Magazine: Matt Schofield talks to GrapevineLive

FREE WEBCAST .... LIVE FROM SAN RAFAEL CALIFORNIA

Matt will be making a 2 hour live video webcast on Jan. 17 from TRI Studios in San Rafael CA, the amazing audio and video facility created by The Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir. The Matt Schofield trio is one of the first bands to be invited to do a webcast from TRI. It is an exciting opportunity.

The show is being filmed and mixed live in real time and you can see it at 19:00 PST, 22:00ET and 03:00GMT the next morning. The show will be rebroadcast the next day - Jan 18 - at midday PST, 15:00ET and a more friendly 20:00GMT for Matt’s fans in the UK and Europe.

Here is the webcast link. The show is scheduled to start at 19:00PST prompt, with two 50 minute sets and an interval in which Matt will be answering questions submitted by fans. So sit back, pour yourself a glass of your favourite beverage, and enjoy!

In the meantime you might like to take a look around TRI Studios with a personal tour in the company of Bob Weir. 

Matt Schofield Interview

Colchester Arts Centre,
18:45, Wednesday 24th November 2011

After completing a 50-date tour around America in the Summer, and in the midst of a 22-date European tour, GrapevineLive catches up with Matt Schofield, world renowned British blues guitarist. It’s hard to comprehend that at the age of just 34, Matt Schofield has managed to master the passion and raw talent seen in those who have had to experience more years of heartbreak, joy and debauchery to create such music. It’s no wonder Matt’s constantly receiving nods from all over the world in recognition of his talent. In the flesh, he’s a super down-to-earth, modest and normal bloke from Gloucestershire, albeit with a slight North American ‘twang’ to his accent being that he’s now chosen to lay his head in Toronto.  Matt tells us about his life as a musician, the pros and cons of touring and why the UK is still one of the very few places still not embracing the blues as much as we should.

We start the interview pondering what’s being washed in the washing machine behind us, until Matt informs us that he is in fact washing his socks as it’s the first time in days he’s managed to find something other than a sink to do it in. Oh, the life of a rock star…

Sarah: Other than your own experiences, and artists that you like, where do you get your inspiration from?

Matt: That’s a good question. All kinds of music, I’ve got like 10,000 tracks on my iPod. Just music really. Mostly blues, obviously. Quite a bit of Jazz and Soul and Funk and stuff like that. Not really anything in the eye of the mainstream, though. Most of what I listen to is mostly by dead people! That’s just the way it is, a lot of my favourites were dead before I got to even see them. But contemporary stuff would be more in the Jazz kind of side of things that I might check out in terms of new records. But I don’t listen to much contemporary blues, like I don’t really listen too much of what I do, if you know what I mean. Apart from Derek Trucks,  actually! (Of The Allman Brothers Band fame) He’s great contemporary guitar player.

Sarah: You recently played at Blues For Heroes –the fundraising concert for the HELP for HEROES charity featuring the best blues musicians in Britain- what was that like?

Matt: It was good, yeah. It was cool.  It’s nice to be able to contribute something that otherwise is difficult for the likes of me to contribute to. Good to do our bit, because you know, we moan about travelling, and staying in crappy hotels, and being tired all the time and things like that all the time but, those guys have got it quite a bit worse, obviously! We all know they’re the real Heroes!

Sarah: What’s your favourite and perhaps not-so-favourite things about touring?

Matt: My favourite thing about touring is I get to play the music and play guitar. I have essentially learned to rationalise that I do that for free. I play guitar and play music because I love it, and always have done and always would do. My job, and what I try and do for a living, is to ride around in vans, busses, planes to airports, to sleep in a different hotel every single night. Every day you wake up, pack up, check out and you’re just on your way to the next one. And that’s what I see as my ‘job’. Everybody’s got to do some stuff they don’t like for a living sometimes, and that’s the bit that is extremely wearing, it’s extremely tiring. But that’s the price you pay in order to not have a proper job! So when people see 2 hours on stage, but that’s not the job, that’s the relief at the end of the day, and I love it.

Sarah: What do you do to unwind and relax, both on tour and when you get home?

