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greensparty · 3 years

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Talking with Matthew Sweet

I’ve gotten to do many cool things with this blog, but I have to say covering one of my favorite musicians Matthew Sweet is among the highlights. I have been lucky enough to review his 2017 album Tomorrow Forever, the 2018 follow up Tomorrow’s Daughter, his 2018 Boston concert, and his new release Catspaw. Me at age 16 is high-fiving myself right now!

Matthew Sweet’s singer-songwriter musical career began with his power-pop sound in the 80s, but it really blew up with the alt-rock explosion in the 90s. I first got into him with this 1991 masterpiece Girlfriend. I’ve listened to that album and his catalog an insane amount of times. It’s accompanied me on many trips and I always discover something new upon each listen. Beyond his hits like “Girlfriend” and “Sick of Myself”, Sweet has carved out his own corner of the pop culture sandbox: scoring and appearing on countless movie and TV soundtracks, doing cover albums with Susanna Hoffs, and still performing for his massive cult following. Getting to chance to interview him via phone was truly an honor. Mr. Sweet was very nice, cool and I’m sure we could’ve chatted for several hours more.

Sweet in 2021

Me: You and I actually met once before. It was at the WBCN River Rave in 1997. After your set, you were doing a signing at a booth. So I met you there and I still have my autographed bumper sticker and copy of Blue Sky on Mars.

MS: That’s so great. I hope I was nice.

Me: You were. [laughter]

MS: That was a long time ago.

the recently-released Catspaw

Me: It was, I’ve seen you five times total, but that was my first time seeing you at that show at the River Rave! But I digress. Congratulations on the new album Catspaw. In my recent album review I named it “the first great album of 2021!”

MS: Oh that’s so cool, thank you! That is a super nice thing to say.

Me: It is a great album. And it was actually recorded at your home studio in 2019. Since the pandemic began, several musicians have been recording in their homes, but you were doing this already. Did this album feel more comfortable for you recording in your home studio versus recording in a big L.A. or New York studio?

MS: Well, I’ve really been recording at home for a long time. So in that way, it’s kinda normal for me. The biggest thing was not using outside people other than my dear friend Rick Menck, who plays drums on it. I played everything else. Its very simple, I played bass, guitar and drums. But just me playing lead guitar myself gave it more of an insular feeling, where it was a little more personal than usual. I do feel like it weirdly fits as my pandemic record, even though it wasn’t really made during it. I mastered it just before we were told that five people would die. I wasn’t ready to start on something new yet, so I spent the year of 2020 mostly consuming a whole lot of movies, shows and a whole lot of streaming. I consumed a lot, watched a lot. Also, the bright stop of hooking up with Omnivore Recordings who I really wanted to do something with for a long time. So I felt really happy that we were able to connect even though it was the pandemic. Then I got to work on the album art work with them, which is always a fun stage of making an album for me before I kinda move on from the experience. And that was around August, September, October and by then it was slated for release in January. So its really been something hopeful that I could kinda look forward to, even though it wasn’t something I did during the pandemic, other than get it ready to go out. Now that it’s out now, I feel like I’ll move on now, make a new album and get on with my life.

Me: In 2013, you moved from L.A. back to your native Omaha, Nebraska. I noted in my review of Tomorrow Forever that I thought that was your best album since the 90s (that is not to dismiss anything you did in-between by any means). And now this new album Catspaw is continuing that streak. Do you think being back in Nebraska has inspired you creatively?

