A Conversation with Matt Hires – HuffPost 8.23.13

 

Mike Ragogna: Matt, how’ve you been?

Matt Hires: I’m doing good Mike, how are you?

MR: I’m doing okay. What part of the world are you in right now?

MH: Right now, I’m at home in Tampa.

MR: Ah, relaxing before the world tour?

MH: Exactly, yeah.

MR: Okay, let’s talk about This World Won’t Last Forever, But Tonight We Can Pretend. Were you paid by the word for that title?

MH: [laughs] Usually, I feel like I’m not necessarily bad at naming things, but it takes me a while. I’ve had so many different titles that I was trying to choose from and this was the one that I landed on from that original list. I was just listening to the song that’s on the record called “Wishing On Dead Stars” one day, and that line is in the song and it stuck out to me. I knew it was long but it kind of felt right.

MR: Right, “Wishing On Dead Stars,” a really clever song. What got you to that topic?

MH: That song is kind of about growing up in the nineties. The story that it follows is like there’s all this stuff going on in the world, but it’s really just about growing up and falling love and the things you do when you’re young.

MR: If I were to over-interpret this, I would say by the time the light reaches us from other stars, a lot of them have already burnt out. It’s almost like the events that hit us have already burnt out and we have to take care of ourselves because we have to take care of ourselves in the end.

MH: Exactly.

MR: I knew it, I was totally wrong…wait, what?

MH: [laughs] You’re not wrong. That’s very close to the mark.

MR: I have to say your sound is a little bit similar to Mumford & Sons when they take a more pop approach. Have they influenced you? And who were your influences?

MH: Well, I don’t know, I think that’s interesting. I like Mumford & Sons, I like their first record a lot. I haven’t really listened to their second one very much, but I wouldn’t necessarily consider them an influence in a big way at least. I think my main influences are Tom Petty and Wilco and more recently, I’m more into The National and some artists like that. A lot of people mention my voice sounding like Marcus Mumford. I don’t really hear it. I listen to his songs and I think I sound nothing like that, but I take it as a compliment. I like the way his voice sounds. I think a lot of the sound similarities come from him having similar influences in older folk stuff and making it more relevant to pop audiences today.

MR: So “Restless Heart” is the lead-off single. Can you give us a little birds’-eye view of what was going on and how do you feel about the response it’s been getting?

MH: Any time a lot of people dig any of my stuff, I’m into that. I wrote it with a guy named Alex Dezen who’s a singer and songwriter for a band called the The Damnwells. This was the first song we had written together. We ended up writing a few more that made it onto the record. “Restless Heart” was kind of a combining of different stories and experiences that we’d had. The story of “Restless Heart” is about a girl who’s kind of a heartbreaker and moves from one guy to the next and standing up against that in a way. The last line in the chorus is, “You say love is all that you need, but you’re not going to go get it from me.”

MR: Has that happened to you one or two times?

MH: It has, yeah. The whole thing isn’t necessarily one experience that one of us had, it’s more of a combining of experiences and adding in a little extra distance to the big story.

MR: There’s also “The Sound Of Falling In Love.” Can you go a little more into that particular sound?

MH: That song was about how when you first fall in love, it’s kind of an indescribable thing and we’re talking about all these things going on around you and how you perceive them differently–the things you’re seeing, the things you’re hearing. You experience life a little differently when you fall in love.

MR: What about “Miles Past Midnight?” I’ll stop with the titles drill, but can you go into the story of this one?

MH: That one I wrote with a guy called Jamie Kenney in Nashville. We actually wrote “The Sound Of Falling In Love” and “Miles Past Midnight” together. He produced “Miles Past Midnight” as well. But that one is a story about trying to overcome adversity in a relationship and get through it past the darkness. That’s what the phrase “Miles Past Midnight” is talking about. Getting through the darkness.

MR: So. This is, as they call it, “The Sophomore Album,” and you’re going to have avoid the so-called “Sophomore Jinx.” A lot of people will be looking at the album for growth from the last album to this album. What would you say is some of the biggest growth or personal and musical changes between the last one and this one?

MH: Well, as you know, my first record came out in 2009 and here we are in 2013 with my sophomore record, so there’s been a good chunk of time between them, so I like to think I’ve grown as a songwriter in that time. In my opinion, I feel like I’m a little better at crafting songs. The way I’m writing it, doing what to the song, where does it feel like it wants to go and stuff like that, crafting it in that way. But I also feel like I’ve become more of an honest songwriter. There’s more of myself in these songs than in any collection of songs that I’ve released before.

MR: Do you think maybe some of your new approach is from your Nashville collaborations?

MH: It did. I did a lot of songwriting with a lot of different people in the two years leading up to the recording of the album. In that time, I’ve written with a lot of people that I love, and some people just didn’t quite click. But I feel like I’ve found those people that I really enjoy writing with and who I enjoy working with and kind of stuck with it. With Alex Dezen, we ended up writing four songs on the record together and I wrote again with Eric Rosse, the producer, who I had written with the first time I made co-writes for some of the songs on the first record. I just feel like I’ve found the people I really click with and have just stuck with that and I feel like it turned out well.

MR: What was your first impression after listening to whole finished, mastered album?

MH: I don’t know, it’s kind of a hard thing to put into words. I actually just recently re-listened to everything again closely because you get so deep into the songs when you’re recording them that you can lose sight of a lot of those things when you’re recording them. You just see them in a different way because they’re right in front of your face. It’s good to step back for a couple of months, not to listen to them, and then come back to it and listen to the record again. I’m really happy with how it turned out. Like I said, I think I’ve matured as a songwriter and we treated each of the songs exactly how they should have been treated and we did it in a pretty short amount of time. We did the record in a month as opposed to my first record, which was like three months plus. I attribute a lot of that to working with the same producer, Eric Rosse. At this point, Eric and I have known each other for five years and have gotten to be good friends, so it made the whole studio experience easier and we were just more on the same page. We had a clearer vision of what we wanted on this record.

MR: If there was one song on this record that you feel like exposes you the most, what do you think that would be?

MH: I definitely think it’s “When I Was Young,” the last song on the record.

MR: I’m so glad you said that.

MH: Yeah, I’d gone through a period of writers’ block and that song was basically to get myself out of that. I sat down with the guitar and I got into why I’d started to write songs in the first place. It got kind of personal, but I think that’s a good thing. It’s kind of a scary song to play live in front of a ton of people because I do get more personal than I have in any song. It’s very autobiographical, but at the same time, it makes it kind of exciting. I really like that one. That one is very special to me and probably is my favorite on the record.

MR: What advice do you have for new artists?

MH: Whenever anybody asks me that, I say try to be as good as you can at what you do and never stop trying for that. Never get comfortable, always be trying to hone your craft. Be as good as you can and hope somebody notices.

MR: And what advice would you have given Matt Hires “When You Were Young?”

MH: [laughs] Oh man, probably a little bit of the same thing and don’t be too hard on yourself.

MR: Very nice. I’ll let you go. It’s always a joy and I’m always rooting for you. This one is growing on me, and that first album means a lot to me. I wish you all the best, you’re amazing.

MH: Thanks a lot, Mike, I appreciate it. I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me.

Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne