WTBU Interviews Matt of Matt & Kim

Matt & Kim, the Brooklyn-based dance-punk duo best known for their infectious energy and delightfully manic live shows, have been busy. In four short years the pair has gone from playing kitchens and basements to festivals such as Siren and Lollapalooza. Their second CD, Grand (which is more fun than a gallon of ice cream and twice as sticky) has been enjoying giddy momentum, and opening for Cut Copy on their latest tour is getting the band some well-deserved exposure. Matt Johnson did a phone interview with us before their House of Blues show to discuss Grand, art school competitiveness, crayons, and most importantly that no matter how big they get, they're still just Matt and Kim.

Emma Dessau and Nina Mashurova: Hey Matt. Thanks for taking some time to talk to us on your way up to Boston. We’re really excited for the show tonight. When did you start touring with Cut Copy?



Matt Johnson: We started touring with them in Austin I think maybe 2 weeks ago. It was about a week or so before South by Southwest that we were there, but then Kim and I had a day off from the Cut Copy tour between Chicago and Toronto so we decided to go back to Austin again and we did play a show. It was very tiring.

ED + NM: We’ve heard from other bands that South by Southwest is exhausting.

MJ: Pretty much. I know Kim was definitely leaving the hotel at 3 AM to go potentially party but she found herself eating pizza with a friend on 6th Street and she just saw numerous people really drunk and crying on street. It was that kinda day.

ED: People were just so tired that they were breaking down and hysterically crying in the street?

MJ: Yeah. And it was Thursday too so it was like the first day of the festival. It was a little early to have overdone it. I mean, come on! Hang in there!

NM: How do you feel being in New York and going to school at the Pratt Institute has influenced your music? Do you feel like the scene in Brooklyn has helped you guys along?

MJ: I think it’s really helpful to be around a lot of people that are doing cool stuff. It doesn’t really matter what it is. People who are playing music or people who are writing... or making cool stuff happen with video stuff or art stuff. If one of my friends is doing something cool I feel like I have to be doing something cool. It’s a kind of art school competitiveness. We’re trained to be competitive in a creative way rather than like, beating someone in arm wrestling. It’s just inspiring to have people doing rad stuff around you, and I think there is a lot of that in New York. It’s a place to not really think about getting stuff done because it’s so expensive to live there, but it’s the place to go to get stuff done.

ED: You recorded “Grand” in Vermont in your old room in your parent’s house, right?

MJ: Yeah. Even though we are inspired by New York like I said, and a lot of the songs on the album were written there, we wanted to go somewhere where we could actually finish something. There’s no where up in Vermont to get distracted by. I grew up in southern Vermont by the Massachusetts border and there is just nothing, there’s nothing. It’s not like people are calling you saying, “You have to come to this bar, you have to come to this thing, it’s awesome!” There are just no distractions. A lot of people are always like oh yeah, I know Vermont like Burlington and northern Vermont and stuff and I just don’t know anything. Whenever we went to shows we would drive down to Boston. To drive two hours is no big deal.

ED: How does it feel to have gotten your start at warehouse parties and playing people’s basements, and to now be playing at places like House of Blues in Boston or Terminal 5 in New York which are pretty big venues? Do you feel like you’ve needed to change the way you guys perform at all?

MJ: I don’t think so. I remember we were nervous about that when we played our first festival which was Siren in Coney Island in Brooklyn. It was the first time we were playing for like 15,000 people and we were like “Oh crap.” We were used to playing art galleries and stuff like that, but we just did what we always did.

NM: I saw you guys at Siren and I thought you handled that big crowd really well.

MJ: That’s awesome. Yeah that was the first time we’d ever done anything like that, and that was two years ago. That summer we did like Capitol Hill Block Party (in Seattle) and Lollapalooza (in Chicago) and we just kept doing what we do and it worked. So many people come and tell me the first place they saw us was a festival and it made them want to come back again.

NM: I was taking pictures of the crowd and during your set there were so many people crowd surfing and having the time of their lives.

MJ: I remember at that show they had that big press barricade and that was bizarre too, for a band that’s used to playing on a floor somewhere. I told everyone to jump the barricade. The security got really mad about it, but it was half successful.

