
giving way to a two thousand and six double ward
train Wreck, train Wreck, I Haven't heard that in a while.
It's a good song. Thanks man, you're interrupting my intro.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
You want me to keep carry on?
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Carry on?
Speaker 6 (03:06):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
He's toured with John Mayor, Sheryl Crow, Train, Mute, Math,
and Keen, to name a few collaborations with Trent Dabs,
Kate York, Paul Moke, Matthew Parriman, Jones Broken the Bluff.
Today we discussed a song called Headlights Home and we
listened to the work tape. Welcome Matt Carney.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
That's awesome to be here.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Thanks for coming.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Oh man, it's a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
I'm glad this worked out. I was really so as
everyone on that regularly listens to this podcast knows, I'm
really close with Micah Talks, who produced this song that
we're going to talk about today, and he was kind
enough to kind of give us the jolt to do
this episode. Mike is awesome. He's so good.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Mike is like I just was texting him and uh, yeah,
I'm just a big fan of him. I was. I've
known him for years back when we were both getting
our start, and he actually delivered flowers. He used to
deliver flowers. I don't know if he'll care if I
mentioned that I was working at Starbucks. Yeah, and he
(04:12):
my girlfriend at the time now my now wife. I
ordered her flowers for Valentine's Day and she was nanny
for a family and there was like a five year
old girl and Micah was the delivery guy and he
knocked on the door and she opened the door and
(04:32):
she was like really pissed off. She went and she's like, Annie,
there's another man at the door with flowers. And she's like,
what's about. What about Matt? You said you liked him.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Mike is a good looking dude. Yea had she had
room to be annoyed by that first question out of
the gate. Let's just get it right. You spell your.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Name with one ta, one tea.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
How many people get this wrong? How many miss prints
have you had? That's my always? Yeah, lots. Do you
have any merchant two t's, Yes, we can have.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
A lot of designs. If you know how many designs
I've gotten back from designers and there's two t's or Kernie.
They spell it Kernie with it's Carney, but it's spelled
like Keernie, and uh yeah, I one t. It was
actually a misspell My wife, my wife. My mother misspelled
it on my birth certificate.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Oh your whole full knit like Matthew m.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
A T H e W. Yeah. I didn't actually find
out till the eighth grade, when I had spelled it
M A T M A T and I would cross
both t's with one line. I thought that was super efficient.
And then in the eighth grade, I pulled out the
you know they give you those like decorative footprint things
from the hospital. They put your footprint on it. They say,
they write in curse of Matthew Carney nine pounds or
(05:52):
eight pounds or whatever. Nine's a lot whatever you weigh birthday.
And I pulled it out one day and I noticed
it was beautiful script and a T HGW and there
was like a red tea drawn in with red ballpoint
pen of these pens I was I'd seen around our
house and I was like, Mom, what's this, you know,
Like She's like, oh, they spelled it wrong. So I
(06:13):
fixed it. Yeah, And I was like, just because you
wrote a T on this thing in our like drawer,
didn't make it legal. Yeah, it didn't change the spelling
of my name. So we pulled out my birthstificate and
we had one tea.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
I'm fully expecting to get a missprint merch from you now, Okay,
I'll try to work on if we can get that,
that'd be great. I also want to make mention that
I've never seen you without a hat on yes, and
so I wore hat today. I've never worn a hat.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
So you look good, just to like my Superman cape.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Match your energy. Where my east Side Music Supply hat?
Speaker 2 (06:45):
What is east Side Music Supply.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
It's that's so interesting, you asked. They're the sponsor of
our program today Love It. Yeah, that's a guitar store
and he said, oh, I think I've been there in
East Nashville. Yeah, that's a good spot. Anyone asking Just
listen to the top of this episode and you can
learn about US Side musicsply dot com.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Love It.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
How many hats do you have?
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Uh, it depends on which era. There's definitely a hat
for each era.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Of Matt Carner. Yeah, like you have dress hats and
you have.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
These, well there's like the Fedora era. Well like baseball cap.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
What about if you if you're playing a show, you
have a different hat for that.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Uh, there's like seasons I have some like there's probably
three or four in rotation for each kind of season.
Some go out like I was wearing like a more
golf style like those like Scottish. Yeah that was that
was like Young Love.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Era Peggy blinders.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Yeah yeah, kind of back when we were all wearing suspenders. Yeah,
I love Us City. Black and White was the black Fedora.
Oh yeah, nothing left to Lose was like more like
an army style kind of green thing.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Now I kind of have my pick of them.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
You can do what you want. Yeah, exactly, You've been
doing this long enough. Wear whatever hats you want. Yeah.
Let's get into your background, early influences. Where did you
come from? Why did you start writing songs? What is it?
I'm what appeals to you about music?
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Yeah, I'm from Eugene, Oregon, sixth generation Oregonian. So when
you were playing Covered Wagon or Organ Trail as a kid,
you know, did you play that game? Yes, that was
my family. They came over to Oregon on covered wagons
and they died of Yes, Like that's the joke we
have in our families, Like everyone else died. We got
strong blood.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
The weirdest diseases also not anything normal dysentery.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
That's a bad way to die, just poop yourself to death.
And we grew up in Oregon, in Eugene, which is
a college town and it's kind of like small. It's
actually a really cool size town to grow up. And
I didn't realize it, but it's one hundred and fifty
thousand arts were celebrated. Was very cultured in some ways,
(09:01):
mostly white people, so cultured white people. But yeah, I
was just like a really lovely place to grow up.
Arts were really celebrated. I had a lot of artists
in my family, painters. My uncle painted, my grandma painted,
my step uncle. They're either lawyers or painters, which is
(09:23):
kind of the soup that formed me. Yeah, and I
was a soccer player but found this teacher that was
an art teacher, Sue Markley, who just really inspired me.
And all of a sudden, I found these kind of
creative outlets that I realized, Wow, this is really how
I'm wired. Like creative expression is like something that deeply
moves me. And music hadn't taken root in my life
(09:47):
as a as a musician, but I loved it. I
mean I would like I remember, like even Bobby Brown
tapes in the eighth grade, Like music just moved me.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Where did you find that kind of reference? Because I
know that you are into hip hop. Yeah, we kind
of mentioned that in your intro, But who was it
or how did you find that style of music early
on that influenced you into doing more like your earlier
stuff has more rap.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Yeah, like spoken word hip write stuff, yeah, I mean
one of it. One thing was that's all I could do.
So growing up in Eugene in the nineties in high school,
you know, the bands that were really celebrated in my
high school were like Tribe called Quest and Sublime and
all the East Coast stuff was actually really popular. We
(10:37):
were on the West Coast, but we didn't listen to
a lot of West Coast rap unless it was like
San Francisco, so you could listen like Farside and there
was a band, you know, Latif and Lyrics, Boring, DJ Shadow,
all these like Bay Area bands or it was like
nas tribe called Quest de Las Soul was just like
massively popular in my group of friends, and so I
(11:01):
don't know, I just really loved it. Meanwhile, I was
listening to a lot of like jazz, and I bought
this console record player that I still have. It's like
a Magnavox, you know table, it looks like a little
piece of furniture. Brought it with me everywhere since I
was fifteen, and I would listen to Billie Holiday and
it just really I remember, I would just be in
(11:23):
tears listening to music and it just really meant So
there was nothing that meant as much to me as music.
Listening to music. And during that period, I would maybe
my senior year, junior year of high school, on the
way to my art classes, photography and all these things
that I lived at. I was terrible student, but I
(11:44):
would live in the dark room. Just seven periods out
of nine I would be in the dark room just working,
and there was a piano. There was the practice. You
would go through the music hall like with a drama
department to get to the arts department, and they had
these practice rooms withs and I learned if you just
push like the black keys, you're all you're all in
(12:06):
one key, you know, you're like the candidates up yeah,
pentatonic scale of F sharp or C sharp, whatever you're in.
And I would just sit for hours and just play,
just mess with it and just like be in tears.
Probably sixteen seventeen be in tears and when I I
(12:28):
was always a good writer. I was a terrible student,
but I could always write. It always made sense to me. Words,
putting them together in an emotional way made sense to me.
And I had a teacher who slid a poem across
my desk one day and he was and she was like,
you should do this, like you're good at this. And
it was the first teacher it ever told me I'm
good at anything other than my photography teacher. So I
(12:51):
was like, whoa someone told me I was good at something.
And I barely got into college to play soccer. I
was a soccer player this whole time. I was playing
at Chico State and I didn't have any other major.
I had to pick a major. So I picked an
English major because I was like, if I can write
a paper, I can get like a B in the class.
(13:11):
If I have to like do physics, it's over, Like
there's no I started copying my physics homework in like
freshman year of high school. So I'm a little behind
at this point. And I became an English major. And
during that period, my roommate had a guitar and I
would do the same kind of things I would do
in the practice studios and I would just start writing songs.
(13:37):
Rewind back to high school. The one thing I could
do musically was we're all listening to hip hop music.
We thought we were kind of like we knew what
was going on. Is I would just freestyle, okay all
the time.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
I was going to ask you about that.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Yeah, that's what we would do.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
That's a thing you do.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Oh, I mean I would. I wouldn't say I'm as
sharp as I was back there.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
It's going to ask you to do it. Yeah, I'm
just asking you if you did. That's how you.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Yeah, that was how I started. Was you know, you'd
be sitting because of the art world. All my friends
were like these graffiti artists, and with that came like
hip hop culture. So so I got into that because
it was kind of rebellious and it wasn't.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
You were tagging trains and stuff.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Yeah, we were, actually we were. There was a legal
graffiti wall in Eugene. You know, these very progressive towns.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
That seems to make get less fun. Oh.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
It was awesome though, because I mean I didn't really
love defacing property. That wasn't very exciting to me. But
the craft of it, and like these guys that were
so good. My friend Brendan who went by Tomb Tomb
was like his tag. He was like a legend in
Eugene and he was my dear friend. So I would
just follow him around and he would paint these really
(14:46):
beautiful murals. I was never very good, but we would
on the way home. You would play like an outcast
instrumental or something, and you just jokingly make up songs
and weirdly, I was just so it just was natural
to me, Like I was words. I was good at
putting them together. And the more you do it, you
(15:06):
build this kind of like muscle memory where you hit
a rhyme, you've got like five you know where you're
gonna end, so you can say anything and it like
builds on itself. And the more you do it, you
have this crazy muscle memory of knowing rhymes and you
can kind of say whatever you want ending on these rhymes.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Right, And did you have stuff like pre worked out?
Speaker 2 (15:25):
No?
Speaker 1 (15:26):
No, no, I mean just did you write poetry and
like kind of reference that in your brain?
Speaker 2 (15:29):
No, it was not it ever written at all. It
was like it was more like juggling.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
I always wonder if like some freestyles are like cheating. Yeah, yeah,
like they've sat down and written all this stuff out
and memorized bits and pieces and then they throw it together.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
The skill is as soon as you say a word,
you know where you're going to rhyme with, okay, so
you can say anything ending on that rhyme. And it's
like the more you do it, your brain instantly like
it's happening so fast, Yes, that you know where you're going,
and you've done it enough that like maybe you have
three or four rhymes that kind of you know whether
(16:10):
you're going to say it doesn't matter. I do it
so much better like than anybody, and it's they say,
am clever or you know, you're like, you know where
you're going with these words. So I got really good
at that too. While I was like, it was like
my party trick and every place I'd go, I would
like get on stage or grab a microphone and just
like make things up about the room. And my my
(16:35):
senior year, my young Life leader had a four track
taskim tape recorder and I started taking like instrumental beats,
like I took a method man beat, and I started
writing kind of like writing down these this you know,
rhyming was easy to me and I start writing them down,
and so I had that in the back of my mind.
I had a couple tapes that I recorded. We recorded
(16:57):
a disc tape my senior year about Sheldon High School.
I'm sorry, Dandrennon, you didn't deserve it. But going into college,
when I grabbed my roommate's guitar, I kind of couldn't
really sing. I didn't really have a four track tape anymore.
(17:17):
And writing had become so much more interesting to me
than just like making up freestyles at parties that I
just started writing stuff down and it was so much
easier for me to write a song than to learn
a song, you know, you know two chords and say
some stuff. I was like, this is easy, you know
four chords, like learn G chords, C chord and just
say stuff like this is awesome. That kind of started
(17:40):
the whole beginning of my music career. And then people
were hearing it and they're like, this is this is weird,
Like you're playing a guitar, you're kind of like talking.