MS: I think it has, in a way, brought me full circle to where I feel connected to my young self with my initial love of music in a way that all the years I was moving around and living in different cities on the coasts, maybe I had gotten away from a little bit. There’s just something comfortable about being here. My family is here, my brother lives in Des Moines. My sister lives in Lincoln, which is actually where I grew up, which is only about 50 miles away from Omaha. I’m really in Omaha because it has the Omaha Airport and its a better spot for me to start tours from. I think without the internet, I probably never would’ve come back. But its really allowed me to be anywhere and have it not matter where I am. I got to spend time with both my parents before they passed away. So there’s a lot of grounding experiences in being here. Because I’m such a homebody, it hasn’t changed much of my life in terms of how I go about things. I’m usually home and either working on music or something else. I’m not someone who goes out to parties and has tons of friends, although I do have some dear friends from L.A. that I miss. Even Rick Menck, who plays drums on Catspaw, he and his wife moved to Minneapolis not long after we moved to Omaha. So we’re still close to each other, the flight from Minneapolis to Omaha is only about 40 minutes or so. Its real easy for him to come down and play on things, not quite as easy as drive over the hill in L.A. at my house there. But again with the internet it makes me feel more connected anyway.

To answer your question, Yes - I do feel it feels more comfortable and it grounds my music somehow.

Sweet performing live @ Brighton Music Hall 6/17/2018

Me: I got to review your Boston concert in 2018 at Brighton Music Hall. You’re always a fantastic live performer. So do you have any plans for livestream events before live music comes back?

MS: I did an acoustic livestream on Facebook on New Year’s Day. So I’ve done one, and I do plan to do more of them. I think we’re going to find that that’s a way now that’s really cool to do. In my case, it’s more intimate because it’s just me playing acoustic guitar. I thought about doing a recording and then livestreaming it. Doing recordings of songs and maybe doing an overdub on it and maybe releasing that stuff live and then re-engaging on Facebook or wherever. I’ve been thinking of doing a question and answer one, where people just put in questions and just answer things and talk during it. That would make me the least nervous. [laughs]. I’ve also been thinking it could be a way to take requests from people to do songs I kinda never do that in my live shows. And then maybe take small groups of those at a time and learn them and then play them in livestream.

A lot of musicians I know jumped right on doing tons of stuff online. When the pandemic began I had this reticence that it just wasn’t quite appropriate yet. But with the new year, my management was like “you have to do this” and I thought Okay, I can do a New Year’s Day show and say I have this album coming out and play a little greatest hits set. It was really well attended. It was really a fun experience, people from all over the world tuning in and making comments. So, you know, it really was a positive feeling for me and I think the fans dug it.

Girlfriend album cover featuring a young Tuesday Weld

Me: This year marks the 30th anniversary of Girlfriend (read my piece I wrote on the 25th anniversary in 2016), one of my desert island top albums ever made. You did an anniversary tour in 2012. Will there be any celebrations or releases this year to celebrate that album this year?

MS: You know, the only reason I knew it was the 30th anniversary was when I started doing interviews last month, I saw on one of the lists “talk about Girlfriend 30th anniversary”. [laughs] I was like - oh my God, it’s the 30th anniversary. When it was the 20th anniversary, we started doing the Girlfriend-only shows. We did it for kind of a long time, I want to say four years or so, because there was a lot of demand for that show in particular.

You know it’s just crazy that it’s been that long. I feel really lucky that the album seemed to matter to people in a real emotional way. I’m happy to say, I’ve never gotten tired of it, or gotten disconnected to it. It has always felt really comfortable to play any of the songs from it when I play live. I’m still fond of it myself. People often ask “are you so sick of still playing “Girlfriend”? I’m just not. I still like it. I’ve always tried to cover that album really well in my live shows while still mixing it up with things from other albums. I don’t tend to play really long shows, it takes a lot out of me just to do an hour and a half or whatever. But that’ll always be an important one for me. It’s been really gratifying for me as I’ve gotten older, looking at the crowd and experiencing what they’re feeling and vibing off that, more than maybe I was in my early years when I maybe had my head down and was so nervous and had a harder time coming out of my shell. I suffer from bipolar disorder and I wasn’t diagnosed or treated until about 2002. So I spent a lot of my heyday kinda challenged in the amount of work I had to do, and the amount of me that I had to fake. Now that’s kinda melted away and I feel just positive vibes. It’s fun to see fans and I just feel really lucky that I have them. I feel lucky that that album was as successful as it was, cause it made it so I could do the thing I love my whole life. And then also 100% Fun too, because “Sick of Myself” was a commercial success that solidified what had happened with Girlfriend. Between those two albums, they’ve kinda kept me going even past my time.

