A Conversation with Matt Hires – HuffPost 4.5.10

Mike Ragogna: We have quite a few questions to get through, but let’s get the most important one out of the way first. What’s up with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers?

Matt Hires: Oh man, I don’t know. I just know that they haven’t been doing so hot, that’s about as much as I can tell you.

MR: When I was young, you know, before you were born, I lived in Tampa Bay for a while when they were a great team.

MH: Tampa’s very much a football city, like everybody here is all about the Buccaneers. But, yeah, the last couple of years, they haven’t been doing so hot.

MR: Since this interview already is Tampa-centric, what was it like growing up there?

MH: I feel like I had a fairly normal childhood. I spent a lot of time at the beach and stuff, being so close to the Gulf, and I was home-schooled. There are different kinds of folks here, and it was a cool place to grow up in. Not the best music scene though, like when I first started right after high school with my band trying to play out. It’s kind of hard out here, kind of hard to get folks to shows. Still, it’s a cool city.

MR: Years ago, a great place to play was The Peanut Gallery, a bar that stayed literally ankle-high in peanut shells every night. It was practically the University of South Florida’s community center, and artists like James Lee Stanley, Mac McAnally, The Swimming Pool Q’s, and Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee played there often, with almost anyone who was a singer-songwriter or a blues-focused artist stopping by or sitting-in. If I ask you if it still exists, you’re going to break my heart and say it doesn’t, aren’t you.

MH: I’ve never heard of it.

MR: Thanks. So, who are some of your non-Peanut Gallery influences?

MH: When I first started playing guitar when I was sixteen or seventeen, I listened to a lot of Dashboard Confessional, Save The Day, Taking Back Sunday. I was into a lot of those bands, especially Dashboard Confessional, it was Chris Carrabba’s acoustic songwriting that got me into wanting to learn how to play the guitar and start writing songs. Then right after high school, I started getting into a lot of older artists like Bob Dylan and The Beatles, and I actually went through a couple of months of my life where I listened to nothing but Dylan, The Band and The Byrds. Then I kind of grew into discovering newer songwriters like Ryan Adams and Jeff Tweedy from Wilco. I really got into those guys.

MR: What are you listening to lately?

MH: Lately, I’ve been on a big Tom Petty kick.

MR: But he’s from Gainesville.

MH: (laughs)

MR: Do you have any hobbies other than music and living for the Bucs?

MH: Actually, every once in a while, I’ll go to a Bucs game because my aunt and uncle have season tickets. Sometimes I’ll go, but I’m not really in town all that much, so I haven’t been to one in a while. I like to ride my bike. Music consumes most of my life.

MR: Into Batman?

MH: I actually admit to a little bit of nerdery that I’m into, I like to read graphic novels sometimes. And speaking of Batman, my favorite would be Batman: The Long Halloween…have you ever read that?

MR: Yes, it’s awesome.

MH: I don’t really follow the newer comics so much, I don’t really know what they’re doing. Besides that, I basically waste too much time when I’m home playing Wii.

MR: Speaking of home, I was told by your drummer that your dad’s a minister?

MH: He is, yeah. He’s a minister at a church here in Tampa.

MR: Is there a particular denomination, or…

MH: No, it’s a non-denominational church. He was a minister since I was four years old, so a lot of our lives were around stuff in the church. I love my dad, and talking about musical influences, my first musical influence would have been my dad.

MR: What instrument does he play?

MH: He’s a drummer, and he did a lot of touring when he was my age, so he introduced me to a lot of music when I was growing. My parents always encouraged my brother and I to play instruments and to learn to play music.

MR: Which instrument did you choose?

MH: Actually, my first instrument was the bass guitar because, when I was twelve and my brother was thirteen, my parents wanted us to start learning an instrument. My brother picked the guitar, and I wanted to do something different, so I chose the bass.

MR: Other than your group of friends, you acknowledge your brother in your album’s credits. What’s your relationship like?

