Matt Bauer

Thrasher Magazine, April, 2008 by Ryan Henry

I MET Matt in 2004 at San Francisco's Makeout Room. With a name like Makeout, you'd expect dark, low, and often angled--but said room is more big glittery cube, with a ceiling as high as the floor is long. I'm sure it gets plenty black in there on Fab Friday or whatever. But in mid-week September, Matt was up first and the sunlight was still on and shining sideways through the front door, 'luminating the staff of social clubbers before hitting the mirror behind the bar, where it then bounced back and forth from lough-brau art to bearskin wall and finally to Matt's teeth, frets, and inlays. The notes coming down his banjo were thickening the holler, and for all the shit rock endured there, I was finally hearing purpose in that cube. He was picking upon that instrument as if he'd been for 100 years, his voice equally timeless. It's not likely you'd want to see through Matt's eyes. He's channeling something heavy, preparing the rest of us for a darkness or beauty that we aren't yet ready to receive. We believe Matt Bauer is a prophet.

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Matt! It's early Monday morning out here in California. What's on your East Coast agenda for today?

Listen back to mixes for the new record, feed the stray cats in the lot around the corner, do a bunch of errands and make some phone calls. How's Brooklyn, NY receiving the roots music of a boy from Kentucky?

Really well. At first I wondered whether something kind of quiet and with a little bit of, if not twang, Southern regional feel, would go over in a big noisy city. But it's been good. A lot of people specifically move to a city like New York or San Francisco or Chicago or wherever because they want to see and hear and taste a variety of things. So many people are from somewhere else. A lot of the people I hang out and play music with are from California, Oregon, Texas, Iowa, West Virginia, and Florida. People have come here because they're open to whatever.

How do you reconcile having Gillian Welch and Fugazi next to each other on a list of influences?

Both have great lyrics, economical arrangements, and a weird combination of discipline and freedom, structure and craziness--Dave Rawlings embarking on a totally out-there solo not knowing where the heck he'll land, or Guy Picciotto convulsing on his back in a river of sweat. Plus I think they both do things completely on their own terms and just wouldn't do it any other way.

Although you've been described as looking like a lost, menacing member of Neurosis, in reality you're the most good-natured dude ever. When's the last time you blackened someone's eye?

You know, I once got in a fight in like third grade. It was more other kids goading me and another guy to wrestle to see who was stronger. Not an angry fight. At some point I pushed the guy and he fell and his head hit a rock. He ended up being OK, but we were all pretty freaked out because it could have been really bad. That pretty much put me off fighting. Although I gotta say, I saw Moby walking across Houston street and I had to stifle an urge to kick him in the nuts.

Ever swear?

Oh, fuck no.

Explain what it means to be a "no-reverb type of guy."

It's kind of like tennis shoes. I think I look stupid in them, but I think other people look great in them. It's a completely subjective just gut sort of feeling. Reverb on my voice sounds fake to me. But if I imagine a Mazzy Star album without any reverb, it would be all wrong. If I want something like reverb on electric guitar or maybe some bells, I'll mic it from way down a hallway to get some real room sound bouncing off the hardwood.

The Daniel Boone National Forest: Where and why?

It's in the foothills of Appalachia in Eastern Kentucky, where I grew up. Near Morehead. The closest little tiny towns were Cranston and Triplett. Kentucky is just ridiculously beautiful. It's my original impression of what the world is supposed to look and feel like. Plus we're always giving the world great stuff like Muhammed Ali and bourbon and George Clooney. The new record, The Island Moved in the Storm, takes its title from a bend in Triplett Creek where I'd play and fish. There was an island made mostly of shale and gravel that would move and change shape after a hard rain or flood. The songs all center around the story of a young woman who was found dead near a creek bed outside Georgetown, KY in the late '60s. She wasn't identified for almost 30 years. I re-imagine her story set in the places I grew up.

Speaking of the record, lots of folks are pretty excited that it'll be coming out this Spring. Where've you been recording?

Several closets and bedrooms in Brooklyn, Queens, and Lexington. Also Pine Studios in SF with Nigel from Last of the Blacksmiths, Loiter in Brooklyn, and East Side Sound in Manhattan. I was living in a 6' by 8' room in Queens and recorded Chad King playing pedal steel in there. I'm probably 6'1", and he makes me feel short. The amp was up on a dresser, furniture up on my desk--there wasn't a spare inch in there. Lots of the banjo was recorded in a little closet in San Francisco. There were water pipes running through it to the upstairs, so any time someone washed their hands up there I had to do that take over. I recorded "You Were Saying Goodbye" in an attic out in the country in Kentucky; you can hear crickets during some of the quiet pauses.