Me: On that note, do you have a favorite album of yours?

MS: I really don’t. I leave that to fans or critics to kinda decide. People always ask “what’s your favorite song on the album?” and I always kinda hem and haw because I don’t want to pick one and then I’m not giving credence to the others. [laughs] They’re all kinda like my little babies, even when they didn’t come out quite right. I still feel protective of them. And albums are kinda the same way.

I think if I was going through all of my albums with someone and looking at all the tracks and we talked about them, there would be things that I remembered fondly on pretty much anything that I did. But I leave that to other people. I don’t really have a favorite per se.

Me: I wanted to ask this, because I’m a huge Beatle fanatic myself. On your Under the Covers series, you and Susanna Hoffs did a cover of George Harrison’s “Beware of Darkness” that actually featured his son Dhani Harrison on guitar. What was that like for you? It’s very rare that someone covers a song by a Beatle and their offspring joins for the cover.

MS: It was a very rare event. He came over to my house and we were all kind of in awe. Susanna had met him before at parties. So she kinda had the connection. I did see him again a couple other times, he was at one of Sue’s birthday parties at her house. It was after the fact.

I love The Beatles so much. I love George. He’s got some of my favorite Beatle songs. And Dhani was very sweet. He was just very easy going. We recorded quickly and without any frustration. It was just kinda magical to have him around. Somehow there was a few extra people around that day. I don’t know if they were Sue’s friends, or my friends or may have been Dhani’s friends. But there was slightly more people around than usual and everyone was sort of gathering around his aura. He is George’s son and you can feel a lot of George’s Georeness in him, you know.

Austin Powers’ band Ming Tea, featuring Mike Myers (orange), Susanna Hoffs (pink) and Sweet (second to the right)

Me: You have popped up a ton in pop culture over the years: countless movie and TV soundtracks, you were a member of Austin Powers’ band Ming Tea, an episode of The Simpsons and a number of other cameos I’m probably leaving out. Do you, yourself, have a favorite film or TV show you’ve been a part of ?

MS: Well you know, I’m really fond of Ming Tea. It was a special time, it was also when I got to know Susanna and we later became such close friends. And at that time, Mike [Myers] was just starting to work out the character of Austin Powers and writing the script. So we really got to watch him, like the first time he came over with the teeth, he slowly kinda became Austin. I had been a fan of Mike’s from SNL, so I was kinda in awe of him. I’d always been a big fan of movies as well. So to get to be around that world a little bit was kind of exciting for me. So for me, the Austin Powers movies, the first one and the third one were the ones that I worked on the most. The second one might have some of the scene breaks where I’m playing sitar.

But I mean, oh my God - getting to do The Simpsons? And I’m originally a bass player. Getting to do bass that was going to be Homer playing bass. It was so funny. It was such an honor to be a part of that. I was friends in L.A. with various past and present writers and producers of The Simpsons, so I’ve always been kinda around people who had been involved with it. But I hadn’t been asked to be a part of it until I moved back to Nebraska already when I did that episode. So that’s fantastic!

I worked on a version of Scooby Doo, not to be confused with the cover I did for Saturday Morning: Cartoon’s Greatest Hits, which was a Gold album in the 90s. It’s just amazing to think things sold that much back then. But anyways, they asked me to do a theme song for Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated. It was really cool to see the animation and hear some music in that.

