7: You just got off the outdoor theater?

Matt: Yea, I was at the outdoor, not the main stage but the one stage left of it.

7:  How’d that go?

Matt: It was rad.  There was a couple thousand people out there and the response was good.  We all got sunburned.

7:  Ha, that’s cool.  We’re you lookin forward to coming out this year?  Was there a big buildup to coming out to the festival?

Matt:  Yea yea yea….  I found out about it a couple of months ago and I was just really pumped up about it.  I hadn’t played a local show… you know I’m from Huntington Beach so I hadn’t played a show around here in a while, so I was psyched to get to be a part of something like this.  It’s was really cool

7: Who else around here are you wanting to see perform?

Matt: I want to see My Morning Jacket and Sigur Ros.  Those are the main two I wanted to see.

7:  I was reading up a little on your background and I saw that you were a pro skateboarder?

Matt: I wasn’t professional but I had sponsers and things.  I did it a lot till I broke my leg.

7: So, how was it making that transition from going down the pro skater route to musician?

Matt: Well, all the pro skateboarders I know, they all want to be musicians now.  So it’s kinda cool we live vicariously through each other.

7: So before you broke your leg did you always want to be a musician?

Matt: Yea, I actually started.. .I had always been involved in music ever since I was young.  I got my first guitar the first year I got my skate board.  And I kinda did both things… and I never really just started writing songs, until I … fine tuning techinique and the craft of things till I was 19.  That’s when I had my broken leg.  I had two years pretty much just to dedicate to it. So I did just to kill time.

7:  Where do you get your inspiration for some of your song writing?

Matt: You know…everywhere pretty much… books and things I read.. and whatever.

7: Does it come back to you… do you write about your own life and things and events that you see?

Matt:  Yea… I write about my personal life and I dress it up and make it sound fancier than it is.. ya know?

7:  You’ve got an album coming out May?

Matt:  Yea…

7: What’s in that one?  What’s new?

Matt:  I dunno… The Songs We Sing is the one I’ve been working and it’s basically like a bunch of stuff that I’ve been working on over the past two years?

7: And you worked with Tom Dumont?

Matt: Yea, yea…

7: How was that working with him?

Matt: Rad.  I mean it kinda like didn’t really start off as like… oh… we’re going to make a record.   It was just, we started recording songs together.  And one song… like, when I was finished with one I did another one and then it just kinda snowballed until we had more than enough material than we knew what to do with.  We put out and EP first.. we ended up putting out 2 EP’s then a record on our own.  Which was the same record that we compiled some of the newer material and then now it’s going to be released through Universal and Brushfire records.

7: How’d you get in touch with him in the first place?

Matt:  With Tom?

7: Yea

Matt:  There a clothing company called RVCA and they just kinda support artists like painters and different artists…

7: Yea, I’ve got some of their shirts actually..

Matt: Yea cool… yea, they have a thing called the Artist Network Program, which they, you know... certain artists do specific designs on t-shirts.  But they just have a real community of artists around there.  And so, Tom would hang around there, and I was around there.  And when Pat introduced us to each other... he was like, you know, you guys should do something together… you guys both make music.  And so, then I just started recording music with Tom.

7:  Very cool… so have you been pretty involved in RVCA?

Matt: Yea, yea…

7:  How’s that going?

Matt: Great!  I mean, you know... it’s cool. I’ve known them for a long time, ever since they had a really small warehouse and now they’ve built it up.  You know, we’ve kinda all grown together.  So they help me… when we did all our stuff on our own, like independently, they threw the record release party and I’d do shows there.

7:  That’s cool.. that’s really nice…  So Phil Ek also helped out on that album right?

Matt: Yea

7:  Those two guys have pretty strong musical backgrounds with their own styles.  What did that bring to the table for you?

Matt: Well for me... working with Tom was a… the thing that he stressed to me was that he let me discover things and do things on my own.  He didn’t want to move me in any direction too much with the songs.  He wanted to let my personality and my songwriting develop on its own.  He just helped me out with recording the songs and he just basically liked the songs that I’d bring to him.  And I’d have ideas like with tones and things.  Cause I’m more of like a melody and I have the idea for the emotion of the song.  But when it comes to tones and things like that… like an organ tone or an electric guitar tones and things like that, that’s not really my specialty.  So he kinda helped, you know, he’d say I think this tone is really good.  And I hear our record and I’m like how do you… what’s this sound.  And he’s like… oh, that’s a certain type of organ or something you know.  That’s kinda how Tom helped out.  He’s just a good producer.  And then, Phil Ek is a producer as well, but he mixed the record.  I liked the other bands that he had worked with and I thought that he had a really good ear.  So we just kinda contacted him and showed him all of our recordings, the rough mixes, and we’re like what do you think about mixing this.  And then he was like yea… He was into it.  I liked having his fresh ear to hear it all and bring everything up to where it should be because I liked everything that he had worked on.

7:  You toured with Jack Johnson… how was that?

Matt:  Uh, crazy.  It was like doing this every night pretty much.  You know what I mean?  Every night there’d be like anywhere from 5,000 to 20,000 people in the crowd.  It was quite an experience.  We traveled all around the world from Japan to Europe, all around the States.  We got along really well.  He’s the kind of guy that anyone could get along with.  He’s super nice.

7:  How long were you guys on tour for?

Matt: We were on tour last summer for two months and then we went to Europe for a month.  And done shows between here and there so all in all we’ve been doing shows together for about nine months together or so.. you know at different times.  Maybe all together like all together like 3 or 4 months together.

7:  Do you like touring?

Matt: Yea, I love it.  It’s kinda what my life is now.  After doing all those.  I had toured a little bit, but really, going with Jack introduced me to a much larger amount of people.  So now I am able to go out on my own to small towns around the country that I never even thought I’d be able to go play in.  People come out and I’m just amazed.

7:  That’s awesome…   You were saying you go to all these different places, which types of venues do you prefer… the more intimate ones?

Matt:  Yea, yea, yea… You know.. it’s kinda cool to be playing in huge venues where there are speaker that are like frickin sky high and to play for a mile, two mile radius around you your sound is being projected.  There’s kinda something rad about the hugeness of if.  There’s something to be said about just the personal close setting.   I’m mean half the time… I just played out there and I got off, and some people were like “play this song, play this song”.  And I was like fuck, I should played this song.  So I jumped off and just started playing right there in the pit to all the people that were there after the show.  You know… I can’t help but do that stuff just because once I get going I can’t stop.  You know, I just want to keep playing.  In the smaller venues it’s easier to interact with people on that level.  When someone says a song and I’m just like, ok, we’ll switch it up and play that one instead.

7:  There are a lot of people that won’t do that anymore.  They are so set in what they are performing and they loose that response with the crowd.

Matt:  Yea, my guitar player gets kinda bummed out.  He’s like I’m not in tune for that one.. and I’m like well, we’re gonna do it!  I think its just in the spirit of it to just go for it.

7:  So for other people just starting out in the industry what would you say to them?

Matt:  You better have a strong liver.

7:  What would you say to others just starting out in the industry?

Matt:  In regards to what?

7:  Did you have any particular struggles or have you been fighting anything to keep the music your own?

Matt:  You know… for me there really hasn’t been anything like that.  I’ve been lucky to be around people that are the same like mindedness as me.  I know Tom, Jack, and everyone... they’re like… we have our own little bubble that we stay away from all that stuff.  If you’re around genuine people you’ll be fine.  It’s easy when you do what you love.  You can’t complain and you don’t got anything to worry about.