MH: We have a good relationship, we didn’t always growing up. But pretty much, once he graduated high school and moved out of the house, once we weren’t living in the same place, we started to become friends.

MR: That’s pretty normal, that describes how it works with about eighty percent of siblings on the planet. Why did your parents home-school you and your brother?

MH: There were different reasons that my parents chose to do that, and I’m glad they did. You know, there were a couple of times I wished I was going to public school like my friends. But in the end, I was able to learn better in that setting. My parents always shaped our schooling around things that we were interested in. So, when I started playing music, part of my schooling was practicing an hour a day or whatever. It was a cool thing, and I think it was good for us.

MR: Do you consider yourself still in the honeymoon phase of your marriage?

MH: In a way. My wife and I are apart so much because I tour, so it’s like an extended honeymoon phase of the marriage. We’ve almost been married for two years now.

MR: Speaking of distance, let’s look at “Turn The Page.” In your lyrics, “My heart has flown to fields of flowers and open roads while I’m left lyin’ in my bed. The darkness holds little rest for weary bones, now turn the page, the chapter’s ending.” It seems that you’re missing your partner, maybe something a bit bigger by the time you get to your “The Earth is on its knees” section. What’s behind that song?

MH: That’s the oldest song on the record. I wrote it probably four-and-a-half or five years ago, and it was right after a break-up, right when it kind of sank in for me. I remember sitting in my bedroom at my house, and I picked up my guitar and just kind of wrote whatever came out. You know, some songs, they kind of take a while. You have to work at them to try to get ’em right, and it can take up to a month or more. But this is one of those ones that just came, and I wrote it in probably about half-an-hour to an hour. I tried to not really think about the words I was saying as much as the feeling I was trying to get across.

MR: The haunting production also unwrapped some of the lyrics. What was its recording process like?

MH: For pretty much all the songs for the record, when we were recording, would start with an acoustic demo where we would just play the song, and we would build on that and change stuff around. We would use that as the skeleton of the song. But with “Turn The Page,” it was pretty much the same as the demo with the pedal steel overdubbed. It’s pretty raw.

MR: On the first track “Honey, Let Me Sing You A Song,” you’re in a new relationship, you trying to help both of you get past the awkwardness with lines like, “listen to my words as they come out wrong,” and “open your mind…you know you don’t have to hide.” Is this about you and the Mrs.?

MH: It was, yeah. It was actually the first song that I wrote for her. We’d been friends for a while, and that’s what the song’s about. I never really saw the things that I started to see in her until I started becoming attracted to her.

MR: I think “You In The End” might be the best track on the album and a potential single as well as a country hit, although your label isn’t really marketing you that way. Lyrics such as “All I am is just a traveler with dirt on my hands, all I have is dust in my pockets and you in the end” and “Summer to Fall, we’re wrapped up in blankets, we’re wrapped up in everything we fear, it’s all what we make it” are simple yet really strong.

MH: I can’t take all the credit for that one. I wrote it with Sara Bareilles, she has that hit “I’m Not Gonna Write You A Love Song.” My producer also produced her album, so he had her come into the studio one day for us to play together and see what would happen. We ended up writing “You In The End,” and she’s a really cool songwriter, I just love the way she writes. Things flow from her in a cool way, very naturally.

MR: The point of the song seems to be it doesn’t matter what comes down the pike, we’ve got each other in the end.

MH: Yeah, yeah.

MR: Speaking of going down the pike, you’ve got “State Lines” which, to me, was about self-discovery. I love the line “…it’s feelin’ like a free-fall now, nobody’s gonna slow us down.” Is that an “it’s time to start our lives” song?

MH: In a way, yeah. You know, I always have a hard time describing songs and saying what they’re about because a lot of them are about a lot of different things at the same time. I wrote that song right after the first nationwide tour I went on. I just recorded the album, we were getting ready to release it, and so it’s kind of about getting my career going. It’s about being on tour and being away from home at the same time, and about starting this new thing.