I’m sure there’s other ones I’m not thinking of. But there’s been a lot of things. I was always a big fan of pop culture, even as a kid. I was born out of an era when it was really starting to happen as TV grew, then came cable and there was so much stuff. We could watch so many things that came from, what seemed like ancient history to me then, but a lot of what I loved came from the 60s and 70s. I was born in 1964 and I was just becoming aware of that stuff when I was 10 or 12, maybe as early as 8. It was a way for me to get away from myself a little bit. The thing I always dreaded was being a boring singer-songwriter, and so, I always tried to get things that I kinda liked into my art work and into my videos and things. Like I was a big fan of the first Mars Rover that landed in the 70s. And I called Jet Propulsion Laboratory from my house in Lincoln, Nebraska, I guess I was about 10. I asked them if they could give me a panoramic photo that the Rovers had taken on Mars. They actually sent me this thing, I still have, this photo printed on nice cardboard of the surface of Mars. Where I’m going with that, is when I made my album Blue Sky on Mars, I was able to go and get a tour of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. I got to go through their photo archive looking for photos to use in that artwork. I went back over the years to see various Rover missions. I was there when they found water-ice under one of the Rovers and hadn’t been announced to the public yet. Those kind of things are real highpoints and I feel real lucky I got to experience them in that kind of way.

Me: Especially with all the movies that have taken on a cult status that generates interest in the soundtracks, like for kids who were not teens in, say, 1997, they dig into those movies and then the music that you’re a part of with it.

MS: Yeah, I had a great time working on a movie Can’t Hardly Wait, which had a lot of young teen stars in it at the time, who went on to be in a lot of movies. I remember once I had a party at my house, which is so unusual - I’m sure I can count on one hand the amount of times I ever did that in my life. I remember all of them came over and they were playing my drums and jamming. It was a lot of fun. I knew the people who wrote and directed it [Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont]. I realized kinda quickly that being around movies, it’s not the same as music and making records, because it wasn’t a solitary thing in that way. Movies are made sort of by committee. There’s essential committee and then a huge amount of people who make it happen. So I realized I would have to completely change my life and have a whole different career if I wanted to make movies myself. So it was the next best thing to be around that kind of stuff and do music for cartoons that I loved watching as a kid. I used to love watching Warner Brothers cartoons. I remember working with John Kricfalusi on Ren & Stimpy. I was a big fan of it when it came out in the early 90s. They would send me scripts of episodes they hadn’t made yet. I found the show really funny. It had a real edge to it, which appealed to me. I would go over to their offices and Bob Camp and John would act out scripts for me. I would just sit on the floor of their office, smoke pot and just feel like I was really special because I got be around Ren & Stimpy. One day, Billy West who was the voice of Stimpy, was there and I had him do an answering machine message for my wife and I. And we still have this Stimpy answering machine message. People call and leave a message and they have no idea what it is. But I’m very fond of Ren & Stimpy and the role it played in those years of Girlfriend / Altered Beast / 100% Fun.

For info on Matthew Sweet: https://www.matthewsweet.com/

#Matthew Sweet #interview #music nerd #susanna hoffs #dhani harrison #ming tea #austin powers #the simpsons #scooby doo #can't hardly wait #ren and stimpy #film geek

