Ian Matthew puts Torrington, Connecticut on the map
On a mission to put Torrington, Connecticut on the map...Ian Matthew is determined to use his music to better his community and continue his role as a mental health advocate! He speaks on his songwriting process, mental health and how it led to the creation of his song “Losing My Mind,” and his growth as an artist.
Abby Martinez: How did you get started in the music industry?
Ian Matthew: I come from a musical family. My father was a guitar player, my grandparents were guitar players. I really couldn't walk from my bedroom to the bathroom without passing a couple guitars on the wall. By the time I was seven, I was playing guitar. My dad would make us play different chords before we could go outside and play. But if I don't know those chords I have to sit here and learn them real quick. And then when I was probably 12 years old I got into punk bands, was playing guitar and singing in punk bands. Once everybody got old and started kind of doing their own thing I didn't have anybody for a band so I started finding and talking to producers online. I would record over there stuff. When I was like eighteen I really took it seriously and started putting music out, started branding myself, and actually promoting myself as an artist. But it's really been one of those things where music has always been there for as long as I can remember. So it almost felt like weird to do something else.
AM: Do you have a creative team or someone you collaborate with often?
IM: I have a small team, my band that does my live shows. They're all creative in their own right. I do have my manager, one of my biggest co-writers. We just kind of riff off of each other, he'll throw a line in the air and I'm like, “Oh, that's good.” And then I'll be like, “what about this and that?” I am always down to co-write because you can definitely get different perspectives.
Ian Matthew on collaborations.
I had actually had a conversation the other day about going into a studio with somebody, especially if it's somebody who takes the craft as seriously as we do and pours the same amount of emotion as we do into music. If you do a collab...they go through that process with you. And just like anything else when you go through something with somebody, you come out on the other end with a special bond like “Yo, we just created something out of thin air!” This wasn't here before we walked into the studio, and now we have something with both of our names. Both of our our energies into it and we're going to give it out and show these people.
AM: Do you have a special place that you typically like to write in?
IM: I think it sounds cliche, but it’s in the studio because you have the opportunity to go run to the mic and record. I mean I have that ability at home as well, but you have the better ability to hear it in real time. I really enjoyed writing out in nature. We were on this porch and had this view of just the mountains. You think about different things you know you don't see in your normal environment so you think kind of differently, which I think is really cool and I'm definitely going to do that more. I think changing the environment is huge. Definitely an eye opener for sure.
AM: Was there a reason it took two different periods of time to complete your song “Ashtray”?
IM: I wrote the hook out there [in San Francisco], and I was in love with it. Then when I came back to Connecticut and wanted to record it, I just didn't feel the same. Then eventually I kind of forgot about it until a couple years later and we had heard this beat. So we tried it and we still had a little bit to write. And actually the first verse that I had written for it, I put it as a feature on somebody else's song because it fit perfectly. So then I had to go back and rewrite it. I'm really glad it happened like that, because I was much more familiar with the content of the chorus that I had written. So I had gone through some stuff that really related to the chorus and I was like “Oh, I can write this now because this is my story, this is the truth.”
I had to experience some things, and that's how it ended up becoming one of my biggest therapy sessions, and a lot of other people's too. I've had plenty of people hit me up.
So I'm glad that I waited because I think it came out how it was supposed to rather than how I intended it to in 2015.
AM: How has mental health played a part in developing your music?
IM: Huge! I use my music as therapy. We will jot down our deepest darkest secrets in a song, and then say “listen to it” and the weird part about musicians, it's like, we can go in front of a camera and go in front of a crowd and be fine but when we're in our rooms alone...the real person comes out. At the end of the day like we're real people, we got to go home, turn the lights out and be in the dark alone with our thoughts like everybody else. I write everything that I feel. I revisit old feelings that I haven't gotten over yet, but now as a 29 year old man that has learned some coping mechanisms, I revisit them in my songs and I put myself back in that situation. I'm like “Damn I remember how I felt then.” But I also can look at it and be like, “you don't feel that way anymore” like looking at growth from what you know what you came from.
