more so when drinking? moshing all up on them concerts. this is the only photographic evidence i could find. i’m on the right. standing to the left of the great ben meyercord. i think this was at a sound judgement show, and i think copy was playing, but i remember sallie ford playing later and being a totally fucking amazing highlight of the happenings.

i do not have any vinyl releases. i would love to have some vinyl releases, but i do not have any vinyl releases. i find records to be so much cooler than cds that i feel really weird about trying to sell people my songs on cds, which is part of the reason i don’t really have any cd releases either. i never buy cds. or, i rarely buy cds. i sort of rarely buy records either, but if i’m going to buy some music i’d very much prefer that it be on vinyl and i think i sort of project that feeling onto the people who i think would be interested in listening to my songs.

that being said, making a record is really scary. i’m scared of having a concrete piece of work (or anything really) that i’m responsible for. it’s super scary. like, i want things to be really good, and i feel like things that i have done up to this point fall pretty far short of whatever that hope is.

actually, that’s kind of a funny thought. i’ve had some people ask me about how it feels to go play shows, like, me and a microphone in front of people, singing a bunch of these sort of super personal songs about some really vulnerable parts of my world, really transparently presenting all these sad, scary moments from my life and all that, and that is a seriously weird thing and sometimes it’s more difficult to deal with than others, but, for the most part, when i’m playing songs in front of people, i’m just trying not to fuck up, trying to sing stuff right, and i don’t so much feel like the song is something to be embarrassed by, because the “performance” or “recital” or whatever of the song is a much more immediate possible embarrassment. but whatever happens, it happens that night, in that moment, in that room, under those circumstances. so, even if i come off sounding like an idiot and everything goes to shit and everyone knows it’s shit and doesn’t like it, and doesn’t understand who the fuck let me play, after the show’s over, the embarrassment is over. anybody who saw that happen might forever hate me, and i might have a hard time not hating myself, but i can go find people who weren’t there that night, and i can hopefully figure out a way to fix whatever i fucked up, or at least try again. it’s a temporary fuckup.

when you give someone a recording, it’s a much more vulnerable thing, because you’re saying “here is this thing that i made. i have had all of the moments that i have been a person to create a thing, and i created this thing. this is my thing.” so if that thing is shit, there aren’t any excuses for it. it’s just a shitty thing. and it’s not a shitty thing for a moment, for a night, it’s a shitty thing for as long as the thing exists, which, with a record, or with a cd, is longer than either you or the person you’re giving the thing to is going to be alive. fucking terrifying level of responsibility.

i know that there are only 300 hypothetical copies of the record, so, when compared with the universe, the relative impact of the shittiness of the shitty thing is pretty nonexistent, but when the context is just me and my silly little attempts at meaningful output, it makes up a huge percentage, becomes a large part of the story of me. fuck, man.

lately, i’m trying not to think about this, because i want to make a record.

<3,
-mat