I couldn't really sing, but what I could sing had
to be simple. So it was like innately catchy because
it's kind of childish and that recipe really kind of
got me started.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
So you really started your career in music late? Yeah,
later than most. I mean there's not really a time
you should start or not start, but yeah, and as
it goes, like a lot of artists are like, oh,
I grew up in church or I was a kid
and I always wanted to do this.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
That wasn't you. No, I didn't have any.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Did you have? Do you think there's any benefit to
starting late?
Speaker 8 (18:25):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Later in college? I guess is when you started, right.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
I mean, I think there's there's a strength to having
limitations early on, but youthful passion you can only do
And if those limitations create kind of a signature, then
that's cool. You know. Like the bands I love, and
(18:50):
it's probably because this is how I'm wired. The artists
I love have these like limitations, Like Johnny Cash, you
know he can't really just kind of he's not like
a singer singer, he's not like a player player yeah.
Or Bob Bill yeah, or Bob Marley or like they
kind of do this thing that's them, right, and that's
always been Those kind of artists are really interesting to
(19:10):
me versus like if you go to Berkeley and you're
virtue so and you can play everything. I can see
that there's a challenge of like what is me? You know, like, yes,
what defines me? All I had was what was me?
That was nothing? Nothing else I could barely I'm hanging
on the whole time.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
What's what do you think the draw to that is? Like,
there's a so you you have Johnny catch figure, he
can play a few chords, he can kind of sing,
he can write a story for sure. Yeah, and you
compare that with someone like tom Yorke Radiohead, Yeah, super
intricate music. It's still appealable. Not not making that difference,
(19:48):
but what's but there's a huge draw to like the
simple man, yeah, or the simple woman in music.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Well, I mean I for I can only speak for me,
and I think it's like one you have to then, yeah,
be able to tell a story your lyric. I mean,
the lyric has to be a thing. If you're not
playing the major seventh to whatever, if the music is
not the thing, like sonically, you know Sigarroas being like, yes,
there's no they're gibberish. It's all these musical expressions or symphony.
(20:18):
You know, like classical music is all counter melodies and
melody and no choice and that's the art of it. Yeah,
it's probably coming from this kind of folk tradition, which
is like it's a lyric idea image, picture driven voice perspective.
You know, those become the strength or the thing that
(20:40):
has to be strong if you're going to be simple.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
Yeah, did you always want to be a solo guy
in that regard or did you think you wanted to
be in a band.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Oh, I've never been in a band, so I didn't
know any difference. I would love. I'm envious of all
my friends that are in bands in that you know,
when we everything comes has to come from me or
someone I I mean, as I've gotten done this longer,
it's easier because you surround yourself with great people and
(21:10):
it's like I'm in a band at times. But you know,
if you're making a if you're by yourself writing a song,
there's no one else Like you need a bass part,
you got to like figure it out or program a drum.
There's not someone who's like going away and slaving over
a guitar part as much as you are. Lyrics and
a melody, but no, I didn't. I've never been in
(21:31):
a band. I my last record when we got Broken
the Bluff in the studio with me, it was the
closer ever felt to be in a band. And it
was like awesome.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
It was like, and those guys are so good, oh
so good.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
I mean I was just sitting back and like, you know,
usually in a studio setting, you're with people that are
really good at what they do, and they their tastes
may not even be what they're playing. Like they're trying
to satisfy you. So if you're like I'm going I
want like early Police thing with like what about more
reverb and like what if the part went up and
(22:05):
you know they're looking for me for their cues. Whereas
with the band but Brooklyn the Bluff, it was like
they'd never really been session musicians. All they'd been is
in a band, so they only knew how to approach
their parts. They were playing like they had to live
and die by these parts, and this is what they
would if they were making a record for their band,
Like right, I have to believe in this part. Yeah,
(22:27):
And it was I just sitting on the couch and
they were they were like encouraging each other to be
like that's awesome, man, or what if you They were
all talking to each other about parts. I was like,
I was sitting back to be like, this is awesome.
Speaker 8 (22:38):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Whatever you're doing is sick.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
It's fun. Yeah. So going back to Oregon before you
moved to Nashville, Yeah, did you move here for music?
Was that the plan? Like you got enough attention off
or enough people saying, hey, this is cool, you should
do this?
Speaker 2 (22:56):
It was no, We had no What it was is
Robert who has been a long time, long time I'm
contributor of my music and writer and producer. He's produced
Young Love City, Black and White, Nothing Left to Lose,
January Flower, a lot of my records. He when I
(23:17):
was in college and I fell in love with songwriting.
I was home for Thanksgiving and I happened into his
studio and we recorded a song and it was like
the first time I've been in a recording studio really
ever in my life. And he's like, let's write a
song tonight, and we're just like okay, and we like
back when you could just write a song, produce it,
(23:37):
mix it done, like from eleven o'clock till four in
the morning, like we're like young hip hop artists or something.
I don't know. We just did it and it was
so it was like a drug. I was like, this
is the greatest thing that's ever happened. So I would
every time I was home in Eugene. He was going
to school at UFO and Eugene, and I was in
(23:58):
Chico playing soccer and writing songs on my guitar. Every
time we were home, we'd go in and record some
music together. And this is probably a year and a
half and I'd started accumulating I maybe five or six
songs I'd ever recorded. And meanwhile he was producing other
bands and one of them had gotten some attraction in Nashville,
(24:20):
so he called me. Now we're just buddies at this time.
I talked to him all the time. He's like, Hey,
I'm driving to Nashville. If you help me drive across
the country, well we'll take like a month and record music.
Oh cool. So he could have literally said anywhere. He
could have said Topeka, Kansas, and I would have wanted
to go with him. So we packed up his truck
(24:41):
in Portland, where he was from, and we slept in
the back of it, put the mattress, put all the clothes,
and put the mattress on top, and we'd just drive
for like seventeen hours pull over. He had no AC
because we're from the Northwest. You're like, you don't need
air conditioning, you know. We'd be like our we'd sleep
bags that were like meant for you know, mountain temperatures.
(25:06):
So we pull up in like in like Oklahoma in August,
you know, and just wake up dripping, went sweat on
the side of the highway in these like twenty degree bags,
you know. And we got to Nashville and we started
we got a little eventually got an apartment in Hillsborough Village.
I helped him move in and we set up a
little studio. We set up the studio in the bedroom
(25:27):
and we had a mattress out in the living room.
We slept on it together like which we had no sheets.
We thought that was like somehow less like intimate to feel.
There's just no sheets on a.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Mattress, right, yeah, which is just gross.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
If you think about it. You're just like two dudes
sleeping on like the mattress. You can't wash that.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
You're trying to justify a situation.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Yeah, you wake up with like the Paisley print on
your face, you know. Yeah. And by the end of
the of August I had we had maybe I had
maybe seven eight songs at this time, and after about
a month of being in Nashville, there was like little
through the people that had liked his production had heard
(26:08):
some of our demos, like Toby Mack, like these people
in like the CCM world, and they heard the demos
and they were like, dude, this is good. You could
do this. And that was kind of all the fuel
I needed and I dropped out of school.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
And was your so your early writing was more informed
by your faith or did you just chase that road
because that's where the attention was coming from, like CCM
was listening or was it?
Speaker 8 (26:39):
No?
Speaker 2 (26:39):
I think it was interesting.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Yeah, I mean your first thing was with Sparrow or
that it was sorry not.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
First thing was with Columbia, but I licensed it to
in Pop, which was a small label, and that was more.
That was like the smartest thing I ever did. I
didn't realize it at the time. That was what your
first question. My faith was like a massive part of
(27:06):
who I was in college. Chico Stuates is like crazy
party school, and I was definitely kind of hitting rock
bottom of my life at that point and just kind
of like searching, you know, going hard into like the
world of just like meaninglessness. And I was really depressed
(27:28):
and said and it was during that season that really
my faith just burst it out and it became alive
and felt like the grace of God. And I was
writing at that time, so a lot of it was
just the only thing. It was just very true to
me of like these feelings of like second chances and
(27:50):
like no matter how helpless, because to me, it felt
like a lot of these kind of patterns that had
followed me all through high school. And I was a
pretty troubled kid that got in trouble, was getting arrested,
and just it felt like I couldn't get out of it,
Like there was no way I was out of my strength.
It wasn't just like I was making bad choices. It
(28:11):
was like I was destined for bad choices, Like I
couldn't escape them, was how I felt. And all of
a sudden, I was like freed from that whole thing,
and it was like, all of a sudden, I was
like making decisions that were like good for me. And
they were awesome and it felt so good.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Was that an easy change?
Speaker 2 (28:29):
It really was? Yeah, I mean shockingly yea, yeah, I would.
It didn't feel I had anything to do with me.
I think that's the kind of this idea that really
still resonates with me. It's this kind of grace of
God idea that you are you're if you really experience love,
(28:50):
then you can give it. You can't. You can't like
you can't earn love from your partner, you know, or something.
It's like when you free giving love is like when
you freely get it. I'm not articulating it. Well, yeah,
but that that thing, that concept really rocked me. So yeah,
I was writing about that, but it was It was
(29:11):
interesting coming from Eugene Organ. I knew nothing about any
of the artists, Like even Toby I didn't really know
his music. We didn't grow up with that kind of stuff.
It was like we grew up going to church, but
it was like we'd be listening to Paul Simon and
Michael Jackson and Eugene was kind of like a hippie town.
So this is like, you know, Bob Dylan's Christian record era.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
It wasn't immersed in gospel, ccium stuff.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
No, I didn't know of anything. I had never heard it,
so I was just following my muse and like what
I loved. But if I had to play a song,
it was at a coffee shop or somewhere there wasn't
It wasn't like a captive audience. So your music had
to just be good. It could be about things, it
could be about whatever it wanted, but it had to
be compelling to whoever was listening. Okay, so that was
(29:59):
kind of the my heroes were. Yeah, I wasn't really
listening to any of that music and I never really
understood it. But having people embraced me in any industry
was really powerful and it was what I needed. But
I don't know, I don't I would say maybe there's
(30:20):
like a youthful kind of passion to some of my
earlier music that as you get older, you like get
a little more metaphoric and veiled and or bigger than
really really specific. That is interesting to me now, But
I would say that the same motivating factors have been
there the whole time.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Did that happen pretty quick for you when you got here?
When you got to Nashville?
Speaker 2 (30:43):
The which part.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Just the making this your job.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Just the deal. Oh, it wasn't my job for a while,
but you would have thought it was my job.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Right, Well, I mean you got a deal.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
I did. I was probably here, so I moved to Nashville.
I got offered deals. Okay, I felt pretty clearly I didn't.
I did a few, like youth group things or something,
and I didn't understand that world or that like, I
didn't seem like it made sense to me to put
music out in that world. So I actually turned them
all down, Okay, which is insane now thinking back about it.
(31:17):
How it was just audacious of me too.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Well, you knew, you knew what you wanted I did.
I mean I saw it. You at least saw, Oh
this is not my lane. No, I want to go
over here.
Speaker 8 (31:28):
And uh.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
I worked at Starbucks, I was a soccer coach. I
worked at banquet server at opry Mills opry Land Hotel.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
I applied for one of those jobs. Terrible, I didn't
get it.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
You be thankful they had a one size you had
to wear a TUXI a fake tuxedo. But they were
like they had a zipper down the side, like it
wasn't a TUXI it was like a onesie and there
was like two sizes with these like cinches you could
like cinch them up. So like there's like five foot
nine girls in these swimming and these like cheap tuxedos
(32:06):
with these weird ties. And you had to carry your
banquet servers so you didn't make tips. You would just
carry like fifteen entrees on a tray. And they were
in those big metal so it was like, yeah, clinking around. Yeah,
it was like it was drop them. I didn't, but
someone would. Yeah all the time.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
I dropped those all the time. Yeah, They're heavy, well.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Time, and the food was gross. It was just not
a vibe.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
I worked at a restaurant and dropped soup on a
lady one time.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
That was bad.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
So how long did it take so before it became
your job?
Speaker 2 (32:42):
So that would have been two thousand. I moved here,
and I it probably took three or four years of
just like that's pretty fast. Yeah, I mean didn't feel
like it at the time, but they call it a
ten year town. Yeah, three or four years to what
what ultimately happened was once I turned down a record
(33:02):
deal in like the Christian world, then they all started
trying to offer me deals and I it was like
it's like the new girl at school or something like
you say no and then it makes people won't I
don't know. It was just like they wanted to who's
this guy?
Speaker 1 (33:17):
Thing is?
Speaker 2 (33:17):
Yeah exactly, And I was just scared, honestly, and I
said no. And eventually I just was like, what do
we need. We just need money to make a record,
because all they were going to do is give us
a budget for me and Robert to make a record.
That's all we were doing. We were by ourselves. We
didn't have any help, and I ended up raising some
(33:41):
money and it was like twenty five grand. It's just
a big deal, so much money, and we just made
our own independent record. And that's the one that I licensed.