Ian Matthew on his goals for his music.
IM: I feel like there's been times where a song I made might not do as well on the streams, but you'll get that one DM that's just like “hey man this song really touched me and it really helped me out through this time or something.” All the money we spent on that song, even if it didn't come back...worth it, because to me I think about all the artists that did that for me in times where I just need something to listen to. If I could do that for somebody, that's payment enough. I'd rather help out a small ecosystem of people really well than a big ecosystem. That's part of my mental health journey of how do I take my issues and turn them into a positive.
I'm from the smallest city in Connecticut [called Torrington] and we've always been looked over. When I was growing up, there was no music studio that I could go to record my music that was readily available and wasn't super expensive or whatever. My city has a super big drug problem or opioid problem which I'm sure a lot of the rest of America does as well but like in my small city, it hit really hard. So my goal is to have more outlets for kids. I would love to be able to put a studio here, or like a music lab, find a way to get kids with instruments in their hands. So maybe that one time they pick up the instrument, they'd be like, “Oh, this is my thing.” Maybe we just saved them from a mental health issue, or drugs. My city is very artsy and there's a lot of opportunities out here right now which is amazing to see. I just want to keep that ball rolling. So I think just any way I could help my community and put some instruments in kids hands or give them a spot to record would be rad.
Losing My Mind music video filmed and edited by Esbei2x
AM: What’s the story behind your song “Losing my mind?”
IM: It was actually one of the mental health songs where I took all of the ideas in our head that get put into the mental health category...the anxiety, the stress, the depression, the addiction... whatever it may be and I took it as if you could take it out of your head and now it's a person. If all of that was an actual being that I could yell at and be like “Yo, this is what you did to me. You made me lose my mind. You made me think that I was drowning.” The craziest part about it is that it's just like a battle that you can't fight back. I think the most important line in that song was “Somebody throw me a line, I think I'm too deep.” Although it's crazy, it's like okay, here's where I'm losing my mind...I'm going to call for help, somebody throw me a line. Whether it be a friend, your parent, your spouse, a therapist. Just saying like “hey I can't do this shit alone.” There are those people that have it figured out, but a lot of us don't. So that was basically a personification of if I could talk to these feelings and kind of describe the struggle with it but also, you know, lend that little piece of “You can ask for help.”
Are there differences from when you first started as an artist versus now?
IM: Oh my god, yeah. Like I touched on earlier about listening to older music. I did a lot of hip hop. And being young, some of the things that I would speak about I would never speak about now because I've learned that maybe it's not the best thing. Maybe it's like promoting something negative. I have a daughter now so a lot of the lines that I would write that were more sexually explicit. I wouldn't put that out there now. I definitely care more about what I'm writing and look at what I watch or what I don't watch. When I do watch a movie, I watch it with the captions. Every line in that movie is supposed to be there, whether it's the background noise or the conversation that these people are having behind them. To add to the overall ambience or the essence of the movie. And I think it's the same thing with the song. I don't want to just say anything because it sounds good. If it doesn't mean anything, what are you getting out of it?
AM: Do you have any future projects coming up?
IM: Yeah, actually! They're all coming together for the overall brand but just more and more singles. We're going to start working possibly on an acoustic project, which is all unplugged. Just taking all the records that we have now, stripping them down. So I think that might be like the next music project. I just started co-hosting a podcast called “Ben Nose Nothing” and that's really fun. I have two or three singles ready to rock. So we're just preparing for the rest of the year right now. I got the music video for “One Night Only” that's probably going to come out next week. We got new merch on the way [“Share music with your friends” shirts]! A bunch of stuff that we're just closing up all the loose ends on right now but it's all going towards like the main Ian Matthew brand.
There's a lot of other people that have been like, ‘Hey, I couldn't put that into words, but you did’ and I'm like oh that's dope. I'm glad I could do that for you. You know, the coolest way to connect with people.
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