MR: In “A Perfect Day,” you say, “I was ready for a change, I wasn’t ready for a revolution.” What are you referring to?

MH: That was about an older relationship, another song that’s about a lot of different things at the same time. Most of that song is about an older relationship, my first one actually.

MR: In the line “life can trip you up on a perfect day,” I believe what you’re saying is one thinks he or she sees things perfectly in some kind of negative light, but they could be wrong, just give it time and let it work out.

MH: Yeah.

MR: Now, “O Sunrise” might be the only pub chant waltz to the morning sun ever written. Especially emphasized with your group chant and that bridge, it seems that more than separating night from day, you’re really talking about light and dark.

MH: Yeah, that’s what we were trying to go for there, and then with the bridge, bring it up, like the sun is rising, like we’re coming out of the dark, that was what we were going for when recording that. That’s a song that I like a lot.

MR: And with the right crowd, it probably can be your big audience participation song.

MH: On the tour that I just did that you saw me in the middle of at the Hotel Café was the first one that I did with the full band. It was fun and awesome to play with those guys. But the year I’d been touring before, I’d just been playing solo acoustic, and I always felt weird playing it like that because I felt like I could never really capture that feeling, you know, to separate the verse and the chorus in the right way.

MR: It came off great even though the Hotel Café can sometimes be a little too respectful when what’s needed is more of a party atmosphere. Who were the ranters on the background of “O Sunrise”?

MH: It’s me, my producer, and some friends. We all kind of crowded into the little vocal booth and just yelled out “Lift up your head!”

MR: Who was the obligato vocalist during the verse who, by the way, came up with an annoyingly beautiful part that you expect to resolve on a note on which it never does?

MH: That’s Sara Bareilles singing the background vocals.

MR: Who plays in your touring band?

MH: They’re guys that I met along the way. My drummer, Bob Matthews, plays with Kate Voegele who I had opened up for in April and May of last year. We became friends on the road. He wasn’t doing anything for the last few months, so he said he’d come out with me. And the other two guys–Aaron Bishop who plays bass and Mike Coppola who plays guitar–play with an artist named Tyrone Wells who I toured with three months last year. They came out with me, they were really great guys and musicians, and I’m sure they’ll be back out on the road with me before too long.

MR: On “Out Of The Dark,” you say, “I’m burned out and wasted, I’m tired of pacing, I’m busy erasing the voices of the dead.” Is that a reference to older relationships or something larger?

MH: It’s kind of about older relationships, yeah. Before I did the solo thing, I was in a band here in Tampa and we played here for a couple of years. And then I decided to go solo and got signed to the label. There’s a certain amount of drama that goes along with that, you know. Being in a band is hard, and breaking up a band is hard because it’s like breaking up a relationship. So some of “Out Of The Dark” is about what I was going through in relation to that.

MR: To me, the mournful group whistle motif that keeps returning is like a musical element representing the dissolution of the tribe. Is your line “Everyone’s faceless, I want to replace this darkness in my head” a reference to wanting to find relationships but couldn’t because of what was going down at the time?

MH: Yeah, it’s a little bit about that. It’s kind of one of those lines…I don’t know. Certain lines come out because it feels like it’s the right thing that the song wants, and then you figure out what they’re about later on.

MR: In “Tangled Web,” you set up the visual “Every silhouetted skyline and constellations in these city lights.” You can picture the little lights of a city in clusters, like constellations, and you can see the buildings casting ominous shadows as you head towards this bigger statement that becomes clear about three lines later. What are you working out in that song?

MH: That song is kind of my wrestling with life and the world, the way the world is, the way we are. Our systems are doing things, and I’m just trying to make sense of it all, that’s the gist of it.

MR: That song’s purely emotional “blow” group vocal in the bridge section is bigger than life. How do you accomplish that live?