In the meantime, I made relationships in one labels, like hey,
can you just license it to us, like, just let
us try to sell it for nothing left to lose.
(34:04):
It became it was bullet that became nothing left to lose.
And then about in the course of maybe three or
three months since I licensed it, Columbia Records heard it.
Aware Records was like my dream label, and I was
playing it for Matt Wirtz, who you had on your
podcast and he's a huge reason he was. We were
in a car Genghis Grill my hond accord and I
(34:27):
was like, yeah, back then, I probably was like, get
in the car, get to listen to this record. I'm
so proud of it. And I was like, I've heard
of you, man, oh I make music, Come listen, and
brought it into my car, put in a burned CD
and he was like, bro, I love this. He's like
this is so good, and he's like, give me a CD.
So I remember giving him a CD and he passed
it on to his booking agent, who passed it on
(34:49):
to his boss who was friends with who was and
that guy was booking like John Marrin and King Kings
of Leon and all these bands, and he was like, dude,
I love this. I want to Can I send it
to my friend at a Wear Records And I remember
I was so scared. I'd said no to everyone. I
was like, I don't know, man, if you should send
it to anybody. Someone told me to lie to him,
(35:12):
be like. This was CIA at the time, Creative Artist Agency,
and they were like telling me of a meeting with
William Morris is the other big agent, so it's like, yeah,
I've got another meeting with William Morris, so I'm not sure,
Just like, who do you think you are? Working at Starbucks? Bro,
Like this guy's trying to help you. And Scott Clayton,
who's now running some UTA, he's an awesome dude. He
(35:35):
sent it to Greg and he's like, this kid doesn't
know what he's doing. Send it to Wear Records. I
was playing a show the next night after that guy
got my record in his town. It's just like total
meant to be. He couldn't stop listening to it. He
came to the show, He's like, I want to sign you.
And then it was kind off to the races and
we took about a year of writing more songs and nothing.
(35:57):
That the Lows came out I think two thousand and
six two.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Six, and it's a great album.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
Thanks man.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
I worre it out when it came out, me too, Scott.
I mean, one thing that I wanted to cover with
you is while there are like more popular songs than
others of yours, almost every song has got.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
Like a really good hook.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
You're really good at writing memorable hooks and I'm curious
where that comes from or do you know?
Speaker 2 (36:30):
I don't. I think, I think you know when it's there, Yeah,
Like you know, there's like an energy to a certain
group of words and melodies that get me excited. It's
like one of the things I love in music is
(36:51):
the marring of like the songwriter that I like, James Taylor,
Paul Simon, all these guys I grew up with with
like this, I almost put them in buckets. It's like
they're cerebral song there's like a cerebral side to music.
It's like the argument. Country music is very much that way.
It's like here's an argument, here's a lyrical kind of
(37:13):
folk music is that way. You're kind of you're appealing
to people's brains with maybe an argument or images or
some sort of word you choices. Obviously the melody matters,
but you're kind of appealing to people's brains. And then
there's like visceral sides of music, which is like hip
hop and Bob Marley, and it's like you don't even
(37:35):
have to speak the language you put it on. It's
one of my favorite things to do is watch a
room when a song comes on and like you put
a Bob Marley song in on in any group of
people and they will all just kind of start their
bodies are responding to the music. So for me, like
both of those are something I value so much that
I always want. I'm always trying to like have both.
(38:00):
I can't just write like music that's like servicey just body,
and I I do write some more just cerebral stuff
like a folk you're kind of just you and a guitar.
And this song is kind of an argument or just images.
But my true love is when you marry them all.
And so I think searching for melodies has to do
with that same thing. There's like this visceral thing you
(38:23):
feel when certain melodies or notes happen that I'm just like, yes,
that's if you.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
Have like a formula for that or like a you
just kind of know when it happens. Do you have
like a in your process of writing? So, like a
song that I might use as an example that I
heard once and couldn't get out of my head as
a good thing. You got a good thing going, Yeah,
(38:48):
I can't stop singing that hook. You just you just
hummed it and for the rest of today it'll be
in my brain.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
Well, I wish I could take more. I mean as
good as I am, which is thank you for saying that.
I I I'm trying to be humble now that I
said that. No, it's good, but but I probably what
I'm better at is is identifying them. So that was
(39:16):
Trent Dabs was just singing that in the room when
I walked in one day at a co write and
I was like, okay, we're doing this. What is this?
I mean, I don't even know. I think I wrote
the maybe the beat the like the alternate section of
that course, but it was pretty much wrong example, but
pretty much done. Still, so many of your songs, like
(39:40):
one of my favorites right now, I haven't heard the
whole new record, but one of my favorites is Kevlar.
That song's super cool. It's not as poppy as the
other ones. That's probably why I like it because that's
how I'm wired. But it's still it's still like everything's
got like this thread that's super hooky, and I just
kind of wanted to try to get to the bottom
of that with you. But I don't know if it's
(40:02):
anything other than you know, I think I'm learning so
much of music is taste. It's like it's not necessarily
for me. I'm not, like I haven't had the ability
my whole life, so what I've had to lean on
is my taste, like right, And that's just like knowing
trying to acknowledge when your body and when you are
excited about something.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
Well, what goes in is what comes out?
Speaker 2 (40:24):
Yeah, I mean what you're digesting sure matters, But like
I think at my core there's like some part of
this barometer when you're when I love how it makes
my body feel and my brain and the dopamine receptors.
I'm like trying to pay attention to that.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
Yeah, And speaking of songs on your new record, let's
talk about Headlights on I Love It. We're going to
listen to the work tape of this, and just a
preface for our listeners. You sent me three versions maybe yeah,
demo the work tape, Yeah, I think it was three,
So I'm gonna splice them together, see here a little
bit of each version, and then we'll listen to like
(41:07):
the fully formed work tape. We'll do that right now,
and then we'll break things down. Cool, yeah, cool.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
I will say this, this is the one song that
is not typical of my songs, which is an interesting
choice because it was such a departure from all of
the different versions. Usually they come more packaged and whole.
If they're good songs like they tend to exist in
one moment. And for all the songwriters out there that
are like slaving on these things they think are good,
(41:36):
I don't know. I've killed myself weeks on songs that
are never good. They're never gonna be good. And then
the easy ones you write in fifteen minutes and it's
so frustrating, and they're the biggest songs. This was one
that put up a fight, and there's a few like
Ships in the Night was one where you felt like, wow,
(41:57):
that broke the mold of this idea that all good
song just comes in one package.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
Right, All right, let's listen to the work tape and
then we'll unpack it again.
Speaker 9 (42:10):
Bound bound.
Speaker 3 (42:20):
Son, If.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
What is that list? That's sick?
Speaker 8 (42:32):
Baby butt me, but don't take change, eat let on
(43:02):
for me. Got intense, he jokes, old devil.
Speaker 3 (43:21):
You know, a case.
Speaker 4 (43:45):
A crack of small bood and leading inside rack the
mouth even you behind.
Speaker 5 (43:53):
Running down the tream out standing by this time, can't
get you out of.
Speaker 8 (43:59):
The mine leather that on both me you know, ca.
Speaker 9 (44:07):
Sleep, run in the flat light offbeat, die in to giveback,
to tell se teuse on the tail.
Speaker 8 (44:20):
You know, can chasing twilights, die in.
Speaker 6 (44:29):
See give you.
Speaker 3 (44:32):
He said that. Tom said that, so.
Speaker 5 (44:50):
Solo window dimn the table Tonight, the Hungy Lovers album,
I got no appetite, the city's riding from the at
the zoom nice.
Speaker 4 (45:01):
This time, and he like, man be the.
Speaker 8 (45:07):
Me you know see run a black.
Speaker 9 (45:16):
Beads back to see to your don't.
Speaker 1 (45:25):
You know can.
Speaker 8 (45:28):
Go je.
Speaker 3 (45:33):
Jake.
Speaker 8 (45:37):
He said that.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
Said to.
Speaker 8 (45:55):
Either I don't either.
Speaker 3 (45:56):
I don't mean either, don't either.
Speaker 6 (46:00):
Lot of phone either, I don't be the don't me.
Speaker 8 (46:07):
Either?
Speaker 6 (46:07):
I don't either, lon'one me the don't need a lot
of me, don't use a lot of pony.
Speaker 8 (46:19):
This is a lot. Don't he a lot of me.
Speaker 5 (46:23):
Either, load of me?
Speaker 8 (46:46):
Pofkay It's co ight? Is this.
Speaker 2 (46:54):
That you.
Speaker 8 (46:56):
Hes you share?
Speaker 1 (46:58):
That's okay? I love this work, Tabe. It's cool to
hear the process. Who did you write the song with?
Who did we hear in there?
Speaker 2 (47:12):
Well? So the first thing you hear is of my
buddy Eli Teplin, who wrote a bunch with me on
my January Flower Records is unbelievable. And we had gone
out to Joshua Tree just to write. And I went
with one of my best friends who's a painter, Marshall Roman.
He's been one of my best friends since I was
in kindergarten, and we just went to go. I was
(47:35):
going to go record, but we stayed at this house
that was like in the middle of nowhere, and this
storm blew through and we had no power and we're
basically in the dark the whole time. I think by
this time we'd gotten a little power and I'd started
making like a little beat or something. But I just
had that, you know. Ip sat in that side and
(48:05):
he was like, Yo, what was that? And I had
that for three years, four years, in just my drop
box and in my phone in a voice note.
Speaker 1 (48:15):
How do you know how to go back to those?
They just there's there's so many I imagine, Well there's.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
Some though, if you if you think about it, it's
it's It wasn't me listening to a voice note. It
was like this thing that I had remembered. I was
like that thing. I think memory is a huge part
of songwriting and recall and like for me and I
just I had never been able to shake that.
Speaker 8 (48:42):
Eden.
Speaker 2 (48:43):
I got the money behind, but that wasn't even on
my radar. And I had gone in to write with
Jordan Minton and Jordan Reynolds, two country like and great
writers in general. Someone had set it up. I'd never
met them, and I think I I don't even know
if I had the title. I think I did the
title Headlights Home, and we wrote the lyric to it
(49:06):
totally different. I don't even have a demo of it.
It was a totally different tempo, totally different chords, totally
different metalody. And I spent probably a week in my
studio trying to get this thing, and I didn't like it,
but I loved the lyric of it. I was like,
this idea is cool, and it hadn't I hadn't, it
(49:28):
hadn't sunk in. Oftentimes there's a chorus. This is a
common experience. Is I have a chorus idea that feels big,
simple and to the point, and you can either double
down on the verses just rewrite that point. It's a
lot of pop music does. What makes what's more interesting
to me though, is like what's the weird or like
(49:50):
the story or what colors this verse, you know, or
what verse could I write that is a departure from
the chorus that keeps me interested in it. Brandon Flowers
is like the best at that killers Like he'll just
the verses like opiod addiction came to town and kids
were doing this and like are you know he's talking
(50:10):
about very specific town and the courses like eagles with
golden spotted wings and we were just trying to figure
out a way to get down the hills and you know,
and like something about those two things together is so
interesting to me, like these big That's a thing I
loved doing often is contrasting if you have a very
specific verse, like getting the chorus to be this like
(50:34):
Monet moment that's just expressionist. You don't even really know
what you're talking about, but you feel it. Those two
things are when you marry those, it's like my favorite
kind of song. And for I remembered this voice note
after a week of toiling with this, and I was
(50:55):
sitting on vacation and I was playing that old the
old chords, just two chords just for six five six
for six five teenage dream or there's a million songs
share those chords and uh, and I just started singing
that old melody man mean and and I was like, oh,
(51:18):
what if I put those lyrics in, be the light
on for me? I had to change melody. You know,
it came okay.
Speaker 1 (51:26):
So you have the lyrics before.
Speaker 2 (51:29):
Not normal, it's not a normal thing. Usually they come
at the same time.
Speaker 1 (51:33):
And let's unpack the lyrics a little bit. So it
sounds like these lyrics are about you being on tour.
Speaker 2 (51:41):
Yeah, it's a road song.
Speaker 1 (51:42):
It's a road song. Yeah, as simple as that.
Speaker 2 (51:47):
Crack a smile, but I'm bleeding inside, rack up the miles,
leaving you behind, chasing it down a dream while you're
standing by this time. Can't get it out of my mind. Yeah,
I think having kids. It's a weird position I'm in
this season. I have never loved touring more. I've never
(52:08):
been better at it. I've never been more free on stage.
I've never been more gratified by the process of playing
a live show, never appreciated it more. In my life,
I've never not cared as much what people think, which
has led to this freedom I've had. I've never practiced
more never taken it more seriously. Why, I don't know.