ED: Since you guys got your start with such an informal but close relationship to your fans, do you feel like you are trying to keep that relationship the way it was in terms of keeping ticket prices low, and reaching out over your website to keep that dynamic going?

MJ: That’s something that is really important to us, actually. That’s kind of why we ended up accidentally being called Matt and Kim. We basically couldn’t think of a name, and at our first show they just listed us as our first names and we were like, “Ok! Sounds good.” But I think it made a lot of sense because it’s just, you know, we’re as much about just being people as we are being this band. I hate it when they want to set the lights up at a venue like really bright on a stage and leaves the crowd in total darkness. I want them to light the crowd, because we’re all just here, doing this together. Kim and I wouldn’t be playing if all these other people wouldn’t be here. We had this banner for a while that we tried to get everyone at our shows to sign. It eventually got so destroyed, but it had thousands of signatures on it. It started to look like the inside of a bathroom stall. But the idea behind it was that we are all the ones making this show and this tour happen, so having all these people sign this thing made sense to us.

NM: Does it seem harder to connect now that you’re reaching a bigger audience?

MJ: I don’t know, it’s confusing. After a show we try to just put on some kind of usher or something so we can jump into the crowd and dance with people. But it is a little bizarre. With the Cut Copy shows its a little different because it’s not our show, we’re supporting them and there are a lot of people who don’t know us. We like the competition of trying to win all these people over, but it’s sort of a different vibe it feels a lot more disconnected. Some of these bigger venues its just like so far away, there are people on balconies like two stories up so it’s a little different but we try to connect as much as we can.

ED: Well it seems like at BU a lot of people really like you guys and know who you are. I can’t speak for the entire city of Boston, but at the show tonight there will be a lot of people looking forward to seeing you guys.

MJ: That’s great. I have to say I love playing in Boston because like I said it’s kind of the start of my whole “going to shows” began with driving down from Vermont to Boston to go to punk shows and all that. Kim is from Rhode Island so tonight there’s going to be like 10 members of her family there. So Kim’s not allowed to swear tonight or her dad will give her an Italian slap which I guess is a tap on the back of the head.

ED: Do you feel like there are any specific musicians or bands that have influenced you?

MJ: It’s hard to say a specific band. You take something from everyone you hear, whether it be like a top 40 band or like a Snoop Dogg song or a more punk rock band or I don’t know, any music we find fun. I remember early on being like, “Hey that Destiny’s Child song is kind of bad ass!” And that’s not a good song at all.

ED: I don’t know, I think Destiny’s Child was sort of bad ass. That’s a respectable influence.

MJ: Really? You’d put Destiny’s Child in the bad ass category?

ED: Some of their stuff, a little bit... you can’t rule it out.

NM: How do you feel about your new album in comparison to your older stuff? I think it’s interesting you have a completely instrumental song on it.

MJ: We went into this album with the goal of making the best recorded album that we could. On the last album we put out, the songs sounded similar to the way we played them live. This time we wanted the whole structure of a well rounded CD. We went into it with 25 songs only wanting to make a 10 song album. We wanted it to feel diverse, kind of like how a movie feels complete is like to have its ups and down points, its intros and a conclusion and stuff like that. So we thought about it that way in choosing what songs to pick. Also lyrically, we went about the narrative process in a kind of weird way. We just wrote it like lists of sentences of whatever came to mind, and then we’d go through and start picking out sentences that I thought were cool and that resonated with me somehow and we’d try to fill in the blanks between those. It’s kind of like the song wrote itself. We didn’t want it to be too literal, we just wanted the songs to mean to people what they meant.

NM: It definitely works really well as an album. What about the decision to make “Daylight” both the intro and the outro?

MJ: We felt like it would kind of like a storybook, or like a film where the camera swoops in to begin with and then the first shot is the last shot and the camera swoops back out. I guess I talk in film terms, I went to school for film, but it made sense.

NM: “Daylight” is so infectiously great, it’s so happy and wonderful.

MJ: The outro part of it... I’m making a snap sound right now with my fingers because it just came really quickly. But “Daylight” itself took us like 7 months to work that song out. To get it to work was really hard, but now we’re so happy with it.

ED: Do you have any crazy stories from the road, anything that stands out as some ridiculous thing that happened to you guys?

MJ: There was one time I can think of. We were driving to somewhere in Kansas, and on the way there the sky just turned real, real black and the wind started picking up and we were like, “What the hell is going on?” Then we start seeing all these cars pulled under overpasses. Then, these gigantic hail balls start coming down, and we’re both from the northeast and are like, “Do these cars know something we don’t know? Why are they all pulled over?” So we turned on the radio and hear that a half mile wide tornado is coming towards exactly where we are. The radio kept saying, “Do not stay in your car, if you are in your car you should get out and find shelter, or a hole, or anything.” We were like, “F*** that,” so we keep driving and then we pull over to a gas station and they are all watching the news. Then we took a second to inspect where we are which happens to be not only a gas station but a fireworks warehouse, it was a tin can of a warehouse. We just said, “Screw this! We are not staying.” And the radio keeps saying, “Keep shelter, do not stay in your car, do not try to drive in this weather!” We swing around and point at the highway, put the metal to the metal, there were no cars anywhere, the sky was black and we finally make it through. Then we got to the venue to find out there was no power and we couldn’t even do the show anyway. But, that definitely sticks out in my memory.

ED: That is pretty traumatic, tornados are my biggest fear, I would have been crying.

MJ: People in that area just seem to know how to deal with these things but nothing they were telling us made any sense, like, get out of your car? Why would I do that? We wanted to check the news later and see if anything happened to that gas station with the fireworks, but I think everything probably ended up okay.

NM: Okay, one more question. This is pretty random, but one of our other DJs thinks this is the best and most exemplary questions to ask in an interview: If you could be any color crayon, what would you be?

MJ: I know Kim would be red.

NM: Straight up just red? Not any kind of special red?

MJ: We got out van painted red and the color we got it painted was called “super red.” That’d be like the no-nonsense red. I think Kim would be super red. I don’t even know what I’d be. I keep thinking gray but that seems kinda drab to me. Do they even make gray crayons?

ED: I think they do make gray. I don’t know if there are different variations of gray, but they do make a gray crayon.

MJ: I’m into pretty monochromatic things lately. But let me ask you a question. Is it pronounced “crayon” or “craan”?

NM: Crayon. Are you a craan person?

MJ: Yeah I am.

ED + NM: Thanks for talking to us for so long on the phone with a bad connection, Matt. Have a great show tonight.

By Emma Dessau and Nina Mashurova from Nick at Night, Emma in the Evening (Saturdays 2-4 AM)

WTBU Interviews: Jennifer O’Connor and Michael Brodlieb!

Photos by Nina Mashurova

Folk/Indie rock singer Jennifer O’Connor played a show at the Middle East in Cambridge on Thursday February 26th. She and her bassist Michael Brodlieb sat down with us beforehand to talk about her roots, influences and the plethora of bands she’s worked with. Jennifer’s fourth full length CD Here With Me is out on Matador Records and has been getting great reviews from Spin magazine, as well as NPR radio.

Emma Dessau: Where did you grow up and when did you start playing music?

Jennifer O’Connor: I lived in Connecticut until I was about thirteen in Danielson. It’s a small town about an hour from here. Then I moved to Florida before high school and I went to college in Atlanta, Georgia. It was a lot of moving. I took piano lessons when I was a kid, but I didn’t really start playing until after college.

Nina Mashurova: You were in a punk band in Atlanta, right?

JO: Punk makes it sound a little cooler than we were but yeah, my first band was called “Violet.”

NM: Was that after the Hole song?

JO: Yeah it was! I think you’re the first person that’s ever guessed that. I was a big Nirvana and Hole fan in college. That was right around the time Nirvana became really huge.

NM: It seems like a big shift from a punk band to what you play now. Do you still listen to that kind of music at all?

JO: Oh yeah. I like all kinds of music.

ED: I saw you in Hoboken when you opened for Yo La Tengo. That was a really awesome venue, I am from that area and had never been there before, and you were really good.

JO: Oh cool! That was really exciting.

ED: Do you have a favorite venue to play in?

JO: In New York I like the Mercury Lounge. I like playing here at the Middle East, I haven’t been here in a while.

ED: When was the last time you played here?

JO: It’s probably been about a year or so. We played here with Langhorne Slim.

