Matthew Sweet (photo: rolling stone)
I’m still a big kid when it comes to interviewing people.
Sometimes it’s just their status. I can’t say I’ve ever had front row seats for a Robbie Williams show, but interviewing him impressed me (though it turned out he was actually very cool, funny, thankful, and adept at Scrabble). Sometimes it’s a combination of status and something intangible, such as childhood idolization. I still have a cassette that features the dryly laconic voice of Harrison Ford, and every time I listen to it - maybe once every couple of years – the nerd in me starts to giggle. I mean, come on. It’s Han Solo.
Other times, though, my excitement is really unwarranted. It wouldn’t be shared by most other people. That’s when the interview is personal – because it’s a friend of mine, or, even better, when it’s an artist that I truly dig and we just happen to get along.
Long story short, one such artist is Matthew Sweet. The first time I talked to the Nebraska-born songwriter, it was on the wave of his first (and, unfortunately, last) enormous hit, “Sick of Myself” (though Guitar Hero II brought the classic “Girlfriend” back a little). As much as interviewer/interviewee can hit it off – especially during a phone interview - we hit it off. We had some strange coincidental connections and shared a level of music geekery that allowed us to chat for far longer than our allotted time.
Even ten years later, with the release of his latest album Sunshine Lies, I was super exited to talk to him. Here’s a little bit of that conversation.
JT: You recorded Sunshine Lies at home. Does a home studio give you the freedom to pop in and out as you’re feeling inspired?
MS: It does. It’s sort of at my leisure. If anything that’s kind of a danger. I was supposed to make a “home-made” record a couple of times, before I had the technology to really do it right. That was in the ‘90s, around the time I did “100% Fun.” In retrospect, I’m so lucky I did that record the way I did, because it worked out well for me and helped solidify my career. Still, at the time I was supposed to get together a record at home, and I just felt to weird and pressured about it. I made demos and wasn’t willing to say any of it was “my record.” Now I’ve got so much experience in hearing other things. I produced a group called The Bridges, and recorded a lot. I don’t feel as much like I’ll fail at it, you know? It’s a great thing for an artist like me who’s more of an introvert and did my early music hiding out making multri-tracks, a Todd Rundgren kind of guy.
JT: They way you release music is different today, too. You’re on a small label called Shout! Factory, and it’s a more manageable system and everyone’s excited.
MS: They feel that, too. When they’re only spending a small amount of money they can get excited and we can all be in it together and try to make something happen. We knew it would work with Under the Covers [Sweet’s covers-collaboration with Susanna Hoffs] as there was a real novelty factor but it’s worked really well setting up my own record too. It makes me think if we can find a niche and an amount of records that makes it work, and somehow keep an audience by not never making records in between every deal… I’m hoping I make my next record for Shout and there’s actually two efforts at one label.
Chart: What about touring? Are they big tours?
MS: They are for me. We played a few shows in southern California for the release last week and we’re going to go and play from Boulder, back east, and down the east coast in October. Part of what we’re trying to do is keep them compact and sort of safe - in hopes that we’ll do well and then be able to go back and book more shows. We don’t want to book some huge tour right now, at a really difficult time, and then have it not do well. That just makes it harder for me to tour later. We’re trying to tailor it to low expectations and then if it does well we can keep promoting. Shout was adamant that I tour, and that’s for everybody’s benefit I think.
JT: It’s probably more pleasant to do what the label wants when you really like that label.
MS: It kind of is. You know it’s easy when you’re the artist and you have a label to just have this snotty attitude like they want to reuin everything. I had that plenty in my life, though I never was forced to really change or do anything like that. It was just like to get your way you had to be the bigger bitch or whatever. At Shout! I’m happy to respect that when people have an opinion, they’re trying to help me be an artist. I just think at this level there’s a lot of commercial concerns that sort of go away. It’s more about in my case connecting with people we know are out there. We all meet fans everywhere all tlhe time. If we could just figure out how they could know I had a record and that they would like it, you know? That’s the effort.
JT: You’ve said that one of your new hobbies has had a huge influence on your music.
MS: I learned how to make pottery. I make pottery on the wheel and I glaze and fire it and all kinds of different things. A guy who is sort of my idol is a guy form the 1890s named Goerge Ohr, and his whole thing was “no two alike.” He was really one of the first abstract artists from this country who cared more about being an artist than the utility of things. He’s become a star 100 years after his death – which he predicted by the way. He’s super huge in the Smithsonian and everything, he’s gotten his due. But in doing pottery it’s very interesting for me because it’s really so much like music. It helped me better understand that place in music where creation takes place. At that moment when I’m throwing something, it’s down to how mellow and smooth I can be, not overthinking - that’s when al the great stuff happens in pottery. Then I get it off the wheel and within a few hours, before it dries too much, I’m looking at these thrings I threw and I don’t even know how it happened. How did I do that? The more time that passes, the more it feels like it wasn’t me who did it. The difference is music is like in the ether, it never felt solid, I always felt in a way like I do nothing. But with pottery there’s a thing that’s left. There is with music, but it’s just in the air.
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