(52:29):
I think that's a great question. I think identity dying
to kind of the artist identity, like when nothing left
to lose hit. It was such a shock to me
to go from working at Starbucks to being popular and
on the charts. It made me very self conscious, self aware.
(52:53):
It changed, It warped my identity of myself in some
ways that took ten years to undo.
Speaker 1 (53:02):
You feel like you're faking it, No, I think you just.
Speaker 2 (53:07):
I think human nature wants to find their identity in
the things people celebrate about them. It's just so it's
like you're a good looking person, you're smart, you're you're
a good argumentative person, you're you serve people well, you're
a great chef, like all of those things. Then it's
(53:30):
easy to start moving more and more of your identity
into that. And that's this is who I am. I
am the successful, talented whatever, you know, insert whatever. And
I had that shaken a few times. You know, all
of a sudden, not as many people come to a
show you had. You had like twenty percent less in
(53:53):
the same city. You're like, wait, and it raw. I
remember I was going through this season maybe two or
three records ago, and my wife was like, Yo, this
doesn't feel like the way it would wreck me was
like not healthy. It was not it wasn't it was
like too much. And she pointed it out to me,
(54:13):
She's like, hey, this feels like something's out of whack.
And that began a process of just kind of dying
to this idea that I am an artist primarily, you know,
like or I am this musician, or I'm assigned to
a major label, or I'm on the radio, or I'm successful,
or i sell records or people like me all of whatever,
(54:35):
insert whatever you want. That kind of you think it's
supposed to be a good thing, because at the core,
you're not that. You're You're so much more than that
everyone is. You're You're You're a brother, a husband, a friend,
child of God. You're like you are. If all of
(54:56):
a sudden I couldn't sing, if I like rip the
tenons in my hand or my head vocal surgery and
I could no longer sing? What I still exist as
a person? Would I no longer be exist? Sure? And
if you put all your identity and things, then you
know you don't exist anymore. If you're an NFL player
and all of a sudden you retire, Like if your
identity is solely in that, who are you? And I
(55:19):
think you should get older? Everyone goes through this and
absolutely Yeah.
Speaker 1 (55:22):
Do you think the freedom that you feel now to
be on the road in regards to this song, do
you think it has to do with the fact.
Speaker 2 (55:29):
That I tangented hard? Didn't? I? Sorry?
Speaker 1 (55:32):
No, it's totally fine. Do you think that that has
to do with the fact that you do have a
family now and you need to make it worth it?
And so you're just like, whatever, I'm going to do
this because the question is is being away worth it?
Speaker 2 (55:49):
Yeah? I mean that's a huge factor, right, I think.
I don't think it's because of the family. I think
the family. My kids are a microscope into that in
a beautiful way. They shine a light onto who are you? Why?
What matters more than they fuel it?
Speaker 1 (56:07):
Would you rather be home? Like if you could just
be songwriter guy in town?
Speaker 6 (56:12):
No?
Speaker 2 (56:12):
I love it, I love you, I love what I do.
Speaker 1 (56:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (56:15):
So, to finish the point that I never finished a
long time ago, It's the most fun I've ever had,
but it is the hardest h it's ever been, So
it's the most I am. I am the most heartbroken
being gone. I feel like I ache for my girls.
And and yeah, I don't think it's wrong. I love.
(56:39):
I think looking at your kids and being like, hey,
there's something you love, like it's going to require sacrifice
by you and everyone around you. I don't think that's
a bad lesson for them. I don't.
Speaker 1 (56:48):
I'm I'm not saying at all that it's wrong. Yeah,
you're either away for work or you're away for work.
It just depends on you know, your work. I remember
the first I dropped my kids off at the airport
and their mom took them to Florida or something, and
the first time I ever felt like that, oh, this
is what this feels like. And I was not expecting this, Like,
(57:12):
well up, like they're just going on vacation and you're
staying back for a few days, not the big a deal.
So that's why I asked that. I think it's interesting.
Hopefully at this point you can bring them out more.
Speaker 2 (57:23):
Yeah, and I don't hit it as hard, And yeah,
we figured out a rhythm that works better. I never
leave for more than I don't. I don't. It's like
I don't have to toil as much. A big year,
you know, is I'm gone for a couple of weeks
and then I'm home for six. Yeah, that's pretty good.
Then I'm gone for two weeks and I'm home for six.
It's like I'm I'm definitely we found a pace that
(57:44):
works cool. But yeah, that song was driven by that feeling.
During that process of kind of identity, I mean and
my wife were talking through I was realizing I used
to go on the road and just be like if
it was just us, like I'm good, Like she could
(58:05):
come out and visit all you wanted, but I didn't
really need much. And weirdly I became more less secure
on the road in just my being by myself. And
it was like I need you guys, like I need
you to FaceTime me with our daughters, like I need
I don't know or just I just needed it. It
(58:27):
was like I can't live without you guys in my life,
even if I'm gone for like a weekend, I just
have a greater need less independent in a good way maybe,
And yeah, that song. I remember I was sitting at
a restaurant. You're always like trying to find food that's
healthy that doesn't give you heartburn show day, like finding
(58:49):
food is like part of the challenge, Like is a singer, yes,
And and I do a VIP thing now, So your
days like you go sound check, You've got maybe an hour.
Then you've got a VIP thing where I play this
acoustic I love it, but I play a couple acoustic
songs with like fifty people. It's really one of my
favorite parts of the night. But then I got another
(59:10):
hour two hours before showtime. You just day is packed,
and so you're like, but you maybe don't want to
get stopped. You're not like eating where the line is
lining up for the show, but you're looking for your
little spot you can grab, like whatever's gonna sit well
in your stomach. After show, you can have your pizza
(59:30):
if you want. Sure. But and I was sitting in
this booth and it's like you're looking at the marquee
with my name on it, in this line of people,
and I remember just feeling that day like you get
to see all these beautiful places, you're in these cool
but you're like, man, it's if there's still an ache
of like the people, the person I love the most
(59:54):
isn't with me doing this right now? And Yeah, what's
the second verse. It starts with like, it's one of
my favorite lyrics on the record, in.
Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
With you eating dinner at the window.
Speaker 2 (01:00:07):
Yeah, the hungry Lover's out, but I got no appetite.
It's like all these you know, people are getting ready,
they're going on a date to the show, and you're
just like sitting with your head down, trying to scarf
a rice bowl, you.
Speaker 1 (01:00:19):
Know, eating potato chips for the show. And it's such
a good song worth mentioning, brooking the bluff is on it. Yeah,
Mica Talks produced it.
Speaker 2 (01:00:31):
I really love it.
Speaker 1 (01:00:32):
It's it's a really great tune. Last question, just for timesake,
would you consider making a full hip hop album ever?
Speaker 2 (01:00:43):
I think you could do it.
Speaker 1 (01:00:44):
I was listening to some of the older stuff and
I was like purposely finding the ones with your more
wrap spoken word stuff. You've got the you've got the
cadence and the tambre to.
Speaker 2 (01:00:53):
Make it really cool.
Speaker 1 (01:00:54):
Yeah, like, okay, maybe like an EP.
Speaker 2 (01:00:58):
You know what's funny is I've been digging. It's always
like a I don't really set out like style of
a record, Like I definitely have a wide net of
influences at this point, there's like more folk landing stuff,
may even country rock, more way hip hop lanning super
(01:01:19):
pop stuff. You know, like that's kind of the bag
I've grabbed from. I'm definitely not as interested in, like
maybe I just it's where I'm at as like real
instrumentation or like interesting real instrumentation. You know, it's still
be samply, but it feels like you're not quite sure.
(01:01:41):
It's like a break pete or like.
Speaker 1 (01:01:42):
Yea, you know, heim or where you'd want to do
something like the roots like a band, like a band.
Speaker 2 (01:01:48):
Yeah, it doesn't have to be a band. It's like
I don't not explain it. It's like there's just like
real instruments. But then it's like it's not just here's
like an ETA eight and snap, So like that is
just not interesting me right now. But it's funny. I've
been picking that up a little bit, like I've been
playing all these acoustic shows and it's just like groove,
(01:02:12):
low end me with a guitar and words, that's all
you have. And I was kind of realizing like, oh,
this is like kind of me, Like this is the
Margherita Pizza of what I am. It's like the groove,
the melody and the lyric, and I've been writing a
little more rhythmic stuff like almost like g love and
(01:02:34):
like the early you know what I mean. Like that's
kind of like like even Jack Johnson's a big influence,
like with like a more tribe called Quest version. Yeah,
that's kind of what I've been messing with. It's been
really fun.
Speaker 1 (01:02:47):
Yeah, something like original Rude Boys, you know them?
Speaker 2 (01:02:52):
I don't, Oh, you should look them up.
Speaker 1 (01:02:55):
It's weird, but it's like this acoustic spoken word.
Speaker 2 (01:03:00):
Cool hip hop thing. The interesting part you're always trying
to marry with like more hip hop leaning stuff. Is
it a lot of what gives it power is it's
it's not trying to be timeless. It's not trying. It's
like it's happening and you're in the moment. Like why
you like Why I like hip hop music is it's
it's unfolding before your eyes. Like it feels like he
(01:03:23):
wrote this she or she wrote this like five minutes ago,
and like five minutes before I'm hearing it on coming
through my speakers. Not all the time, like you know,
I listen to trib call Quest stuff, but it still
feels like this isn't throwback or something. But I also
love kind of like timeless songs and feelings, so it's
(01:03:44):
always trying to like, how do you marry that? Like
a story is always a great like if you're going
to do like a hip hop versus a story kind
of can do both things and feel immediate and like
timeless at the same time. So that's all always the
challenge when I enter that world. It could be like
you can easily write like about now and sometimes that
(01:04:06):
sound interesting.
Speaker 1 (01:04:07):
Yeah, I love that. Yeah, Matt Carney, thanks for being here.
Speaker 2 (01:04:11):
Hey man, love talking about songs.
Speaker 1 (01:04:13):
My one request as we sign off is because you're
a happy guy, can we get an album cover where
you're smiling? I just won.
Speaker 2 (01:04:23):
I don't know how to smile. Who smiles?
Speaker 1 (01:04:25):
You know, nobody smiles on an album cover.
Speaker 2 (01:04:28):
Maybe that's the thing.
Speaker 1 (01:04:29):
You want to use your LinkedIn profile for your album cover.
Speaker 2 (01:04:32):
Like AFX twin was, there was a big smiley guy.
His just creepy, so like a creepy smile.
Speaker 1 (01:04:37):
You could do a creepy smile. That'd be good.
Speaker 2 (01:04:40):
Didn't Bob Dylan with the girl where he's holding dirt?
Is he smiling? He's got his arm around the girl?
It's kind of a it's like a smirk.
Speaker 1 (01:04:46):
I think you could change things now with the smile.
I think it. I think you would be a massive
influence on album art just cheesing. Everyone's like, oh, you
should start smiling.
Speaker 2 (01:04:56):
Cheesing it up.
Speaker 1 (01:04:57):
Yeah, that was so serious.
Speaker 2 (01:05:00):
I'll consider there.
Speaker 1 (01:05:01):
Thank you, appreciate it, Thanks for being hey, thanks griving.
Speaker 8 (01:05:04):
Thanks to.
Speaker 2 (01:05:06):
Use all.
Speaker 3 (01:05:10):
You know jas.
Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
Work Tapes is produced by me Brandon Carswell, filming and
editing by Sean Carswell, Special thanks to Matt Carney. You
can find more info about Matt at Mattcarney dot com.
Don't forget to like and subscribe to Work Tapes wherever
you're listening, please
This episode of work Tapes is brought to you by
Eastside Music Supply. East Side Music Supply is a music
shop in Nashville, Tennessee. It's my go to spot for
all things gear related, whether it's guitars, bass guitars. If
I need work on my gear, if I need to
buy a pedal, that's really cool and awesome, that's super unique.
They've got that kind of stuff there. They've got cool
merch audio gear, all the stuff. You're dealing with the
(00:22):
best people in the industry. Unlike those big box stores
that don't really care, east Side Music Supply cares. It
cares about your tone, They care about your experience. Go
to Eastside Music Supply dot com. If you're not local
to Nashville, they will hook you up. Tell them when
you go that Brandon from Work Tapes sent you you're good.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
I'm good.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
I'm trying to make sure I'm good. That's what are
you asking?
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Are you good?
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Are you good?
Speaker 3 (00:46):
We're good.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Welcome to work Tapes. This is a podcast where we
tear up ourt songs. Why was the song written, what's
it about, what's the context and emotion behind it? Where
were you at the time, what were you going through
How did certain lines come to you? What's the inspiration?