NM: I think I saw you! I remembered that Langhorne Slim had a girl open for him. Did you cover “Achin’ to Be” by The Replacements?

JO: Probably! Yeah it must have been me. I played solo. It’s funny because I recorded that as a B-side for the record so I must have played it that night.

ED: When I saw you you played a Carly Simon cover, “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow.”

JO: Yeah that was probably the first time we ever played that. We tend to learn covers right when we play them.

ED: I heard that you recorded some tracks with Franz Nicolay from The Hold Steady on your record and someone from Ben Folds Five.

JO: Yeah, Darren Jessee was the drummer for Ben Folds Five. He is actually a very good friend of mine, so that was really cool to work with him. He’s a great singer and songwriter. I didn’t really know much Ben Folds stuff, but apparently he is a fantastic drummer. He’s apparently one of the best drummers in the area.

Franz (from The Hold Steady) is really great, we met him through our record producer. He made records for the Hold Steady and he made our records. That’s how we got hooked up with him. We’re actually doing a show with him tomorrow night, which we’ve never done before. It should be really fun.

ED: We’re kind of obsessed with The Hold Steady.

JO: They’re a lot of fun. They live in our neighborhood in Brooklyn. Craig Finn goes to our gym.

ED: That’s awesome. Does he spazz out when he’s working out at all like he does on stage?

Michael Brodlieb: No, he just completely ignores everybody and rides his bike. He only benches like one pound.

ED: Yeah, that’s what I would guess. He’s not the type of guy I could see lifting a lot of weight.

MB: That’s pretty much what I can bench too so I can’t say anything.

ED: You’ve released a couple records on Matador and you’re making your own record label now. How is that going?

JO: Well my first CD that I put out I had made it on my own label. All that really means is I came up with a name to put on the CD. And after that I put that by the wayside. I’ve put out a couple of 7” since then, but I’m sort of bringing it back a little bit to put out a few CDs of some of my friend’s bands.

ED: Is that the main reason why you’ve decided to do it, or do you feel like you have less freedom on a bigger record label?

JO: I’m still on Matador. This is just kind of like a side project I guess. I just want to help out and be involved with friend’s music and help them reach a new audience as well as put out little side projects of my own.

ED: Matador is a really good record label, right? It’s got some big names like The New Pornographers.

JO: Yeah definitely. It’s done tremendous things for me. This is just my way to build my own little thing as well.

ED: You’ve been compared to Aimee Mann and Elliott Smith. That’s a pretty big compliment. How do you feel about that?

JO: I feel good. I mean, I think that you tend to get compared to people no matter what you do and those are people I really like. I think they are great song writers so I would much rather get compared to them than somebody I don’t like at all.

ED: Is this your first headlining tour?

JO: We’ve done a couple of headlining tours. Not that many. You’d be right in thinking

it was. We’ve been mostly opening for other bands. This is probably our second or third headlining tour. We were on a really long tour before this.

ED: Who else have you toured with?

JO: We’ve toured with Damien Jurado, Jamie Lidell and Amy Ray (of the Indigo Girls) most recently. We’ve done a few shows with Wilco. I wouldn’t call it a tour but, I’ll stretch it and call it a tour. Who else? I’ve done a few shows with The Mountain Goats, and Mason Jennings. I’ve pretty much been all over the map. I do shows with a lot of singer/songwriter people and then some indie rock shows as well. Sometimes I play with these guys (Michael Brodlieb and Jon Langmead) and other times I’m solo.

ED: Is it true that you recorded your latest CD “Here With Me” in 12 days?

JO: Yeah it is. Our record producer helped us out with that, John Agnello.

ED: And he’s also produced Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr.?

JO: Yeah, that’s really why I wanted to work with him. Someone recommended him and I went to his website and saw that he’d made some of my favorite records. I saw Sonic Youth a million times in college and Dinosaur Jr. too. We did it really fast, but it was awesome.

ED: Do you have a favorite song to play live?

JO: That’s a good question. Yeah! I have a few actually. What’s your answer? I wanna know what you think.

MB: I’d say Lightbulb.

JO: Yeah. We have this song Lightbulb that didn’t make the record, but it’s a B-side. You can get it online. I like playing that and I like playing “Here with Me,” the title track. I also like playing “Dirty City Blues” from my last record.