MH: We kind of changed it around a little bit on the last tour. I almost wished we’d recorded it that way because it brings a lot more power to that bridge once it hits.

MR: Well, it hit me pretty hard on your record as it is now, but I get it. How did you get “discovered”?

MH: Well, I was in that band in Tampa for a while, and we got some songs up on MySpace as most bands do. Our band was breaking up, we lost our bass player, so I thought it would be a good time to do the solo thing. Around that time, an A&R guy at Atlantic Records sent me a message on MySpace saying that he loved the songs and to call him up. I really didn’t think about it at first because there are so many people trying to scam you on MySpace, so I didn’t really believe it. But I called up the number, it was Atlantic, and I was pretty stoked about that, and things just happened from there. He was starting up an imprint label with Atlantic called F-Stop Music which is the label that I’m on. They’re all about focusing on artist development, developing new artists. It was a good fit for me, and stuff happened from there. It’s a good thing.

MR: It’s like Sony’s Aware label, right?

MH: Yeah, something like that.

MR: So, what’s up for the next couple of years?

MH: I don’t know, I just want to keep making music, and for more and more people to listen to it and be able to hear something with meaning in it. Hopefully, have a couple of hits along the way, that wouldn’t be too bad.

MR: You’ve already had your songs on popular TV shows. Which songs were on what shows?

MH: Yeah, I’ve had a couple of different songs on episodes of Grey’s Anatomy–“Turn The Page” early last year and “Out Of The Dark” this year. “Honey, Let Me Sing You A Song” was in an episode of Cougar Town this year, and it was also used in Life Unexpected, plus they used “O Sunrise.” And “A Perfect Day” was in Private Practice, and a movie trailer for When In Rome. So, the songs have had a lot of TV placements, I’m really into that. It seems that since less and less people are listening to radio, that’s kind of a good outlet for people to hear new songs.

MR: How did you feel when you heard your song on a show for the first time?

MH: I was at my parent’s house. The first song on a TV show was “A Perfect Day” onPrivate Practice. I was at my parent’s house and we were watching, we didn’t know when it was going to be in the episode. It wasn’t until the very end so we were waiting on it the whole time, and then the song came on. It was very surreal to hear the song on there and know that so many people are watching.

MR: And now that you’re an old pro at this, when they use your songs, you probably think, “Why the heck didn’t they use such-and-such!”

MH: (laughs)

MR: Did you over-record for this album, where some of the songs will make a rarities package or an expanded reissue of Take Us To The Start?

MH: Yeah, yeah. We have about five songs that we recorded demos of that didn’t make it on to the album. One of these songs that we released on iTunes a month or so ago is called “Hurricane” and it’s on that. It’s a really cool song, I love it a lot. It may make its way onto an album with a full band version of it somewhere along the way.

MR: Are you already thinking about the new album?

MH: I am, yeah, I’m thinking bout it a lot recently. Half the time I’m at home and trying to into the mind set of working on it. I’m trying to think about what I want this album to feel and sound like. My favorite artists are those who have a unique song with each album while there’s a thread of familiarity running through all of them.

MR: That’s the case with John Mayer. None of his records sound exactly like the other, but his style continues through his four studio albums. Are either your brother or dad going to make an appearance on the new album?

MH: I don’t know, my dad may make his way onto a record somewhere along the way. My brother is into a lot of filming right now, and we’re actually talking about doing some kind of film together.

MR: What’s the rest of your tour going to be like?

MH: I’m going out in April with Needtobreathe, they’re really cool. It’s swampy rock ‘n’ roll. And I’m opening up for Wilco in April, then Green River Ordinance for about a week-and-a-half at the end of April, beginning of May.

MR: All the best with your album and tour, Matt. Take Us To The Start is a very special record, one that a lot of your contemporaries and even mine could study-up on.

MH: Thank you. The thing that I hope for most with this record is that it speaks to people and that they feel things from it.