If you don’t know Matt Hires by name, you’ve definitely heard his melodic, folk-tinged pop rock on various television shows, or on tour with some of your favorite artists like Dave Matthews Band and OAR. Matt hails from Florida and infuses a sunny sensitivity to each one of his light-hearted pop gems, setting him apart from his contemporaries.
The most refreshing thing about Matt’s music is it’s unrelenting sincerity, Matt doesn’t posteur or pose, you can hear and feel him pour out his heart with each lyric and uplifting melody. Take a look at the success of his debut album, 2009’s “Take Us To The Start,” Matt’s single “Honey, Let Me Sing You A Song” gained widespread airplay on shows like “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Life Unexpected,” earning him a touring spot with big names all over America.
Now, Matt is releasing his “Live Sessions” EP, available digitally today. The EP features new takes on previously released material as well as a new track and a cover of MGMT’s hit song “Kids.” Check out his Facebook page for more details. GlobalGrind had the opportunity to talk to Matt about writing music in a cabinet store, what it feels like the moment before the curtain opens, and his luck, or lack thereof, with gasoline tanks.
GG: How would you describe your sound and where does your musical inspiration come from?
MH: It’s always a hard thing for me to describe my music, but a lot of my sound comes from influences like Bob Dylan and Tom Petty and Ryan Adams and some of that kind of flavor. But also a little more pop than a lot of that, indie, folky pop.
GG: Is that what we can expect on this EP?
MH: Yeah, it was recorded a couple months ago after I did a headlining tour. The band and I just went into a studio and all sat around in a circle and played the songs and tried to approach them in little, different ways. Some of them are a little more stripped down than playing them live and some of them, there’s a little more instrumentation. There will be different sounds, even on the songs people have heard before.
[pagebreak]
GG: Is that something you do frequently, take different approaches to the same song?
MH: I do. It was especially fun since we had just been on the road for a month and a half, we were able to come back and think about the songs in a different way than we had been playing them every night and not do them the same way. Take a different approach. It made us think and it was fun to do.
GG: Growing up you were into punk and emo, what happened that made you switch over to folk/pop?
MH: I’m not really sure what it was. It was a friend who had given me some Bob Dylan and I started listening to that and soon after high school I started listening to a lot of Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Band and a lot of older stuff. Then for awhile I probably didn’t listen to anything recorded after 1975, but now I try to appreciate all different kinds of music. Lately I’ve been listening to everything from Kanye’s new record, which I like, to Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly and some older rock and roll like that.
GG: You were a cabinet store worker before you got into music, did you ever have the opportunity to make your own guitar?
MH: (Laughs) No, I never, I don’t know, it seems like it’s probably a little out of my skill level. Yeah, that was the only job I ever had, besides playing music full time now. I started working at the cabinet shop at like 15, that was right before I started writing songs, which was like 16, 17. Once I started writing songs, I brought a voice recorder into work with me and would be sanding doors and stuff, because I had a bunch of monotonous work to do. So I would write songs in my head and then sneak off after and record them into my little voice recorder so I wouldn’t forget them.
[pagebreak]
GG: Did you find the jump from working in a more solitary job to being an artist to be a big leap?
MH: It’s definitely a lot different, but it’s great. Cabinetry was fun at the time and I learned a lot, but it wasn’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my life and music was.
GG: Tell us a little bit about your writing process.
MH: It really all depends, usually when I’m at home, I typically write late at night and I don’t really have any certain way of doing it. Sometimes I’ll start with a melody, sometimes I’ll start with a chord progression or a line, or group of words. I wrote a song recently where I started off with the title and kind of built it off of that, which is the first time I’ve ever done that. It’s the only brand new song that’s going to be on the EP, it’s called “I Always Lose When I Gamble On You.”
When I was recording my last full length record, I did some co-writing for the first time which was interesting. It was a little hard at first because writing had always been more of a private thing that I always did by myself. But to open that up to write with someone else, was kind of hard at first, but it was good I was able to write with some cool people and it was good to be able to learn from other people’s writing styles.
GG: Would you consider doing collaborations?
MH: I definitely would, on my last record I wrote a song with Sara Bareilles, she sang the background vocals on it, which was great. As far as another collaboration, Jakob Dylan would be cool, the singer from Death Cab For Cutie, Ben Gibbard, that would be a cool collaboration.
[pagebreak]
GG: Did you catch Bob Dylan’s performance at the Grammy Awards?
MH: Oh yeah, that was one of the main reasons why I watched the Grammys because I heard that Mumford & Sons and The Avett Brothers and Dylan were all playing together. I loved it, it was great. Granted Dylan’s voice hasn’t aged all that well, but he’s Dylan.
GG: If you were stranded on a desert island what are some albums you’d have to have?
MH: I would need “Heartbreaker” by Ryan Adams, “Damn The Torpedos” by Tom Petty, “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” by Wilco, “Freewheelin'” Bob Dylan, and “Highway 61 Revisited” by Bob Dylan, and one of my recent favorites has been Brandon Flowers’ solo record.
GG: Where is the best place you’ve travelled?
MH: That’s a hard one. I’ve been doing a lot of touring over the past few years and I’ve found things to like about every part of the country that I’ve played in. Chicago, there’s just something about that city that I like a lot, except in the winter. I was there a few weeks ago and it was supposedly the coldest day of the year, like two degrees and that wasn’t quite as fun.
[pagebreak]
GG: You’ve been on tour with big names like Dave Matthews Band, any moments that stick out to you?
MH: One of my favorite moments from touring was on my very first real nation-wide tour that I went on, the first show of that was at the El Rey in Los Angeles. and I wasn’t with the band then, it was just me playing solo and the El Ray was sold out. There’s a curtain on the El Ray stage and I was standing behind the curtain and the curtain lifted and there was all these people standing in front of me and I think at that time that was the most people I’d ever played for and it was just a great moment. It was cool to be able to share my music for that many people and just to play in that setting was a really, really cool thing.
GG: Do you have any crazy stories that have happened during touring?
MH: There’s this funny thing that has actually happened twice to me on tour which, that it would even happen once is amazing, but twice is really amazing. The first time this happened I was driving through Mississippi, it was one of the tours I was on, I was just playing solo, so it was me and a tour manager in a rental car. We’re heading west on I-10 and the empty light came on in our car and I was driving. The tour manager was in the passenger seat, he was like ‘I’m going to take a nap, make sure we get some gas soon.’
He goes to sleep, I’m just sitting there listening to music, it’s a beautiful day, I’m having a good time, I completely forget about the gas. Probably, I’d say 50 or 60 miles later and he says ‘Oh man, I didn’t even wake up when you stopped for gas.’ Then I realize that I hadn’t gotten gas. (Laughs) So I’m cruising along, drafting behind a semi-truck, trying to make it to the next exit. We pull off the exit and right at the end, the car shuts off. We had just enough momentum to cruise up to the gas station. The second time it happened, it was me and my band and we were in Colorado, a couple miles north of Denver and that time we ran out of gas, at least a mile from the exit. But it was downhill the whole way, so the same thing happened, we just coasted along to the pump.
GG: So you’ve been lucky two times.