ED: I bought your CD after I saw you and I have a new favorite song from it every week.

JO: Oh good! That’s what I like to hear. What’s your favorite right now?

ED: I really like “Daylight Out” right now. Actually, I’m not sure if you played it in Hoboken or if I just heard it online, but I also really like “Hole in the Road” from your older CD “The Color and the Light.”

JO: Oh yeah. We’re gonna play that tonight, just for you.

ED and NM: Thanks a lot for talking to us guys! Have a good show.

-Emma Dessau and Nina Mashurova of Nick at Night, Emma in the Evening

WTBU Interviews: John McCauley of Deer Tick

Photos By Nina Mashurova

The Rhode Island/Brooklyn based band Deer Tick opened up for Jason Isbell at T.T. the Bears in Cambridge on Tuesday night. Frontman John McCauley sat down with us before going on stage to talk about where the band’s name came from, feelings about covering songs and their upcoming trip to Austin for the South by Southwest Music festival. If you’re looking for some good old school rock and roll with a country twang, Deer Tick is for you. Keep an eye out for their show in Allston this April.

You guys came up with your name before you had a band, is there a story behind the name Deer Tick?

There’s not that much of a story. The first time I ever got bit by a deer tick I thought of it and I just thought it sounded cool. You know, kinda gross, bad ass.

We heard your cover of “Beautiful Girls” by Sean Kingston, it’s pretty funny. I think it sounds better when you sing it. Where did you get the idea to record that?

We were on tour before we did it and Dennis, our drummer, had it on his iPod and we would just listen to it all the time. We thought it would be funny if we covered it but it never really materialized.

Do you ever play it at shows?

We got asked to play it for this music website called cokemachineglow.com because they were doing their second annual fantasy covers where they have their favorite bands of the year play their favorite songs of the year. It seemed perfect at the time but now I kind of regret it because it’s almost become a nightly thing that people ask us to play it.

Well we promise we won’t ask you to play it tonight.

Thank you.

You also did a pretty awesome cover of Paul Simon’s “Still Crazy After All These Years.”

Yeah, I just kind of got pretty obsessed with that song, especially the piano part and decided to try to record it for fun.

You guys were at SXSW last year. How did that go?

It was crazy. We did 9 shows in 4 days.

Was it a bunch of different venues all around Austin?

Oh yeah. All day it was just back and forth.

Are you going back this year? Did you have fun playing there last year despite the schedule?

Yeah we’re going back there this March. Our schedule is not going to be as hectic because I am not up for that again. But it was tons of fun, definitely. On the way back it was just complete hell because we were all so tired, but it was worth it.

Deer Tick has toured with some pretty big names like Jenny Lewis and the Felice Brothers. Did you enjoy that?

Well, we only did about three shows with Jenny Lewis. We opened for her in Wilmington, Delaware and Connecticut but we were on tour with the Felice Brothers. Playing with both those bands was tons of fun they are great people.

It seems like electronic influences are infiltrating every alternative band out there right now, but Deer Tick has kept a pretty steady country, folk-y sound.

I never really liked electronic or house music, so it’s been pretty easy to stay away from that sound. We are becoming more and more of a rock ‘n’ roll band. I think our recorded music doesn’t really give a good sample of what we actually sound like, because War Elephant was just me recording it on my own. Now with the band the sound has really filled out a lot more.

When is your next CD coming out?

It comes out in June. We don’t have an exact release date figured out yet but yep. June.

Are you excited?

Oh yeah. It will finally give people a chance to hear what the band sounds like.

Thanks John for taking some time before the show to talk to us!

-Emma Dessau and Nina Mashurova of Nick at Night, Emma in the Evening

WTBU Interviews: Ferraby Lionheart

Photos by Nina Mashurova


Ferraby Lionheart started off a sold out show at T.T. the Bears in Cambridge this Tuesday. The folk/indie musician made time to talk to us in his busy day after traveling from New York that morning to play a quick set before going right back down the coast. Ferraby has released two records: In 2006 he came out with a self-titled EP and in 2007 he followed up it with his first full length album Catch the Brass Ring. Ferraby's whimsical name, warm personality, and Nashville roots contribute to a sound that's as soft and sweet as it is genuine.