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berlinner · 4 years

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the switch

romantic love, is it for-real possible without devolving into George and Martha, into the black rain of the operatic? each of us has our own Blue Valentine to lament or extoll. our thumbs are up for the heart-wide-open, plug-into-socket split-second when ego takes a back seat and the heart is the driver. it’s thumbs down when Mr. thrill-is-gone sticks his tongue out and the ego re-takes the tiller. in my case the twist in the wind begins as soon as i microscope the cold distance infecting myself and the one i wake up thinking about. when we start not saying the unsaid. when we resist the homework required to love the one you’re with. romance is a snap when the connection can’t wear thin from overuse. when a one- night-only-pair of eyes peers over a pint in me-too commiseration. or when a boy on a bus is a winner for the short ride. i sat next to a kid on the way to New York City. i hung back in the boarding line to snag someone who wouldn’t stink me out. my not-so-innocent ‘would it be ok, ya know, if i sat here with you?’ worked. he was cool with it. a Brit, a musician, handsome and a talker. the time flew. we were castaways for the afternoon. we never saw each other again, although he looked me up on line and we write. on the sad side lurks the decaying relationship. the lying, the cover-up, the flayed flounder that rots in the gut entombing intimacy, spoiling the spark that jump-started two lovers when both felt ‘new’. a friend suggested that in those first minutes we define the scope and rules of the ‘contract’ to follow. for good or ill. eyes wander over a hugged shoulder and lust for another. our ears pretend to listen as we rehearse our next monlogue. judgement looks over a book at a phony laugh. these are the petty annoyances that sprout like scabies after a one night stand. i’m guilty on all counts. i’ve cheated in one way or another with just about every person i’ve spent a decent number of days with. i’ve pretended my beloved was a fascinating conversationalist when all i was thinking about was what i wasn’t getting done while i was stuck there listening to him. i’ve choked back comments about a body part that weirded me out. (all are petty crimes on the emotional docket.) there are exceptions. there always are. the primary love in my life grew like a pot plant in the manure of my longest term relationship. he was young, 20 years less than i, who magically, immediately, knew my heart, my brain, my paranoid imaginings like a gypsy reading a palm. he knew when i was falling backwards into doubt. he would catch and pull me back with a single look. he knew who i was in all those places i feared uncovering after our best-foot-forward honeymoon. the ones i’d eek out like mustard gas to warn him off, to prove my unworthiness, to be forgiven. you like me this much? ok, see if you can cope with these worms in this head. it was a psycho test i could not help running. we both did it, daring the other to challenge the truth about how we were, of who we became and how we created each other, wanting to earn our romantic diploma. we wanted to be ever safe on the high bed of the heart, to rock the universe, to carry the gleaming sword-in-stone’ (the show-off vanity of having scored a 10 in loveland.) i quit my job as a cabbie and worked where he worked, where i’d met him and where we happened, evolving a language of you-had-to-be-there rituals that turned up the heat on a daily basis. he’d climb up to my third-floor porch when my boyfriend was out, heart like a cap-in-hand. we’d buy 40’s and walk the Arboretum, laughing, lost in the autumn light. we’d lie under trees on damp leaves and do things he’d never thought of doing but did for the love of me, urgently, awkwardly. the pop song wonders, we did not. we had it all. and he was beautiful to look at. all of him. i could watch his face for hours, the shades of feeling as they moved over him like a dervish spinning across a still pond. it was the luckiest time in my life. i wrote a song about us, Over the Hill. WBCN played it for weeks in summer drive time. he’d listen incognito, in a car with friends who hadn’t a clue. no one did. we were cloaked, safe, in Neverland and now, because of him i no longer binocular the horizon for The One. i have no need, no desire to find someone like him again even though all interactions vary and who knows what lies ahead in our memory of the future. still, after all this, we ended badly. he was leaving for college. long distance would make it difficult. we got stinking drunk on what would be his last night home. we wept the hard, ugly sobbing that accompanies loss. we walked around the block and stopped, facing each other, wet with slobber and tears and that’s when it happened. that’s when the switch moved from on to off, the switch in my heart. i can’t give a reason. i still don’t understand it. i’m not proud of it. a vortex of light, of energy shot up, out of the top of my being into the starry night. i became in that instant, neutral, emotionally flat-lined. i didn’t love him anymore. not in that way. not in the way we’d been. it was so sad. i didn’t say a word to him about it. i couldn’t. in the next several years he sacrificed a lot to re-connect with me, a selfless boy, a generous man. but i was not there for him in my heart and i hurt him i’m sure, because he knew, of course he knew and forgave me as he always did, silently, spiritually. he’s married now. he has two beautiful kids. he lives far from here. but i’d say, after all this time, that i can, in a blink, re-enter that Eden of the heart and see his eyes upon me, filled to the brim.

This is an excerpt from my book, The Paragraphs — Cutlass Press

About The Paragraphs and how to order

Link to buy

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#love #romance #loss

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