How long did it take to write? I'm Brandon Carswell
and I'm fascinated with songwriting and how songs are built
(01:16):
from the ground up. It's easy to hear a full
production song on the radio and dismiss its origin story.
I want to hear the rough draft of the song
or the work take. I want to explore the very
beginning of how songs that move us and make us
move our born.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
A crack of small boot leading inside rack of the
Mozzy me.
Speaker 5 (01:58):
Running down the Chima You stay in baddest time can
get you out of.
Speaker 6 (02:09):
You know ca.
Speaker 7 (02:11):
See run in a Flat Off, Dying Get Back Tennessee Teazon,
you know Killy.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Welcome to work Tapes everyone. I am Brandon Carswell. I
am joined today by a fantastic singer, songwriter artist I've
known for quite a while, and I'm happy to get
reacquainted with you today. Matt is known for his distinct
blend of pop, folk and hip hop. This unique sound
(02:48):
has produced hits like Nothing Left to Lose and train Wreck,
giving way to a two thousand and six double ward
train Wreck, train Wreck, I Haven't heard that in a while.
It's a good song. Thanks man, you're interrupting my intro.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
You want me to keep carry on?
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Carry on?
Speaker 6 (03:06):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
He's toured with John Mayor, Sheryl Crow, Train, Mute, Math,
and Keen, to name a few collaborations with Trent Dabs,
Kate York, Paul Moke, Matthew Parriman, Jones Broken the Bluff.
Today we discussed a song called Headlights Home and we
listened to the work tape. Welcome Matt Carney.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
That's awesome to be here.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Thanks for coming.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Oh man, it's a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
I'm glad this worked out. I was really so as
everyone on that regularly listens to this podcast knows, I'm
really close with Micah Talks, who produced this song that
we're going to talk about today, and he was kind
enough to kind of give us the jolt to do
this episode. Mike is awesome. He's so good.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Mike is like I just was texting him and uh, yeah,
I'm just a big fan of him. I was. I've
known him for years back when we were both getting
our start, and he actually delivered flowers. He used to
deliver flowers. I don't know if he'll care if I
mentioned that I was working at Starbucks. Yeah, and he
(04:12):
my girlfriend at the time now my now wife. I
ordered her flowers for Valentine's Day and she was nanny
for a family and there was like a five year
old girl and Micah was the delivery guy and he
knocked on the door and she opened the door and
(04:32):
she was like really pissed off. She went and she's like, Annie,
there's another man at the door with flowers. And she's like,
what's about. What about Matt? You said you liked him.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Mike is a good looking dude. Yea had she had
room to be annoyed by that first question out of
the gate. Let's just get it right. You spell your.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Name with one ta, one tea.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
How many people get this wrong? How many miss prints
have you had? That's my always? Yeah, lots. Do you
have any merchant two t's, Yes, we can have.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
A lot of designs. If you know how many designs
I've gotten back from designers and there's two t's or Kernie.
They spell it Kernie with it's Carney, but it's spelled
like Keernie, and uh yeah, I one t. It was
actually a misspell My wife, my wife. My mother misspelled
it on my birth certificate.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Oh your whole full knit like Matthew m.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
A T H e W. Yeah. I didn't actually find
out till the eighth grade, when I had spelled it
M A T M A T and I would cross
both t's with one line. I thought that was super efficient.
And then in the eighth grade, I pulled out the
you know they give you those like decorative footprint things
from the hospital. They put your footprint on it. They say,
they write in curse of Matthew Carney nine pounds or
(05:52):
eight pounds or whatever. Nine's a lot whatever you weigh birthday.
And I pulled it out one day and I noticed
it was beautiful script and a T HGW and there
was like a red tea drawn in with red ballpoint
pen of these pens I was I'd seen around our
house and I was like, Mom, what's this, you know,
Like She's like, oh, they spelled it wrong. So I
(06:13):
fixed it. Yeah, And I was like, just because you
wrote a T on this thing in our like drawer,
didn't make it legal. Yeah, it didn't change the spelling
of my name. So we pulled out my birthstificate and
we had one tea.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
I'm fully expecting to get a missprint merch from you now, Okay,
I'll try to work on if we can get that,
that'd be great. I also want to make mention that
I've never seen you without a hat on yes, and
so I wore hat today. I've never worn a hat.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
So you look good, just to like my Superman cape.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Match your energy. Where my east Side Music Supply hat?
Speaker 2 (06:45):
What is east Side Music Supply.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
It's that's so interesting, you asked. They're the sponsor of
our program today Love It. Yeah, that's a guitar store
and he said, oh, I think I've been there in
East Nashville. Yeah, that's a good spot. Anyone asking Just
listen to the top of this episode and you can
learn about US Side musicsply dot com.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Love It.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
How many hats do you have?
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Uh, it depends on which era. There's definitely a hat
for each era.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Of Matt Carner. Yeah, like you have dress hats and
you have.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
These, well there's like the Fedora era. Well like baseball cap.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
What about if you if you're playing a show, you
have a different hat for that.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Uh, there's like seasons I have some like there's probably
three or four in rotation for each kind of season.
Some go out like I was wearing like a more
golf style like those like Scottish. Yeah that was that
was like Young Love.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Era Peggy blinders.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Yeah yeah, kind of back when we were all wearing suspenders. Yeah,
I love Us City. Black and White was the black Fedora.
Oh yeah, nothing left to Lose was like more like
an army style kind of green thing.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Now I kind of have my pick of them.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
You can do what you want. Yeah, exactly, You've been
doing this long enough. Wear whatever hats you want. Yeah.
Let's get into your background, early influences. Where did you
come from? Why did you start writing songs? What is it?
I'm what appeals to you about music?
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Yeah, I'm from Eugene, Oregon, sixth generation Oregonian. So when
you were playing Covered Wagon or Organ Trail as a kid,
you know, did you play that game? Yes, that was
my family. They came over to Oregon on covered wagons
and they died of Yes, Like that's the joke we
have in our families, Like everyone else died. We got
strong blood.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
The weirdest diseases also not anything normal dysentery.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
That's a bad way to die, just poop yourself to death.
And we grew up in Oregon, in Eugene, which is
a college town and it's kind of like small. It's
actually a really cool size town to grow up. And
I didn't realize it, but it's one hundred and fifty
thousand arts were celebrated. Was very cultured in some ways,
(09:01):
mostly white people, so cultured white people. But yeah, I
was just like a really lovely place to grow up.
Arts were really celebrated. I had a lot of artists
in my family, painters. My uncle painted, my grandma painted,
my step uncle. They're either lawyers or painters, which is
(09:23):
kind of the soup that formed me. Yeah, and I
was a soccer player but found this teacher that was
an art teacher, Sue Markley, who just really inspired me.
And all of a sudden, I found these kind of
creative outlets that I realized, Wow, this is really how
I'm wired. Like creative expression is like something that deeply
moves me. And music hadn't taken root in my life
(09:47):
as a as a musician, but I loved it. I
mean I would like I remember, like even Bobby Brown
tapes in the eighth grade, Like music just moved me.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Where did you find that kind of reference? Because I
know that you are into hip hop. Yeah, we kind
of mentioned that in your intro, But who was it
or how did you find that style of music early
on that influenced you into doing more like your earlier
stuff has more rap.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Yeah, like spoken word hip write stuff, yeah, I mean
one of it. One thing was that's all I could do.
So growing up in Eugene in the nineties in high school,
you know, the bands that were really celebrated in my
high school were like Tribe called Quest and Sublime and
all the East Coast stuff was actually really popular. We
(10:37):
were on the West Coast, but we didn't listen to
a lot of West Coast rap unless it was like
San Francisco, so you could listen like Farside and there
was a band, you know, Latif and Lyrics, Boring, DJ Shadow,
all these like Bay Area bands or it was like
nas tribe called Quest de Las Soul was just like
massively popular in my group of friends, and so I
(11:01):
don't know, I just really loved it. Meanwhile, I was
listening to a lot of like jazz, and I bought
this console record player that I still have. It's like
a Magnavox, you know table, it looks like a little
piece of furniture. Brought it with me everywhere since I
was fifteen, and I would listen to Billie Holiday and
it just really I remember, I would just be in
(11:23):
tears listening to music and it just really meant So
there was nothing that meant as much to me as music.
Listening to music. And during that period, I would maybe
my senior year, junior year of high school, on the
way to my art classes, photography and all these things
that I lived at. I was terrible student, but I
(11:44):
would live in the dark room. Just seven periods out
of nine I would be in the dark room just working,
and there was a piano. There was the practice. You
would go through the music hall like with a drama
department to get to the arts department, and they had
these practice rooms withs and I learned if you just
push like the black keys, you're all you're all in
(12:06):
one key, you know, you're like the candidates up yeah,
pentatonic scale of F sharp or C sharp, whatever you're in.
And I would just sit for hours and just play,
just mess with it and just like be in tears.
Probably sixteen seventeen be in tears and when I I
(12:28):
was always a good writer. I was a terrible student,
but I could always write. It always made sense to me. Words,
putting them together in an emotional way made sense to me.
And I had a teacher who slid a poem across
my desk one day and he was and she was like,
you should do this, like you're good at this. And
it was the first teacher it ever told me I'm
good at anything other than my photography teacher. So I
(12:51):
was like, whoa someone told me I was good at something.
And I barely got into college to play soccer. I
was a soccer player this whole time. I was playing
at Chico State and I didn't have any other major.
I had to pick a major. So I picked an
English major because I was like, if I can write
a paper, I can get like a B in the class.
(13:11):
If I have to like do physics, it's over, Like
there's no I started copying my physics homework in like
freshman year of high school. So I'm a little behind
at this point. And I became an English major. And
during that period, my roommate had a guitar and I
would do the same kind of things I would do
in the practice studios and I would just start writing songs.
(13:37):
Rewind back to high school. The one thing I could
do musically was we're all listening to hip hop music.
We thought we were kind of like we knew what
was going on. Is I would just freestyle, okay all
the time.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
I was going to ask you about that.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Yeah, that's what we would do.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
That's a thing you do.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Oh, I mean I would. I wouldn't say I'm as
sharp as I was back there.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
It's going to ask you to do it. Yeah, I'm
just asking you if you did. That's how you.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Yeah, that was how I started. Was you know, you'd
be sitting because of the art world. All my friends
were like these graffiti artists, and with that came like
hip hop culture. So so I got into that because
it was kind of rebellious and it wasn't.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
You were tagging trains and stuff.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Yeah, we were, actually we were. There was a legal
graffiti wall in Eugene. You know, these very progressive towns.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
That seems to make get less fun. Oh.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
It was awesome though, because I mean I didn't really
love defacing property. That wasn't very exciting to me. But
the craft of it, and like these guys that were
so good. My friend Brendan who went by Tomb Tomb
was like his tag. He was like a legend in
Eugene and he was my dear friend. So I would
just follow him around and he would paint these really
(14:46):
beautiful murals. I was never very good, but we would
on the way home. You would play like an outcast
instrumental or something, and you just jokingly make up songs
and weirdly, I was just so it just was natural
to me, Like I was words. I was good at
putting them together. And the more you do it, you
(15:06):
build this kind of like muscle memory where you hit
a rhyme, you've got like five you know where you're
gonna end, so you can say anything and it like
builds on itself. And the more you do it, you
have this crazy muscle memory of knowing rhymes and you
can kind of say whatever you want ending on these rhymes.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Right, And did you have stuff like pre worked out?
Speaker 2 (15:25):
No?
Speaker 1 (15:26):
No, no, I mean just did you write poetry and
like kind of reference that in your brain?
Speaker 2 (15:29):
No, it was not it ever written at all. It
was like it was more like juggling.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
I always wonder if like some freestyles are like cheating. Yeah, yeah,
like they've sat down and written all this stuff out
and memorized bits and pieces and then they throw it together.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
The skill is as soon as you say a word,
you know where you're going to rhyme with, okay, so
you can say anything ending on that rhyme. And it's
like the more you do it, your brain instantly like
it's happening so fast, Yes, that you know where you're going,
and you've done it enough that like maybe you have
three or four rhymes that kind of you know whether
(16:10):
you're going to say it doesn't matter. I do it
so much better like than anybody, and it's they say,
am clever or you know, you're like, you know where
you're going with these words. So I got really good
at that too. While I was like, it was like
my party trick and every place I'd go, I would
like get on stage or grab a microphone and just
like make things up about the room. And my my
(16:35):
senior year, my young Life leader had a four track
taskim tape recorder and I started taking like instrumental beats,
like I took a method man beat, and I started
writing kind of like writing down these this you know,
rhyming was easy to me and I start writing them down,
and so I had that in the back of my mind.