Matt: Yeah you don’t get to do that on tour, at all! The day off is driving somewhere, usually. For example we recently played a gig in Zwolle, North Holland, and that was an 11 hour car journey back. So that was my day off! I mean, we have a couple of beers after the gig, and then it’s like “We better get to bed because we’ve got to check out at 11am” so if you want to get a full night’s sleep, which you have to, it’s an early night. I mean, I had a great night’s sleep last night and I’m already knackered again today, just from an accumulative effect of touring. So it’s really All-Go when you’re on tour, and it takes a couple of weeks to decompress when you get back. Kevin’s (the drummer in The Matt Schofield Trio) brother was a guitar player in Huey Lewis and Muse back in the day, so they used to do these massive tours, and he always joked that he was going to build a room on his house that looked like a hotel room so that when he got home he could gradually reintroduce himself back into home life!

When I do get home though, we’ve got our dogs, and I miss them terribly when I’m on tour. We have a Belgian Malinois, a Rhodesian Ridgeback and a Greyhound. So 3 big dogs who my girlfriend –who of course I also miss terribly when on tour!- looks after when I’m away.
But when you’re home, you’re home, and that’s nice. I mean, I might get to be at home completely for six weeks or something and not have to work. It’s all or nothing in this industry. It’s either go-go-go or, just nothing. And of course, within a few days I’m twiddling my thumbs thinking, “Would be nice to have a gig” That’s the curse of the musician! When you’re out doing it, you’re thinking “Would be lovely to go home tonight” and then when you’re not doing it, you feel the complete opposite!

Sarah: To give our readers a little glimpse into how you work, tell us what you do when you stumble upon a lyric, or melody. What’s your process?

Matt: Usually with the music, it’s all in my head as I don’t actually read or write music. [Matt taught himself guitar from the age of 10] It’s all by ear, and I have a good memory, so I can hear something once and remember it. I’ve tried putting it down on the computer but to be honest, it’s more trouble than it’s worth for me because I’m only going to explain it to the band anyway, by playing it, a lot of times not even with a guitar, though. I don’t need the guitar in my hands to ‘play’ guitar, if you know what I mean. After a while you know what you would be playing in your mind.

With the lyrics, sometimes it’s just a little thing like a title or an idea of some kind of story. My girlfriend is the co-writer on a lot of our stuff, so she often comes with a set of lyrics or a title or an idea and we work on them together, or they might have been finished already. There’s no really set rules for how it works.

Sarah: So is there a lot of improvisation when you record and when even when you’re on stage?

Matt: It’s all improvised. I mean, there’s a theme, but usually we have an intro, like a way in, and obviously you sing a couple of verses, and then pretty much what happens in the middle can go any amount of time or go anywhere it likes. And then on a cue, and there’s a lot of little cues, like I’ll just give the guys a quick glance or a little tilt of the guitar head to stop, we then go back into the outro, which we know where we are to coming to the end of the song. It’s all completely open to whatever we’re feeling. And that’s the only way we can play. I can’t really plan. Even on the record, the guitar solo that I play is still just the one that day at that minute, and I can do it 20 times thereafter but it will always be slightly different. Like I say though, we have a theme that is contextual to the song, and every night when we do a song I’ll play contextually to that, so it’s not going to be like improvised to the point of “Tonight I’m just going to play it in a different key” or something. There’s always a theme, but the actual notes or whatever comes out at that second is the only way I can play. It’s like having a conversation, you know what the conversation is about but, you don’t always necessarily know what you’re going to end up saying once you open your mouth and start talking.

Sarah: You taught yourself guitar from the age of 10. How did you come to have your first guitar, and do you still have it?

Matt: I do, actually! I found it last year in the loft of my Mum’s house, because they were moving back up to Manchester [where Matt was born] so I went back to help them. My first guitar was a three quarter size, nylon string, classical guitar and I got it probably when I was about 7 or 8 but I didn’t really get going on it until later. But my Dad got it for me, as he was really into the blues but didn’t play much guitar himself, but there was always one around. And he kind of taught me about the music. But if I’m honest, it was bought with the intention of playing Christmas Carols at school, originally. Those were really the only lessons I had in my life, early on at school learning “London’s burning! London’s burning!” But then I didn’t do anything with it until I was like 11 or 12 when I picked out that same guitar and I cut –it’s hard to explain- but I cut a cheese wedge out of the lower bout of the guitar, well I carved it out with a hack saw. I did it because all the blues guitarists I was watching looked like they were playing really high up on the neck, so I cut this cheese wedge out so I could get my hand up higher like them! So it looks in a terrible state, this poor thing.