How was your trip up from New York today?

It was pretty easy. We had to leave at about eight in the morning so that wasn’t too fun but we got here all right. We’d been in New York a while playing this place called Pianos.

You had a residency there for the past month, right? How did that go?

It went really well. There are a lot places in the city that are fun to play, but it was nice coming to the same place for a while. You get a rhythm going. I’m also sort of getting a new band into shape so it was cool to have somewhere to get together.

Your music has changed a little from your earlier songs like “The Ballad of Gus and Sam” on your EP which had more of a rock and roll sound to the more recent single “Dear Corinne.” Do you feel like your style has evolved?

I think a little bit. I’ve been growing. It’s hard to say if I’ve been more into folk or ballads. I couldn’t say that there won’t be a song on my new record that sounds like “Gus and Sam.” For me its more like a less specific change, maybe its more about lyrics and the combination of instruments that I use to record.

What instruments do you like to play the most?

When I record I play mostly guitar, sometimes percussion, sometimes the bass. Sometimes just knick knacks I find around the house. I think I like the piano the most.

Clearly you are a man of many talents. You first started out with a band. What made you decide to go solo? Do you enjoy performing without a band more?

I decided to go solo because it made it easier to change up what I wanted to sound like. When you’re in a band you are confined to a format because the other members may be limited in their function or skills.


Your name is pretty awesome. Where did it come from? Is it your real name?

Ferraby is my real name. Lionheart is catchy. I think it’s good for show biz, most people like the way it sounds. I guess some say it’s heavy handed or something. They like it here but they make fun of it in Europe sometimes. I got a write up when we put our record out in the UK that was complimentary, but it started out with “Despite the name...”

How did growing up in Nashville influence you? Who would you say your biggest influences are?

I like being from Nashville, mostly because I like the sound of it. My influences change up depending on what I’m up to at the time. I like Paul Simon a lot, he’s definitely one of my heros. He’s really prolific. I like stuff from his whole career.

What are you listening to now?

My friend recently got me into Beach House. I also like to listen to jazz a lot because I get sick of pop songs sometimes. Everything starts to sound the same.

When you’re writing songs, do you find that you write music or lyrics first? Does one influence the other or does it come to you at the same time?

I typically write music first. I’ve dabbled with the other order but what works for me best is writing music first. Everyone in a while it comes at the same time.

We heard Jon Brion had you come up on stage and play a song with him in LA a couple years ago. How was that? Are you a big fan?

I think it’s so weird when younger people know who he is! I guess most people know him from the stuff he produces like the “I Heart Huckabees” soundtrack or “Eternal Sunshine.” Going on stage with him was really exciting. I was very nervous. I was a fan of his before I moved to LA because of stuff he produced like Rufus and Fiona and the soundtrack to “Magnolia.” For 6 or 8 years he was playing a Hollywood show in West Hollywood at a place called “Largo” and I was working at a pizza place right next to it. One of my coworkers was putting on a benefit that we were both supposed to play at and she gave him my CD and he liked it enough to know one of the songs. I was at his show on a Friday night and he took me up on stage.

How long have you been touring?

A couple years. I toured a little with my last band but I have been more now.

How was sharing a stage with The Walkmen?

The Walkmen was my first tour after the CMJ festival in New York two years ago. My agent called me and asked if I ever played with a horn player, because if I did, he thought he might be able to get me on tour with them. I actually had never played with a horn player before, but they were one of my favorite bands at the time so I told him I could definitely manage to find one.

And you also did a couple shows with Langhorne Slim?

Playing with Langhorne Slim worked out really well. Our crowds overlap nicely. He’s a little more rough and tumble but there was a great balance. I was only on a short leg of his tour but when it was over we wished it had been longer.

Do you have a favorite venue or city to play in?

The other night we played at the Music Hall of Williamsburg. The crowd was great. It really stuck out. The Aladdin theater in Portland, Oregon is great. The Pabst in Milwaukee is also pretty cool. I toured all the UK in April and went to 16 cities. Glasgow was really great. The people there love music and folk musicians so much.


Have a great time playing in Cambridge tonight! Thanks for talking to us!

-Emma Dessau and Nina Mashurova, of Nick at Night, Emma in the Evening