Mat Kearney Touches All With Latest Release

Mat, a self taught musician with a background in Art is genuinely talented and has an ability to write lyrics that touch the hearts of all music lovers from young girls to forty-something’s alike. I was amazed to see how many fans in the audience at The House of Blues knew all the words to his complicated songs and sang along...

Mat Kearney is a talented new artist and is featured this month’s VH1 You Ought To Know. I had the pleasure of meeting him at The House of Blues in Chicago, watching him perform live and then talking with him for this interview on his life and work to date. At first glance his life seems like an overnight success, with a short preamble to being signed and getting his songs playing on the radio nationwide as well as on the soundtracks of popular TV shows, until he tells about his cross country travel, dropping out of college, living in a grubby apartment, and betting all he had on a demo to try and get signed.

Mat, a self taught musician with a background in Art is genuinely talented and has an ability to write lyrics that touch the hearts of all music lovers from young girls to forty-something’s alike. I was amazed to see how many fans in the audience at The House of Blues knew all the words to his complicated songs and sang along like they had known him forever, even though he's only been on the scene a comparatively short while.

I'll let his words speak for themselves in our interesting interview. Mat is on tour now and will be back in Chicago on December 8th at The Chicago Theatre with the Goo Goo Dolls, so don't miss your chance to see him!

Buzz – How did you enjoy playing in front of a Chicago crowd at The House of Blues?

Mat Kearney – Oh, it was so much fun. It was the highlight of the tour so far.

Buzz – Are the audiences in Chicago different from the ones you’ve seen?

Mat – The audiences in Chicago are not easy to win over all the time. I remember playing earlier shows in my career where they had sort of a standoffish towards you kind of view. But it’s fun to come around full circle and have a bunch of people come out and be touched by your music. It seems like people flip just as hard and can be passionate about something they weren’t passionate about, if that makes sense. It seems like a very loyal town like people will be coming to shows for a while.

Buzz – If they don’t know you they can be a bit distant but if they love you, they’ll be so devoted.

Mat – Seems like some of the people I’ve met in Chicago, too (laughs).

Buzz – If they get your vibe they are very faithful, steadfast people.

Mat – Yeah, I love it. It was a moment for me because I’ve played in that room – I’ve opened – then just being on stage now and everyone coming to the show – it was just very humbling and very exciting in a very cool way.

Buzz – It was fun watching the crowd sing along with you word for word on many of the songs.

Mat – Yeah, it was great. It was really more about a moment than being a rock star.

Buzz – In reading about you it looks like you just sort of fell into music. You sing, play guitar and piano. How did you originally start playing or learn to play?

Mat – I’m still learning. My first time playing guitar was with my roommate’s guitar in college. He had a guitar and I would pick it up and mess around with it, and that’s when I really started playing guitar. I couldn’t really play anyone else’s music so I just started writing music. Everyone else was covering Dave Matthew’s or something and I was no good at it so I just starting writing my own songs.

Buzz – So you had no childhood training whatsoever?

Mat – My family was totally supportive of anything creative – like I had painting lessons…My uncle was a painter, my grandma was a painter…So we were always doing creative things, but the one thing my family was not at all, was musical. We loved music – I mean, I have very fond memories of my dad blasting Paul Simon or Michael Jackson and dancing around on a Sunday morning. But no, no music. One time my mom got my dad a piano – this is when I was in high school – it was for his birthday, she rented one – kind of like a lease perhaps. So I came home and there was this mini piano and I played it for like two hours straight – just banging on it. But then I came home the next day and the piano was gone (laughs).

Buzz – Oh my God! Here today, gone tomorrow.

Mat – I guess she didn’t really like my playing.

Buzz – But art was definitely a factor in your make up and influence.

Mat – Yeah, my uncles were really talented painters, and my aunt and my grandma. Actually, visual art was something I really wanted to go into before I became an English major. I wanted to go into photography. I had a real interest in photography.

Buzz – Who’s to say you can’t do that as well?

Mat – There’s still time.

Buzz – So you started playing guitar in college, but besides your brief encounter with the piano in high school, how did you start playing the keyboard?

Mat – Well, in college as well, I learned how to break into this big auditorium at our school in Chico, California. I would go late at night sometimes – I would just ride my bike – get there and figure out where the light switches were and there were these big – nine-foot concert pianos. I really didn’t know what I was doing – I kind of understood octaves. So I would just mess around and I didn’t really know how to play anything so I would just end up writing stuff.

Buzz – How did you record music or remember stuff since you didn’t know how to read music?

Mat – I still don’t know how to write music. But I’m pretty visual. The piano was really interesting because I’m so visual that everything was mapped out. If I wanted to write down chords I would actually draw the keyboard and mark the keys I was pushing. But I’m kind of a freak about remembering things, like I’ll write down lyrics but I’ll never really have to write down chords or anything. I kind of just remember it.

Buzz – Now when did you really decide to get into music full-steam ahead?