I had a couple tapes that I recorded. We recorded
(16:57):
a disc tape my senior year about Sheldon High School.
I'm sorry, Dandrennon, you didn't deserve it. But going into college,
when I grabbed my roommate's guitar, I kind of couldn't
really sing. I didn't really have a four track tape anymore.
(17:17):
And writing had become so much more interesting to me
than just like making up freestyles at parties that I
just started writing stuff down and it was so much
easier for me to write a song than to learn
a song, you know, you know two chords and say
some stuff. I was like, this is easy, you know
four chords, like learn G chords, C chord and just
say stuff like this is awesome. That kind of started
(17:40):
the whole beginning of my music career. And then people
were hearing it and they're like, this is this is weird,
Like you're playing a guitar, you're kind of like talking.
I couldn't really sing, but what I could sing had
to be simple. So it was like innately catchy because
it's kind of childish and that recipe really kind of
got me started.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
So you really started your career in music late? Yeah,
later than most. I mean there's not really a time
you should start or not start, but yeah, and as
it goes, like a lot of artists are like, oh,
I grew up in church or I was a kid
and I always wanted to do this.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
That wasn't you. No, I didn't have any.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Did you have? Do you think there's any benefit to
starting late?
Speaker 8 (18:25):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Later in college? I guess is when you started, right.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
I mean, I think there's there's a strength to having
limitations early on, but youthful passion you can only do
And if those limitations create kind of a signature, then
that's cool. You know. Like the bands I love, and
(18:50):
it's probably because this is how I'm wired. The artists
I love have these like limitations, Like Johnny Cash, you
know he can't really just kind of he's not like
a singer singer, he's not like a player player yeah.
Or Bob Bill yeah, or Bob Marley or like they
kind of do this thing that's them, right, and that's
always been Those kind of artists are really interesting to
(19:10):
me versus like if you go to Berkeley and you're
virtue so and you can play everything. I can see
that there's a challenge of like what is me? You know, like, yes,
what defines me? All I had was what was me?
That was nothing? Nothing else I could barely I'm hanging
on the whole time.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
What's what do you think the draw to that is? Like,
there's a so you you have Johnny catch figure, he
can play a few chords, he can kind of sing,
he can write a story for sure. Yeah, and you
compare that with someone like tom Yorke Radiohead, Yeah, super
intricate music. It's still appealable. Not not making that difference,
(19:48):
but what's but there's a huge draw to like the
simple man, yeah, or the simple woman in music.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Well, I mean I for I can only speak for me,
and I think it's like one you have to then, yeah,
be able to tell a story your lyric. I mean,
the lyric has to be a thing. If you're not
playing the major seventh to whatever, if the music is
not the thing, like sonically, you know Sigarroas being like, yes,
there's no they're gibberish. It's all these musical expressions or symphony.
(20:18):
You know, like classical music is all counter melodies and
melody and no choice and that's the art of it. Yeah,
it's probably coming from this kind of folk tradition, which
is like it's a lyric idea image, picture driven voice perspective.
You know, those become the strength or the thing that
(20:40):
has to be strong if you're going to be simple.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
Yeah, did you always want to be a solo guy
in that regard or did you think you wanted to
be in a band.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Oh, I've never been in a band, so I didn't
know any difference. I would love. I'm envious of all
my friends that are in bands in that you know,
when we everything comes has to come from me or
someone I I mean, as I've gotten done this longer,
it's easier because you surround yourself with great people and
(21:10):
it's like I'm in a band at times. But you know,
if you're making a if you're by yourself writing a song,
there's no one else Like you need a bass part,
you got to like figure it out or program a drum.
There's not someone who's like going away and slaving over
a guitar part as much as you are. Lyrics and
a melody, but no, I didn't. I've never been in
(21:31):
a band. I my last record when we got Broken
the Bluff in the studio with me, it was the
closer ever felt to be in a band. And it
was like awesome.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
It was like, and those guys are so good, oh
so good.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
I mean I was just sitting back and like, you know,
usually in a studio setting, you're with people that are
really good at what they do, and they their tastes
may not even be what they're playing. Like they're trying
to satisfy you. So if you're like I'm going I
want like early Police thing with like what about more
reverb and like what if the part went up and
(22:05):
you know they're looking for me for their cues. Whereas
with the band but Brooklyn the Bluff, it was like
they'd never really been session musicians. All they'd been is
in a band, so they only knew how to approach
their parts. They were playing like they had to live
and die by these parts, and this is what they
would if they were making a record for their band,
Like right, I have to believe in this part. Yeah,
(22:27):
And it was I just sitting on the couch and
they were they were like encouraging each other to be
like that's awesome, man, or what if you They were
all talking to each other about parts. I was like,
I was sitting back to be like, this is awesome.
Speaker 8 (22:38):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Whatever you're doing is sick.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
It's fun. Yeah. So going back to Oregon before you
moved to Nashville, Yeah, did you move here for music?
Was that the plan? Like you got enough attention off
or enough people saying, hey, this is cool, you should
do this?
Speaker 2 (22:56):
It was no, We had no What it was is
Robert who has been a long time, long time I'm
contributor of my music and writer and producer. He's produced
Young Love City, Black and White, Nothing Left to Lose,
January Flower, a lot of my records. He when I
(23:17):
was in college and I fell in love with songwriting.
I was home for Thanksgiving and I happened into his
studio and we recorded a song and it was like
the first time I've been in a recording studio really
ever in my life. And he's like, let's write a
song tonight, and we're just like okay, and we like
back when you could just write a song, produce it,
(23:37):
mix it done, like from eleven o'clock till four in
the morning, like we're like young hip hop artists or something.
I don't know. We just did it and it was
so it was like a drug. I was like, this
is the greatest thing that's ever happened. So I would
every time I was home in Eugene. He was going
to school at UFO and Eugene, and I was in
(23:58):
Chico playing soccer and writing songs on my guitar. Every
time we were home, we'd go in and record some
music together. And this is probably a year and a
half and I'd started accumulating I maybe five or six
songs I'd ever recorded. And meanwhile he was producing other
bands and one of them had gotten some attraction in Nashville,
(24:20):
so he called me. Now we're just buddies at this time.
I talked to him all the time. He's like, Hey,
I'm driving to Nashville. If you help me drive across
the country, well we'll take like a month and record music.
Oh cool. So he could have literally said anywhere. He
could have said Topeka, Kansas, and I would have wanted
to go with him. So we packed up his truck
(24:41):
in Portland, where he was from, and we slept in
the back of it, put the mattress, put all the clothes,
and put the mattress on top, and we'd just drive
for like seventeen hours pull over. He had no AC
because we're from the Northwest. You're like, you don't need
air conditioning, you know. We'd be like our we'd sleep
bags that were like meant for you know, mountain temperatures.
(25:06):
So we pull up in like in like Oklahoma in August,
you know, and just wake up dripping, went sweat on
the side of the highway in these like twenty degree bags,
you know. And we got to Nashville and we started
we got a little eventually got an apartment in Hillsborough Village.
I helped him move in and we set up a
little studio. We set up the studio in the bedroom
(25:27):
and we had a mattress out in the living room.
We slept on it together like which we had no sheets.
We thought that was like somehow less like intimate to feel.
There's just no sheets on a.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Mattress, right, yeah, which is just gross.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
If you think about it. You're just like two dudes
sleeping on like the mattress. You can't wash that.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
You're trying to justify a situation.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Yeah, you wake up with like the Paisley print on
your face, you know. Yeah. And by the end of
the of August I had we had maybe I had
maybe seven eight songs at this time, and after about
a month of being in Nashville, there was like little
through the people that had liked his production had heard
(26:08):
some of our demos, like Toby Mack, like these people
in like the CCM world, and they heard the demos
and they were like, dude, this is good. You could
do this. And that was kind of all the fuel
I needed and I dropped out of school.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
And was your so your early writing was more informed
by your faith or did you just chase that road
because that's where the attention was coming from, like CCM
was listening or was it?
Speaker 8 (26:39):
No?
Speaker 2 (26:39):
I think it was interesting.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Yeah, I mean your first thing was with Sparrow or
that it was sorry not.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
First thing was with Columbia, but I licensed it to
in Pop, which was a small label, and that was more.
That was like the smartest thing I ever did. I
didn't realize it at the time. That was what your
first question. My faith was like a massive part of
(27:06):
who I was in college. Chico Stuates is like crazy
party school, and I was definitely kind of hitting rock
bottom of my life at that point and just kind
of like searching, you know, going hard into like the
world of just like meaninglessness. And I was really depressed
(27:28):
and said and it was during that season that really
my faith just burst it out and it became alive
and felt like the grace of God. And I was
writing at that time, so a lot of it was
just the only thing. It was just very true to
me of like these feelings of like second chances and
(27:50):
like no matter how helpless, because to me, it felt
like a lot of these kind of patterns that had
followed me all through high school. And I was a
pretty troubled kid that got in trouble, was getting arrested,
and just it felt like I couldn't get out of it,
Like there was no way I was out of my strength.
It wasn't just like I was making bad choices. It
(28:11):
was like I was destined for bad choices, Like I
couldn't escape them, was how I felt. And all of
a sudden, I was like freed from that whole thing,
and it was like, all of a sudden, I was
like making decisions that were like good for me. And
they were awesome and it felt so good.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Was that an easy change?
Speaker 2 (28:29):
It really was? Yeah, I mean shockingly yea, yeah, I would.
It didn't feel I had anything to do with me.
I think that's the kind of this idea that really
still resonates with me. It's this kind of grace of
God idea that you are you're if you really experience love,
(28:50):
then you can give it. You can't. You can't like
you can't earn love from your partner, you know, or something.
It's like when you free giving love is like when
you freely get it. I'm not articulating it. Well, yeah,
but that that thing, that concept really rocked me. So yeah,
I was writing about that, but it was It was
(29:11):
interesting coming from Eugene Organ. I knew nothing about any
of the artists, Like even Toby I didn't really know
his music. We didn't grow up with that kind of stuff.
It was like we grew up going to church, but
it was like we'd be listening to Paul Simon and
Michael Jackson and Eugene was kind of like a hippie town.
So this is like, you know, Bob Dylan's Christian record era.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
It wasn't immersed in gospel, ccium stuff.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
No, I didn't know of anything. I had never heard it,
so I was just following my muse and like what
I loved. But if I had to play a song,
it was at a coffee shop or somewhere there wasn't
It wasn't like a captive audience. So your music had
to just be good. It could be about things, it
could be about whatever it wanted, but it had to
be compelling to whoever was listening. Okay, so that was
(29:59):
kind of the my heroes were. Yeah, I wasn't really
listening to any of that music and I never really
understood it. But having people embraced me in any industry
was really powerful and it was what I needed. But
I don't know, I don't I would say maybe there's
(30:20):
like a youthful kind of passion to some of my
earlier music that as you get older, you like get
a little more metaphoric and veiled and or bigger than
really really specific. That is interesting to me now, But
I would say that the same motivating factors have been
there the whole time.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Did that happen pretty quick for you when you got here?
When you got to Nashville?
Speaker 2 (30:43):
The which part.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Just the making this your job.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Just the deal. Oh, it wasn't my job for a while,
but you would have thought it was my job.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Right, Well, I mean you got a deal.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
I did. I was probably here, so I moved to Nashville.
I got offered deals. Okay, I felt pretty clearly I didn't.
I did a few, like youth group things or something,
and I didn't understand that world or that like, I
didn't seem like it made sense to me to put
music out in that world. So I actually turned them
all down, Okay, which is insane now thinking back about it.
(31:17):
How it was just audacious of me too.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Well, you knew, you knew what you wanted I did.
I mean I saw it. You at least saw, Oh
this is not my lane. No, I want to go
over here.
Speaker 8 (31:28):
And uh.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
I worked at Starbucks, I was a soccer coach. I
worked at banquet server at opry Mills opry Land Hotel.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
I applied for one of those jobs. Terrible, I didn't
get it.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
You be thankful they had a one size you had
to wear a TUXI a fake tuxedo. But they were
like they had a zipper down the side, like it
wasn't a TUXI it was like a onesie and there
was like two sizes with these like cinches you could
like cinch them up. So like there's like five foot
nine girls in these swimming and these like cheap tuxedos
(32:06):
with these weird ties. And you had to carry your
banquet servers so you didn't make tips. You would just
carry like fifteen entrees on a tray. And they were
in those big metal so it was like, yeah, clinking around. Yeah,
it was like it was drop them. I didn't, but
someone would. Yeah all the time.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
I dropped those all the time. Yeah, They're heavy, well.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Time, and the food was gross. It was just not
a vibe.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
I worked at a restaurant and dropped soup on a
lady one time.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
That was bad.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
So how long did it take so before it became
your job?
