Catching up with Mat Kearney before Beaver Creek Performance
Last Word Features
Adam Alonzo/Courtesy photo
Like many musicians, the pandemic forced Mat Kearney to do something he had rarely done during the preceding decade plus as a recording artist – take time off.
“I pretty much jumped on a rocket ship in 2007 and spent a lot of the years since then just touring or I’d be in the middle of a project or grinding in the studio all night,” Kearney said in a recent phone interview. “It was the first time I’d really had a chance to just stop and take stock of where I was at and focus on home in a way I hadn’t. It ended up being kind of, I almost feel guilty saying it, but a really beautiful season.”
One of the great things that happened was Kearney and his wife had their second child.
The pandemic also gave Kearney plenty of time to think about his next album, which became the recently released “January Flower,” and ask himself big questions like what kind of music he wants to make and what matters most to him about his music.
“I don’t know a simple way to answer that question because at the core, it’s kind of a journey as a human I’ve been on, reconnecting to myself outside of music,” Kearney said. “Who am I? If the music goes away, what are you? What do you have to say? What have you always had to say? What is something that you’ve always loved? And I think the longer you do this, the more voices enter the picture of ‘Oh, is this commercial?’ Will it (work) on radio? Is this going to license?’ And those voices, they’re important on some level, but it just felt like the (next) record needed to be ‘You know, I don’t care about any of that. I want to go back to when I made records for my little brother and my best friends and I played for them in my Honda Accord. That kind of became the north star for that project.”
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Kearney debuted with what at the time was a unique melding of styles. Fundamentally, Kearney was a pop-folk singer-songwriter, but he also incorporated elements of hip-hop into his 2007 major label debut album, “Nothing Left To Lose.” Four more albums followed, as Kearney further explored a blend of pop-folk, hip-hop and EDM, while notching several top 20 adult pop singles.
“January Flower” was released in May 2021 on Kearney’s own Tomorrow Music label. The project began in January 2019, when Kearney went to a house in Joshua Tree, California with long-time friends, songwriter Eli Teplin and painter Marshall Roeman.
The original idea was to set up a studio in the house and write and record some material over a two-week period. But then a historic rainstorm flooded the area and knocked out power to the house.
Leaving the house and re-booking time there later was not an option.
“We couldn’t leave because the house was situated like 10 miles from anywhere on a dirt road that had become a river,” Kearney said. “We’re just sitting in this dark house together. I can’t remember who did it, but someone made a fire in the fireplace and that kind of added some calm and something you could at least look at. And I pulled out my guitar, and as a joke, I was like, I sang ‘powerless, we’re out of power.’ And then my buddy who I was there with said ‘That sounds kind of cool. You should write that.'”
That song became “January Flower’s” lead track, “Powerless,” which examines what it means to be powerless, both literally and in terms of one’s life being pleasantly out of control.
When the two-week session ended, Kearney had five new songs. Much work remained, but the Joshua Tree sessions set the tone for “January Flower” by sending Kearney back to creating songs built around acoustic guitar and voice, while he also sought to be more honest, vulnerable and brave than ever in his lyric writing.
“January Flower” was also a back-to-his-beginnings album for Kearney from a production standpoint. When he returned to the project in 2020, he reunited with Robert Marvin, who produced “Nothing Left To Lose” and Kearney’s third album, “Young Love.”
Kearney and Marvin navigated having to work remotely because of the pandemic – as well as the occasional times when there were disagreements — and came out with “January Flower,” which mixes lean acoustic-oriented full-band songs with others that add the hip-hop and EDM elements for which Kearney is known.
Kearney’s live shows figure to feature material from across his career, but he’s happy with what the “January Flower” material brings to his shows in any band format.
“In some ways, this album has reconnected me to a band playing songs. And when I made this record, in the back of my mind the live show was a huge influence on the choices I made and the instrumentation we picked,” Kearney said. “I really wanted it to be an album that would be really fun to tour and would come to life on tour. I think that’s just where I’m at.”