Mat –I had a buddy who asked if I would help him move to Nashville so we hopped into his truck and left from Oregon – we packed up the back of his truck and slept in the back of his truck and drove across the country. It was really the story in “Nothing Left To Lose”. But I met this guy Robert, who had a studio, and we started recording some demos with him and some buddies in Nashville that summer. And by the end of the summer I was supposed to go back to school but by then all I wanted to do was music. So I dropped out of school and never went back and basically lived in this dirty, grimy apartment chasing after my dream.

Buzz – And how long after that was it before you recorded your first record?

Mat – I didn’t record my first record until about three years after that. In the meantime I was just working odd jobs. But that’s when I really started practicing guitar and work on my craft – work on songwriting. And by the time we went on to record our own independent product, we had friends and musicians, and we called in every favor we could and we made our first record.

Buzz – Interesting. So there was a three-year period where you were honing your skills before making that first album.

Mat – Yeah. I mean, I still had never taken a lesson and I still never owned a piano. The funny thing was is that I would still continue the tradition. Since I didn’t have a piano and we lived next to Belmont University I would just kind of waltz in there and practice and play the piano a couple times a week. All of my piano songs on my first album were written in practice sessions at Belmont University.

Buzz – That’s a very creative way to rehearse for an album.

Mat – I know (laughs).

Buzz – Were you surprised when you first started getting offers? Were you like, “Thank God?” What was that like?

Mat – Well, you know the funny thing was, is we created my first recording – we recorded this independent release on a shoestring budget and I worked on it with the guy I traveled across the country with. When I first made the record I was pretty confident that it was going to land somewhere and during that process I was turning down little independent record deals.

Buzz – Why were you turning them down? Were they kind of rip off deals?

Mat – They weren’t the best deals and I didn’t feel that I was ready either. I mean, I wanted to either do it on my own or get with someone that was really talented and knew the business. I really didn’t want to partner with someone who couldn’t do much more than I could do myself. So I thought it was going to land somewhere and I played this little show in Chicago, and this guy named Greg Latterman, who’s from Chicago, walked into my show - and he signed and worked with all these really talented artists – but he just walked into my show and said, “Hey, I really love your record – I want to sign you.” So we had a deal done almost within that week.

Buzz – Did you invite him to the show or did he track you down on his own?

Mat – Well, I made my little demo on my own and I met with this guy, a booking agent in Nashville named Scott Clayton, and he asked, “Can I send this to my friend?” And I said, “I don’t know.” I was funny; I was skeptical of really anything. I was just super defensive. So I told him not to send it to anybody. But he said, “C’mon man, he’s just my buddy – He owns this label in Chicago.” So I gave him the go ahead. It just so happens that he got the record on a Friday, listened to it on the way home, and I was playing the next day – Saturday. He called me Saturday and told me he was coming to my show that night, saw me and offered me a deal.

Buzz – That happened so fast.

Mat – I think we all knew it was right because of what they’ve done and the way they do graph research marketing, which is really something that I was doing – playing on college campuses and playing for younger people. He really understood that.

Buzz – So what’s it’s like touring for you?

Mat – This is like my second ever headlining tour.

Buzz – Has it been exciting, fun, tiring?

Mat – It’s been all of the above. It’s amazing playing music, getting up and playing your songs to people in sold out rooms. It’s completely amazing but it’s also very tiring because you live in a hotel – and a different each night, mind you.

Buzz – Here in Chicago, you had a lot of teenage girls in the front of the stage, but the crowd was very diverse – a little bit of everyone.

Mat – Yeah, it’s probably the teenagers that push their way to the front of the stage. It’s definitely fun. But my music is kind of getting heard all across the board. It tends to be a different representation with younger people, and even adults. My single really reacted on a forMat called Triple A, which is a really hip, older crowd – music lovers – and a lot of them come to my shows. I’m still figuring out what the people who are coming to my shows are like and they’re still figuring out what I’m like. It’s been a fun journey this year to meet the people that my music connects with.

Buzz – Was it a real thrill for you when you started getting your music on TV shows? Was it a real boost for you?

Mat – It’s fun on the level of people finding out about your music. It was new to me. I never really thought of my music being played on a television show.

Buzz – So what are some of your hopes and fears about the future in the business you chose to be in?

Mat – I’m just looking forward to doing what we’ve been doing. It’s just been so much fun. I pinch myself because on the back end of this tour almost every show has been sold out – people are truly responding. VH1 has this thing called You Ought To Know, where they have artists that they help promote, so we’re trying to work with them on a tour. The future looks real exciting. There are other creative things coming down the pipe, like film, which I’m just starting to try my hand at.

Buzz – Like composing for film?

Mat – Well, I’m probably speaking ahead of myself a little bit, but like some screenplays are starting to come in for me, like even as an actor. I love that music is so open to the media these days, it’s part television, it’s part video – visual images, movies…like never before. It’s just really exciting. I’m starting to work with some people outside of the music industry and we try to figure out how music can be involved in what they do.

Buzz – Is there anything that you’d like to say to your Chicago fans before we go?

Mat – Chicago is truly one of my favorite places to play – the people are great. They’ve definitely got some love and they also have a chip on their shoulder and I love both of those (laughs).

• < Prev
• Next >