Mat Kearney
All of my acoustic playing came from my songwriting. All of the chords I've learned and all of the voicings I play them in are a direct result of composing.
More than any other instrument, the relationship between an acoustic guitar and a microphone is super-important. The kind of mics that you use and your placement of the mics to the guitar can radically alter your sound.
Choosing an acoustic guitar for a live setting can be different from picking out one for recording. One doesn't always work for the other. The sonic properties can be vastly different.
I've never been one to learn scales and do exercises. Maybe I'm lazy, but I just don't take to that kind of thing. Learning other people's songs is enjoyable, and my fingers tend to go to new places because I'm not playing my music, the stuff that comes naturally to me.
I'm actually named Matthew William Kearney: my middle name is named after my grandfather.
I think the way I love talking about my faith is through my story because I think that's all we have to work with sometimes. I think it's the most moving way to share your story, too - is what you know, what you've seen and heard and tasted and felt.
When I barely got into college, the one thing I could do was write, so I became an English major.
I didn't start writing music until I was a sophomore in college. I would steal my roommate's guitar and sit on the front porch and kind of blend this weird spoken word and these little melodies over simple chords; that really started my whole journey as a musician.
Golf was big in my family.
My dad was a scratch golfer growing up. When I'm on the road, I always bring my clubs with me.
I think I have always made really beat-driven pop-rock records.
I enjoy changing; I think it's more fun to try something different than to just do what you did last time. As an artist, you just want to keep creating, keep finding a place that really inspires you that feels fresh and new, and keep it exciting.
I am a micromanager, and I love being involved in every detail of my life, but in the big picture, you realize how little control you have. 'Air I Breathe' is about those moments of surrender where you get to something that is bigger than you, and you don't have answers for it.
I started writing music in a season of my life where people were telling me I wasn't defined by mistakes, and God really loved me and was fighting for me, and there was a journey to be had with that. And I don't know of a more important message.
Money definitely does not equal success in recording.
The first year I moved to Nashville, I started playing these songwriter nights with people like Nickel Creek, Duncan Sheik, and even Ryan Adams... That was the first place I really started playing music, and I had to really step up my game. Really quick. Or get kicked off the stage.
I don't think, to be a traveler, you have to reject setting roots up.
There are people I love in Nashville and would not want to go a day without talking to, but I want to see the world.
Songs like 'Learn To Love Again' and 'Rochester' and some of the more gut-wrenching ones deal with the pain of the younger times of your life... trying to make sense of some the stuff we probably all went through.
Even on tour, where I perform songs from 'City Of Black And White,' I still do songs from 'Nothing Left To Lose.' I never turned my back on that material. On some albums, you change - that's all. The trick is to follow your heart and do what feels right.
As an artist, you tend to gravitate to the opposite. I know, when I finish a song or an album, I'm interested in doing something completely new. It doesn't always happen, but that's the idea. My poor fans - I don't know if they love that or hate that.
'City Of Black And White' was me trying to do something more mature, more adult contemporary.
Somehow, my music really suits doctors making out in the syringe room.
You write these songs which are really dear to you about your family or friends, loved ones, and then you get this call, and they say, 'It's perfect for two vampires making out in the back of a car.' It's some random TV show, and so I say, 'Oh, yeah, perfect - that's what I meant it for.'
Owl City is exactly as you'd imagine him. It's hard to have much on him. He's like a frightened bunny. I feel like if you yelled at him, he'd just dart to a corner of the room.
I'm painfully a realist but ruthlessly an optimist. I think maybe it's because of my faith - I've always got the hope that there is something out there to make it all worthwhile.
With 'City of Black & White,' I wanted a record that would make you feel good, that would sort of take you up in its hand and sweep you along.
The first record blew up and sold really well. 'City of Black & White' didn't sell as well, and that's when you wonder, 'Did I peak already?'
When 'Young Love' came out, I was really excited, and it has been really special.
I love to play the songs that got me to where I am. I like to take a little bit from all of my records and mix it up.
I played soccer. I was really known as an athlete. It was a shock to people that I was doing music. They thought it was really odd.
My first album was hip-hop influenced, and my second was more of a singer-songwriter album.
I was an English major, and I always wrote poems.
My songs have a layer of melancholy.
I started as a writer. I didn't play music until late in life.
I think you can hear all my hip hop influences in 'Just Kids.'
Paul Simon is the king!
I love Bruce Springsteen's writing, but I grew up on '90s hip hop, like Tribe Called Quest.
When I set out to write, I want to write something that will rip your heart out and connect with you. Great songs connect beyond genre and style.
Ultimately, when you write from a vantage point of faith, humility, and openness to the world around you, people have to respond because those same truths are instilled in them.
'Nothing Left to Lose' was an album that I wrote in my bedroom, and you don't know who is listening or who cares.
I've always sought to get after something that's foundational in people. That comes through my faith, through my belief in life, through trying to hit something that's true every time. I think that's really where you move people, when you touch on something that's true, that's not based on fluff or based on a moment or a movement.
The stories that are too personally vulnerable to write are the ones that must be told.Collection: Healing
There's a truth to the fact that it's hard to be real. It's easy to be indulgent. It's easy to be bubble gum, but it's hard to find a real thing that really makes your soul tick. It's painful and honest. It can be more challenging than just a sad song.Collection: Song
Trying to find a heart that's not walking away.Collection: Heart
I am not an evangelist. I am not a preacher. I am a musician. That is what I know how to do. I know how to write songs. I know how to write things that relate to my heart. I feel that I talk about God in every song, in everything I do - all of it! I really do not know how to respond. I do not relate to that.Collection: Song
It's not the circumstances that determine who you're gonna be but how you deal with these problems and pains that come your way.Collection: Pain
As my uncle always says, 'If your vibe outweighs your substance, you're destined to be a novelty.' I think that is true in all art.Collection: Art
Life's too short to stay where we are.Collection: Too Short