Speaker 2 (32:42):
So that would have been two thousand. I moved here,
and I it probably took three or four years of
just like that's pretty fast. Yeah, I mean didn't feel
like it at the time, but they call it a
ten year town. Yeah, three or four years to what
what ultimately happened was once I turned down a record
(33:02):
deal in like the Christian world, then they all started
trying to offer me deals and I it was like
it's like the new girl at school or something like
you say no and then it makes people won't I
don't know. It was just like they wanted to who's
this guy?
Speaker 1 (33:17):
Thing is?
Speaker 2 (33:17):
Yeah exactly, And I was just scared, honestly, and I
said no. And eventually I just was like, what do
we need. We just need money to make a record,
because all they were going to do is give us
a budget for me and Robert to make a record.
That's all we were doing. We were by ourselves. We
didn't have any help, and I ended up raising some
(33:41):
money and it was like twenty five grand. It's just
a big deal, so much money, and we just made
our own independent record. And that's the one that I licensed.
In the meantime, I made relationships in one labels, like hey,
can you just license it to us, like, just let
us try to sell it for nothing left to lose.
(34:04):
It became it was bullet that became nothing left to lose.
And then about in the course of maybe three or
three months since I licensed it, Columbia Records heard it.
Aware Records was like my dream label, and I was
playing it for Matt Wirtz, who you had on your
podcast and he's a huge reason he was. We were
in a car Genghis Grill my hond accord and I
(34:27):
was like, yeah, back then, I probably was like, get
in the car, get to listen to this record. I'm
so proud of it. And I was like, I've heard
of you, man, oh I make music, Come listen, and
brought it into my car, put in a burned CD
and he was like, bro, I love this. He's like
this is so good, and he's like, give me a CD.
So I remember giving him a CD and he passed
it on to his booking agent, who passed it on
(34:49):
to his boss who was friends with who was and
that guy was booking like John Marrin and King Kings
of Leon and all these bands, and he was like, dude,
I love this. I want to Can I send it
to my friend at a Wear Records And I remember
I was so scared. I'd said no to everyone. I
was like, I don't know, man, if you should send
it to anybody. Someone told me to lie to him,
(35:12):
be like. This was CIA at the time, Creative Artist Agency,
and they were like telling me of a meeting with
William Morris is the other big agent, so it's like, yeah,
I've got another meeting with William Morris, so I'm not sure,
Just like, who do you think you are? Working at Starbucks? Bro,
Like this guy's trying to help you. And Scott Clayton,
who's now running some UTA, he's an awesome dude. He
(35:35):
sent it to Greg and he's like, this kid doesn't
know what he's doing. Send it to Wear Records. I
was playing a show the next night after that guy
got my record in his town. It's just like total
meant to be. He couldn't stop listening to it. He
came to the show, He's like, I want to sign you.
And then it was kind off to the races and
we took about a year of writing more songs and nothing.
(35:57):
That the Lows came out I think two thousand and
six two.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Six, and it's a great album.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
Thanks man.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
I worre it out when it came out, me too, Scott.
I mean, one thing that I wanted to cover with
you is while there are like more popular songs than
others of yours, almost every song has got.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
Like a really good hook.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
You're really good at writing memorable hooks and I'm curious
where that comes from or do you know?
Speaker 2 (36:30):
I don't. I think, I think you know when it's there, Yeah,
Like you know, there's like an energy to a certain
group of words and melodies that get me excited. It's
like one of the things I love in music is
(36:51):
the marring of like the songwriter that I like, James Taylor,
Paul Simon, all these guys I grew up with with
like this, I almost put them in buckets. It's like
they're cerebral song there's like a cerebral side to music.
It's like the argument. Country music is very much that way.
It's like here's an argument, here's a lyrical kind of
(37:13):
folk music is that way. You're kind of you're appealing
to people's brains with maybe an argument or images or
some sort of word you choices. Obviously the melody matters,
but you're kind of appealing to people's brains. And then
there's like visceral sides of music, which is like hip
hop and Bob Marley, and it's like you don't even
(37:35):
have to speak the language you put it on. It's
one of my favorite things to do is watch a
room when a song comes on and like you put
a Bob Marley song in on in any group of
people and they will all just kind of start their
bodies are responding to the music. So for me, like
both of those are something I value so much that
I always want. I'm always trying to like have both.
(38:00):
I can't just write like music that's like servicey just body,
and I I do write some more just cerebral stuff
like a folk you're kind of just you and a guitar.
And this song is kind of an argument or just images.
But my true love is when you marry them all.
And so I think searching for melodies has to do
with that same thing. There's like this visceral thing you
(38:23):
feel when certain melodies or notes happen that I'm just like, yes,
that's if you.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
Have like a formula for that or like a you
just kind of know when it happens. Do you have
like a in your process of writing? So, like a
song that I might use as an example that I
heard once and couldn't get out of my head as
a good thing. You got a good thing going, Yeah,
(38:48):
I can't stop singing that hook. You just you just
hummed it and for the rest of today it'll be
in my brain.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
Well, I wish I could take more. I mean as
good as I am, which is thank you for saying that.
I I I'm trying to be humble now that I
said that. No, it's good, but but I probably what
I'm better at is is identifying them. So that was
(39:16):
Trent Dabs was just singing that in the room when
I walked in one day at a co write and
I was like, okay, we're doing this. What is this?
I mean, I don't even know. I think I wrote
the maybe the beat the like the alternate section of
that course, but it was pretty much wrong example, but
pretty much done. Still, so many of your songs, like
(39:40):
one of my favorites right now, I haven't heard the
whole new record, but one of my favorites is Kevlar.
That song's super cool. It's not as poppy as the
other ones. That's probably why I like it because that's
how I'm wired. But it's still it's still like everything's
got like this thread that's super hooky, and I just
kind of wanted to try to get to the bottom
of that with you. But I don't know if it's
(40:02):
anything other than you know, I think I'm learning so
much of music is taste. It's like it's not necessarily
for me. I'm not, like I haven't had the ability
my whole life, so what I've had to lean on
is my taste, like right, And that's just like knowing
trying to acknowledge when your body and when you are
excited about something.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
Well, what goes in is what comes out?
Speaker 2 (40:24):
Yeah, I mean what you're digesting sure matters, But like
I think at my core there's like some part of
this barometer when you're when I love how it makes
my body feel and my brain and the dopamine receptors.
I'm like trying to pay attention to that.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
Yeah, And speaking of songs on your new record, let's
talk about Headlights on I Love It. We're going to
listen to the work tape of this, and just a
preface for our listeners. You sent me three versions maybe yeah,
demo the work tape, Yeah, I think it was three,
So I'm gonna splice them together, see here a little
bit of each version, and then we'll listen to like
(41:07):
the fully formed work tape. We'll do that right now,
and then we'll break things down. Cool, yeah, cool.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
I will say this, this is the one song that
is not typical of my songs, which is an interesting
choice because it was such a departure from all of
the different versions. Usually they come more packaged and whole.
If they're good songs like they tend to exist in
one moment. And for all the songwriters out there that
are like slaving on these things they think are good,
(41:36):
I don't know. I've killed myself weeks on songs that
are never good. They're never gonna be good. And then
the easy ones you write in fifteen minutes and it's
so frustrating, and they're the biggest songs. This was one
that put up a fight, and there's a few like
Ships in the Night was one where you felt like, wow,
(41:57):
that broke the mold of this idea that all good
song just comes in one package.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
Right, All right, let's listen to the work tape and
then we'll unpack it again.
Speaker 9 (42:10):
Bound bound.
Speaker 3 (42:20):
Son, If.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
What is that list? That's sick?
Speaker 8 (42:32):
Baby butt me, but don't take change, eat let on
(43:02):
for me. Got intense, he jokes, old devil.
Speaker 3 (43:21):
You know, a case.
Speaker 4 (43:45):
A crack of small bood and leading inside rack the
mouth even you behind.
Speaker 5 (43:53):
Running down the tream out standing by this time, can't
get you out of.
Speaker 8 (43:59):
The mine leather that on both me you know, ca.
Speaker 9 (44:07):
Sleep, run in the flat light offbeat, die in to giveback,
to tell se teuse on the tail.
Speaker 8 (44:20):
You know, can chasing twilights, die in.
Speaker 6 (44:29):
See give you.
Speaker 3 (44:32):
He said that. Tom said that, so.
Speaker 5 (44:50):
Solo window dimn the table Tonight, the Hungy Lovers album,
I got no appetite, the city's riding from the at
the zoom nice.
Speaker 4 (45:01):
This time, and he like, man be the.
Speaker 8 (45:07):
Me you know see run a black.
Speaker 9 (45:16):
Beads back to see to your don't.
Speaker 1 (45:25):
You know can.
Speaker 8 (45:28):
Go je.
Speaker 3 (45:33):
Jake.
Speaker 8 (45:37):
He said that.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
Said to.
Speaker 8 (45:55):
Either I don't either.
Speaker 3 (45:56):
I don't mean either, don't either.
Speaker 6 (46:00):
Lot of phone either, I don't be the don't me.
Speaker 8 (46:07):
Either?
Speaker 6 (46:07):
I don't either, lon'one me the don't need a lot
of me, don't use a lot of pony.
Speaker 8 (46:19):
This is a lot. Don't he a lot of me.
Speaker 5 (46:23):
Either, load of me?
Speaker 8 (46:46):
Pofkay It's co ight? Is this.
Speaker 2 (46:54):
That you.
Speaker 8 (46:56):
Hes you share?
Speaker 1 (46:58):
That's okay? I love this work, Tabe. It's cool to
hear the process. Who did you write the song with?
Who did we hear in there?
Speaker 2 (47:12):
Well? So the first thing you hear is of my
buddy Eli Teplin, who wrote a bunch with me on
my January Flower Records is unbelievable. And we had gone
out to Joshua Tree just to write. And I went
with one of my best friends who's a painter, Marshall Roman.
He's been one of my best friends since I was
in kindergarten, and we just went to go. I was
(47:35):
going to go record, but we stayed at this house
that was like in the middle of nowhere, and this
storm blew through and we had no power and we're
basically in the dark the whole time. I think by
this time we'd gotten a little power and I'd started
making like a little beat or something. But I just
had that, you know. Ip sat in that side and
(48:05):
he was like, Yo, what was that? And I had
that for three years, four years, in just my drop
box and in my phone in a voice note.
Speaker 1 (48:15):
How do you know how to go back to those?
They just there's there's so many I imagine, Well there's.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
Some though, if you if you think about it, it's
it's It wasn't me listening to a voice note. It
was like this thing that I had remembered. I was
like that thing. I think memory is a huge part
of songwriting and recall and like for me and I
just I had never been able to shake that.
Speaker 8 (48:42):
Eden.
Speaker 2 (48:43):
I got the money behind, but that wasn't even on
my radar. And I had gone in to write with
Jordan Minton and Jordan Reynolds, two country like and great
writers in general. Someone had set it up. I'd never
met them, and I think I I don't even know
if I had the title. I think I did the
title Headlights Home, and we wrote the lyric to it
(49:06):
totally different. I don't even have a demo of it.
It was a totally different tempo, totally different chords, totally
different metalody. And I spent probably a week in my
studio trying to get this thing, and I didn't like it,
but I loved the lyric of it. I was like,
this idea is cool, and it hadn't I hadn't, it
(49:28):
hadn't sunk in. Oftentimes there's a chorus. This is a
common experience. Is I have a chorus idea that feels big,
simple and to the point, and you can either double
down on the verses just rewrite that point. It's a
lot of pop music does. What makes what's more interesting
to me though, is like what's the weird or like
(49:50):
the story or what colors this verse, you know, or
what verse could I write that is a departure from
the chorus that keeps me interested in it. Brandon Flowers
is like the best at that killers Like he'll just
the verses like opiod addiction came to town and kids
were doing this and like are you know he's talking
(50:10):
about very specific town and the courses like eagles with
golden spotted wings and we were just trying to figure
out a way to get down the hills and you know,
and like something about those two things together is so
interesting to me, like these big That's a thing I
loved doing often is contrasting if you have a very
specific verse, like getting the chorus to be this like
(50:34):
Monet moment that's just expressionist. You don't even really know
what you're talking about, but you feel it. Those two
things are when you marry those, it's like my favorite
kind of song. And for I remembered this voice note
after a week of toiling with this, and I was
(50:55):
sitting on vacation and I was playing that old the
old chords, just two chords just for six five six
for six five teenage dream or there's a million songs
share those chords and uh, and I just started singing
that old melody man mean and and I was like, oh,
(51:18):
what if I put those lyrics in, be the light
on for me? I had to change melody. You know,
it came okay.