[At this moment, one of the roadies brings in some beers, to which Matt immediately asks if they are cold and very kindly asks if any of us would like one. For some unknown reason though, all of us turned them down!! WHY?!]

Sarah: You’re regularly receiving accolades from both sides of the Atlantic, -most of all for being one of the best blues guitarist of this generation even though you’re a Brit- how does that make you feel?

Matt: Well to some people I’m that, but not all obviously. It’s all relative, isn’t it? We have some great loyal fans that come from all over the place to see you, except you’re not always playing to that many people. So it’s this kind of, to some people, we’re extremely important, and they’re extremely dedicated, loyal and crazy fans, which is amazing! And yet for us to play to more than a few hundred people at one of our shows in this country, is rare. So it’s this kind of small intense following. We’ve had people flown from Japan to see us because we’ve not played in Japan that year. But it’s not always like thousands of people every night, it’s a different gig. The settings are usually more intimate and there’s sort of cult-ey side to all of it. Particularly in this country. It’s more marginal than just about anywhere, really! We played to about two to three times this many people in say, Holland where we were last week. We played upwards of 400 people there every night in bigger venues. It’s just a different scene elsewhere, even though Holland’s tiny compared to the UK! Italy, Germany, Belgium too, there are great big blues festivals out there. So the UK is still the hardest nut to crack in terms of building an audience because they just don’t know about us. Like just last week we were on Dutch television, a music TV show, which immediately puts you in front of so many people. But I just can’t think of a TV shows here –other than maybe Jools Holland- that we would be able to go on in this country. That’s what it comes down to, exposure. We always find that people like it when they hear it, it’s just that not aware of it before hand. So that’s what we’re always up against over here with ‘The Blues’.

Sarah: So, do you think people have a pre-conceived idea of what the blues is going to sound like?

Matt: Yes, unfortunately, I do. It’s been tarred with a pretty lame brush, because, I’ll speak frankly, the blues is extremely easy to play badly, because in theory it’s pretty simple. But that’s actually what makes it much harder to play well! Because you’re working from a smaller pallet and you’ve got to make something out of those –in theory- limited colours. Of course they’re infinite if you’re mixing them together right. Whereas something like jazz, you can either play it or you can’t. You can’t kind of, go out and do the pub-version of some Jazz. You can either have that technical ability on the instrument, or not. But blues isn’t just about that. For a lot of people, certainly the younger generation, they’re just not exposed to it or worse, have been, but in a bad way via some rubbish pub band or something, which is usually boring, tuneless and cheesy. And then they associate with something that their Dad might listen to or something. Eric Clapton covers or something, badly done.

Sarah: Have you noticed the blues scene changing in terms of audience size, age demographic etc?

Matt: I wish I could say I have, but I haven’t. We get a few young guys have kind of heard of us, probably from listening to John Mayer (an American Pop rock and blues rock musician), so he’s been their sort of way in. They’ll then think “Where’s this guitar playing come from?” and then inevitably discover Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughn and people that I’ve listened to as well, so that’s the connection there. And so from that, they look to find who’s a bit like that now and they end up at us. So John Mayer’s done a good job at putting blues into his pop music. I use the same brand of amplifier as John Mayer by pure coincidence actaully, and that also brings guys to the gigs. People come to check out my equipment, believe it or not! For whatever reason I’ve become like, the guy with this so-called ‘renowned’ guitar tone. So people come because they just want to check it out. You’ll see them, they’ll be looking at the pedal board over the front and seeing I’m using, and they’ll be asking what picks ups I’m using, all kinds of stuff. It’s pretty nerdy after a while!

Sarah: After playing so many gigs all over the world, do you get nervous or anxious at all still?

Matt: No, I’ve never been nervous. Even on my first gig, the desire to want to do it, outweighed any possible nerves about doing it. I do get stressed out, because of everything else that’s going on around when you’re recording it or filming it, though. Yesterday in London, there was just a lot of people around, and it was hard to think. You can’t just do this magically on demand, or at least I can’t, maybe some people can. But in order to do it to the best of my ability you do need some kind of focus into it. So when there’s a lot of chaos around, it’s hard to kind of carve your way through that and get to the music. That’s more it, I get wound up and annoyed and stressed more than anything else.