Speaker 1 (51:26):
So you have the lyrics before.
Speaker 2 (51:29):
Not normal, it's not a normal thing. Usually they come
at the same time.
Speaker 1 (51:33):
And let's unpack the lyrics a little bit. So it
sounds like these lyrics are about you being on tour.
Speaker 2 (51:41):
Yeah, it's a road song.
Speaker 1 (51:42):
It's a road song. Yeah, as simple as that.
Speaker 2 (51:47):
Crack a smile, but I'm bleeding inside, rack up the miles,
leaving you behind, chasing it down a dream while you're
standing by this time. Can't get it out of my mind. Yeah,
I think having kids. It's a weird position I'm in
this season. I have never loved touring more. I've never
(52:08):
been better at it. I've never been more free on stage.
I've never been more gratified by the process of playing
a live show, never appreciated it more. In my life,
I've never not cared as much what people think, which
has led to this freedom I've had. I've never practiced
more never taken it more seriously. Why, I don't know.
(52:29):
I think that's a great question. I think identity dying
to kind of the artist identity, like when nothing left
to lose hit. It was such a shock to me
to go from working at Starbucks to being popular and
on the charts. It made me very self conscious, self aware.
(52:53):
It changed, It warped my identity of myself in some
ways that took ten years to undo.
Speaker 1 (53:02):
You feel like you're faking it, No, I think you just.
Speaker 2 (53:07):
I think human nature wants to find their identity in
the things people celebrate about them. It's just so it's
like you're a good looking person, you're smart, you're you're
a good argumentative person, you're you serve people well, you're
a great chef, like all of those things. Then it's
(53:30):
easy to start moving more and more of your identity
into that. And that's this is who I am. I
am the successful, talented whatever, you know, insert whatever. And
I had that shaken a few times. You know, all
of a sudden, not as many people come to a
show you had. You had like twenty percent less in
(53:53):
the same city. You're like, wait, and it raw. I
remember I was going through this season maybe two or
three records ago, and my wife was like, Yo, this
doesn't feel like the way it would wreck me was
like not healthy. It was not it wasn't it was
like too much. And she pointed it out to me,
(54:13):
She's like, hey, this feels like something's out of whack.
And that began a process of just kind of dying
to this idea that I am an artist primarily, you know,
like or I am this musician, or I'm assigned to
a major label, or I'm on the radio, or I'm successful,
or i sell records or people like me all of whatever,
(54:35):
insert whatever you want. That kind of you think it's
supposed to be a good thing, because at the core,
you're not that. You're You're so much more than that
everyone is. You're You're You're a brother, a husband, a friend,
child of God. You're like you are. If all of
(54:56):
a sudden I couldn't sing, if I like rip the
tenons in my hand or my head vocal surgery and
I could no longer sing? What I still exist as
a person? Would I no longer be exist? Sure? And
if you put all your identity and things, then you
know you don't exist anymore. If you're an NFL player
and all of a sudden you retire, Like if your
identity is solely in that, who are you? And I
(55:19):
think you should get older? Everyone goes through this and
absolutely Yeah.
Speaker 1 (55:22):
Do you think the freedom that you feel now to
be on the road in regards to this song, do
you think it has to do with the fact.
Speaker 2 (55:29):
That I tangented hard? Didn't? I? Sorry?
Speaker 1 (55:32):
No, it's totally fine. Do you think that that has
to do with the fact that you do have a
family now and you need to make it worth it?
And so you're just like, whatever, I'm going to do
this because the question is is being away worth it?
Speaker 2 (55:49):
Yeah? I mean that's a huge factor, right, I think.
I don't think it's because of the family. I think
the family. My kids are a microscope into that in
a beautiful way. They shine a light onto who are you? Why?
What matters more than they fuel it?
Speaker 1 (56:07):
Would you rather be home? Like if you could just
be songwriter guy in town?
Speaker 6 (56:12):
No?
Speaker 2 (56:12):
I love it, I love you, I love what I do.
Speaker 1 (56:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (56:15):
So, to finish the point that I never finished a
long time ago, It's the most fun I've ever had,
but it is the hardest h it's ever been, So
it's the most I am. I am the most heartbroken
being gone. I feel like I ache for my girls.
And and yeah, I don't think it's wrong. I love.
(56:39):
I think looking at your kids and being like, hey,
there's something you love, like it's going to require sacrifice
by you and everyone around you. I don't think that's
a bad lesson for them. I don't.
Speaker 1 (56:48):
I'm I'm not saying at all that it's wrong. Yeah,
you're either away for work or you're away for work.
It just depends on you know, your work. I remember
the first I dropped my kids off at the airport
and their mom took them to Florida or something, and
the first time I ever felt like that, oh, this
is what this feels like. And I was not expecting this, Like,
(57:12):
well up, like they're just going on vacation and you're
staying back for a few days, not the big a deal.
So that's why I asked that. I think it's interesting.
Hopefully at this point you can bring them out more.
Speaker 2 (57:23):
Yeah, and I don't hit it as hard, And yeah,
we figured out a rhythm that works better. I never
leave for more than I don't. I don't. It's like
I don't have to toil as much. A big year,
you know, is I'm gone for a couple of weeks
and then I'm home for six. Yeah, that's pretty good.
Then I'm gone for two weeks and I'm home for six.
It's like I'm I'm definitely we found a pace that
(57:44):
works cool. But yeah, that song was driven by that feeling.
During that process of kind of identity, I mean and
my wife were talking through I was realizing I used
to go on the road and just be like if
it was just us, like I'm good, Like she could
(58:05):
come out and visit all you wanted, but I didn't
really need much. And weirdly I became more less secure
on the road in just my being by myself. And
it was like I need you guys, like I need
you to FaceTime me with our daughters, like I need
I don't know or just I just needed it. It
(58:27):
was like I can't live without you guys in my life,
even if I'm gone for like a weekend, I just
have a greater need less independent in a good way maybe,
And yeah, that song. I remember I was sitting at
a restaurant. You're always like trying to find food that's
healthy that doesn't give you heartburn show day, like finding
(58:49):
food is like part of the challenge, Like is a singer, yes,
And and I do a VIP thing now, So your
days like you go sound check, You've got maybe an hour.
Then you've got a VIP thing where I play this
acoustic I love it, but I play a couple acoustic
songs with like fifty people. It's really one of my
favorite parts of the night. But then I got another
(59:10):
hour two hours before showtime. You just day is packed,
and so you're like, but you maybe don't want to
get stopped. You're not like eating where the line is
lining up for the show, but you're looking for your
little spot you can grab, like whatever's gonna sit well
in your stomach. After show, you can have your pizza
(59:30):
if you want. Sure. But and I was sitting in
this booth and it's like you're looking at the marquee
with my name on it, in this line of people,
and I remember just feeling that day like you get
to see all these beautiful places, you're in these cool
but you're like, man, it's if there's still an ache
of like the people, the person I love the most
(59:54):
isn't with me doing this right now? And Yeah, what's
the second verse. It starts with like, it's one of
my favorite lyrics on the record, in.
Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
With you eating dinner at the window.
Speaker 2 (01:00:07):
Yeah, the hungry Lover's out, but I got no appetite.
It's like all these you know, people are getting ready,
they're going on a date to the show, and you're
just like sitting with your head down, trying to scarf
a rice bowl, you.
Speaker 1 (01:00:19):
Know, eating potato chips for the show. And it's such
a good song worth mentioning, brooking the bluff is on it. Yeah,
Mica Talks produced it.
Speaker 2 (01:00:31):
I really love it.
Speaker 1 (01:00:32):
It's it's a really great tune. Last question, just for timesake,
would you consider making a full hip hop album ever?
Speaker 2 (01:00:43):
I think you could do it.
Speaker 1 (01:00:44):
I was listening to some of the older stuff and
I was like purposely finding the ones with your more
wrap spoken word stuff. You've got the you've got the
cadence and the tambre to.
Speaker 2 (01:00:53):
Make it really cool.
Speaker 1 (01:00:54):
Yeah, like, okay, maybe like an EP.
Speaker 2 (01:00:58):
You know what's funny is I've been digging. It's always
like a I don't really set out like style of
a record, Like I definitely have a wide net of
influences at this point, there's like more folk landing stuff,
may even country rock, more way hip hop lanning super
(01:01:19):
pop stuff. You know, like that's kind of the bag
I've grabbed from. I'm definitely not as interested in, like
maybe I just it's where I'm at as like real
instrumentation or like interesting real instrumentation. You know, it's still
be samply, but it feels like you're not quite sure.
(01:01:41):
It's like a break pete or like.
Speaker 1 (01:01:42):
Yea, you know, heim or where you'd want to do
something like the roots like a band, like a band.
Speaker 2 (01:01:48):
Yeah, it doesn't have to be a band. It's like
I don't not explain it. It's like there's just like
real instruments. But then it's like it's not just here's
like an ETA eight and snap, So like that is
just not interesting me right now. But it's funny. I've
been picking that up a little bit, like I've been
playing all these acoustic shows and it's just like groove,
(01:02:12):
low end me with a guitar and words, that's all
you have. And I was kind of realizing like, oh,
this is like kind of me, Like this is the
Margherita Pizza of what I am. It's like the groove,
the melody and the lyric, and I've been writing a
little more rhythmic stuff like almost like g love and
(01:02:34):
like the early you know what I mean. Like that's
kind of like like even Jack Johnson's a big influence,
like with like a more tribe called Quest version. Yeah,
that's kind of what I've been messing with. It's been
really fun.
Speaker 1 (01:02:47):
Yeah, something like original Rude Boys, you know them?
Speaker 2 (01:02:52):
I don't, Oh, you should look them up.
Speaker 1 (01:02:55):
It's weird, but it's like this acoustic spoken word.
Speaker 2 (01:03:00):
Cool hip hop thing. The interesting part you're always trying
to marry with like more hip hop leaning stuff. Is
it a lot of what gives it power is it's
it's not trying to be timeless. It's not trying. It's
like it's happening and you're in the moment. Like why
you like Why I like hip hop music is it's
it's unfolding before your eyes. Like it feels like he
(01:03:23):
wrote this she or she wrote this like five minutes ago,
and like five minutes before I'm hearing it on coming
through my speakers. Not all the time, like you know,
I listen to trib call Quest stuff, but it still
feels like this isn't throwback or something. But I also
love kind of like timeless songs and feelings, so it's
(01:03:44):
always trying to like, how do you marry that? Like
a story is always a great like if you're going
to do like a hip hop versus a story kind
of can do both things and feel immediate and like
timeless at the same time. So that's all always the
challenge when I enter that world. It could be like
you can easily write like about now and sometimes that
(01:04:06):
sound interesting.
Speaker 1 (01:04:07):
Yeah, I love that. Yeah, Matt Carney, thanks for being here.
Speaker 2 (01:04:11):
Hey man, love talking about songs.
Speaker 1 (01:04:13):
My one request as we sign off is because you're
a happy guy, can we get an album cover where
you're smiling? I just won.
Speaker 2 (01:04:23):
I don't know how to smile. Who smiles?
Speaker 1 (01:04:25):
You know, nobody smiles on an album cover.
Speaker 2 (01:04:28):
Maybe that's the thing.
Speaker 1 (01:04:29):
You want to use your LinkedIn profile for your album cover.
Speaker 2 (01:04:32):
Like AFX twin was, there was a big smiley guy.
His just creepy, so like a creepy smile.
Speaker 1 (01:04:37):
You could do a creepy smile. That'd be good.
Speaker 2 (01:04:40):
Didn't Bob Dylan with the girl where he's holding dirt?
Is he smiling? He's got his arm around the girl?
It's kind of a it's like a smirk.
Speaker 1 (01:04:46):
I think you could change things now with the smile.
I think it. I think you would be a massive
influence on album art just cheesing. Everyone's like, oh, you
should start smiling.
Speaker 2 (01:04:56):
Cheesing it up.
Speaker 1 (01:04:57):
Yeah, that was so serious.
Speaker 2 (01:05:00):
I'll consider there.
Speaker 1 (01:05:01):
Thank you, appreciate it, Thanks for being hey, thanks griving.
Speaker 8 (01:05:04):
Thanks to.
Speaker 2 (01:05:06):
Use all.
Speaker 3 (01:05:10):
You know jas.
Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
Work Tapes is produced by me Brandon Carswell, filming and
editing by Sean Carswell, Special thanks to Matt Carney. You
can find more info about Matt at Mattcarney dot com.
Don't forget to like and subscribe to Work Tapes wherever
you're listening, please
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