Sarah: So would you say you’re a bit of perfectionist?

Matt: Yeah, absolutely. We’ve got loads of live albums that we’ve never released because I haven’t liked them. In fact the last one that we released –Live from the Archive- I still haven’t listened to. That was an archive recording that Simon, my guitar tech, found and said “This is really good! You’ve got to check out this recording!” and it was a live radio broadcast and I said “Yeah, yeah, sure” and I didn’t listen to it. A little later on he’d ask again “Have you listened to that recording yet?” and I’m just like, no, no, because I don’t listen to myself, because I only hear what I’d rather change. You know, you only hear the mistakes. It’s like looking at a photo of yourself. So, I didn’t listen to it and eventually Simon sent it straight to Richard here, and he was all “Well this is really good! We should put it out!” and I said “Fine, if you guys think it sounds alright, we’ll put it out” But I still haven’t listened to it, because I know I will only hear what I don’t like. I can trust other people, if they say it sounds good, but if I listen to it too much I go “I don’t like that, or that, we can’t use it” So if that answers your question about being a perfectionist! But I’ve learned to deal with it, by doing that. But left to my own devices, yeah, I’d be way down the rabbit hole.

Sarah: What makes a good show for you?

Matt: It’s all about feeling the vibe back. You know, we put out a lot, man. Everybody plays hard, really giving it everything, all this energy. But if you don’t feel like you’re getting it back, then you just run out of steam really early on. Whereas when the audience give it back, then you feel you can almost go off into the sky with it! Some places it can really drag, like if the audience are really reserved and afraid of letting go. I mean, I’m used to it now but I used to think for years “They hate us. They think we suck. What can I- you know, I can’t say anything to them” They’ll be guys just stood there at the front, arms folded not moving a muscle, and then at the end of the gig they all come up and buy a CD and tell us how great it was and how much they loved it and can’t wait until we come back. And then it’s like, just please demonstrate that in some way! Because it’s really draining, because we really do give off so much energy and trying to project something However, sometimes it can go the other way, with moronic people just “Woo!”-ing and shouting throughout the whole thing. So it’s a two way thing, make us feel good and like you want us to be here, and we’ll work with it and give it back.

Sarah: What are you like as a gig-goer, then?

Matt: Me? Oh, I’m the one at the front with my arms folded! Only joking. No, I’ve got to say, I just can’t go to big gigs any more. Two years ago I went to see The Allman Brothers in Toronto, Molson Ampitheatre, which is this absolutely massive venue. I just hated every second, though. You know, there was one guy over here smoking weed and another guy over there getting pissed and all these distractions around me –like I was saying with when I’m at my own gigs- and I just wanted to hear Derek Trucks play guitar. And all these people around me meant that I just couldn’t get into the band, so I hated it from that perspective, not because I’d gone to do the whole “Go on then, mate, impress me. I’ve heard you’re a good guitar player” Because there’s a lot of that still, especially because we tend to get a lot of ‘guitar people’ at our gigs, not just blues people. And they’re the worst, because they’re not there to just watch and enjoy you, they’re there to almost judge and score you on your guitar playing.  So I like to stand to the side of the stage and quietly enjoy the band at a festival or something, which is the only time we really get to go and see other bands.

Editor’s note:
Matt was an absolute pleasure to interview, and an incredible performer to watch. Being one of the ‘young people’ Matt speaks about in our interview, and how they love it once they’re exposed to it, I have to say, I fully concur! Never in a million years did I think I’d be a fan of the blues, but his performance truly blew me away and I am now already looking to see when I can see him and his band perform again.

Matt’s latest album, Anything But Time is available on iTunes. Check out my favourite tracks: Don’t Know What I’d Do, his Albert King cover Wrapped Up In Love, Where Do I Have To Stand and of course, the title track, Anything But Time.

Photography by Tony Bell, Tony Bell Photography - www.tonybellphotography.com

Interview by Sarah, GrapevineLive - info@grapevinelive.co.uk

Matt Schofield - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Matt-Schofield-Official/128907697139672?ref=ts