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mattyslittleworld · 3 years

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dead mans coffee

July / 2020

Just woke up in my front seat, at a rest stop in Tennessee. First thing I saw was my ALL WILL SUFFER tattoo on my leg. A constant reminder of a different person. Tomorrow I’m getting coffee with Skrillex’s right hand man in Nashville, and I’m nursing a cold coffee in the heat watching this crazy lightning shoot across the skyline. It looks like the end of the world. Or some fucked up Lucero song. I must’ve pulled over for a second and closed my eyes and just dropped dead for hours while parked, I’m on the way to my hotel.

I am sitting in a diner on broadway in Nashville, TN. Nursing another shitty coffee booking meetings. As the texts come in I ignore them because they are covering the screen and distracting me from reading and studying how to properly sell my soul to the devil at the crossroads In Mississippi.

Clarksdale, Mississippi

12:30 am

Where Robert Johnson, Bob Dylan, and now, Matty Carlock, sold their souls to the devil.

December / 2020

Sitting in my home, in Hollywood, CA. I have the window open, and I hear the subtle sound of LA breathing, cars passing on the boulevard, sirens off in the distance, and a vinyl record of mine spinning at the lowest volume possible for me to still hear yet ignore it. I feel calm and at peace, although, it seems like a parallel feeling is war, confusion, imposter syndrome, abandonment, and skeptical. How could these two umbrellas of emotion coexist? Its very interesting. Ive been recording so much music that has nothing to do with my artist project. Its been liberating to put that aside for something greater. A new focus. Leaving artistry a vessel solely for extreme self expression and cathartic release.

July / 2020

Winding the day down, 10:30pm. With an open tab that reads “Tigers Jaw holiday show” - on pause. I open my Mac book on my couch, ready to go through stems and ratchet strip club beats, and it catches my eye. I press play and it leads me down a rabbit hole. I find myself watching “Never Saw It Coming” right into “Chemicals” / live in Boston. Like lightning it struck through my entire body. Maybe it was the 2 hour long conversation with Andy? And the memories we were trading. The bond we have over hard times, innocence, violence, literal blood on the pavement, years of freezing in the winter....nowhere to go. The people that were around - we made forever memories to these two songs. I right away, made a playlist that consists of “The Sun, I Saw Water, Chemicals, Never Saw It Coming, and Planes”. On top of that I found the live acoustic set they recorded and put out. When I was young on DIY tours, sleeping on floors, dirty as shit, poor as shit, a human being at the very best.....the uncertainty of my near future was so bleak. I remember Title Fight came out with their record “Shed” - and the song “where am I?” would lay me down on long drives, or on the floor. I’d watch white lines pass one by one by one into the abyss of nothing.

The line

“Another floor

A different ceiling than the night before

Where am I?

While you’re back home”

Missing my girlfriend at that current time, leaving, and just laying on a strangers floor thinking where am I while you’re back home? What am I doing? Maybe there’s nothing only this moment?

On the tigers jaw live EP they covered this acoustic and it’s everything right now. I am fortunate to live a block away from the sunset strip - and I grabbed my skateboard and just bolted into the night.

This SO SPECIFIC FEELING of these songs. That nobody in this environment will ever understand. It’s so beautiful. It’s so real. It’s so raw. It’s exactly what I need right now - as the past 3 weeks I’ve been living here have moved faster than the past 4 years. A loss of identity easily awaits you. It’s like you fight your whole life for that moment, to get to where you dream of, to get a shot. Scrape and crawl. And then reset. Since I’ve been living in Hollywood my day to day has been a huge mirror for me. The parts of myself I’ve been trying out run have caught me. Maybe all of this could coexist?

March 2nd / 2021

Spring is here. Its 75 degrees in LA and theres this new thing I noticed while driving around…..the overbearing smell of flowers in the air. It sounds like a movie. Its fucked up cause It felt like a funeral in my car. I was like what the fuck is happening? It smells like a small funeral in here….are my dreams dying? Am I dying? Is punk dead? Okay its just a Ryan gosling movie out here I guess. Whatever lets go. Here’s some hatrebreed. But the windows are down. My mood is different. My spirit is lifted, which ive been desperate to say. I automatically get punched in the guts with the feeling of driving so fucking fast, and blasting title fight. Skateboarding. Looooooooooong drives with fucked up friends to out of state shows no one will be at. Im listening to Stab by Title Fight - off the Shed LP. What a specific time in my life this brings back. That I usually talk about on this little throw up blog often. Spring is such a pivotal time in my life every year. Since covid shows stopped - human decency stopped - community stopped - my natural habitat was taken from me, and all of my friends and family. I remember living in New York in 2011. At the New Yorker. I was studying at the Institute Of Audio Research to be a janitor in my home town. Because that’s what they teach you. Instead of studying compression, and listening to washed up hacks talk to me about music, I would walk out my building onto 8th ave. B Line it Penn Station. Get on the LIRR and ride that shit right into the best LI shows every night I could. Id meet all my friends from Jersey / NYC / Philly and even Baltimore because it was so common to make it a priority to no matter what, drive hours on end to support a hardcore shows and to not lose touch with the hundreds around the country that you call family. Drive to Richmond for a shows on a Monday night, go off, hit a diner after with your new found tribe, then drive home, be back at 6 am, and just stumble into your bullshit job with a black eye or scratches all over you. It was all worth it. Probably quit that job anyway to go on tour with your friends band and live as gypsies for the entire summer too. Spring embodies this spirit for me. Church parking lots in Doylestown, PA - full of kids from all over the country, who left their problems in their hometown, to just get on the road with their best friends and basically start a new life. It is just amazing how formative those years were for a lot of my friends. I have people I met at shows from all over the country messaging me always checking in, and supporting, and sometimes it feels like I know them better than my first cousins, aunts and uncles. We were at war together. We fought against the world together. We found ourselves together. We created shit from nothing. Determination and passion. Oh no….Planes by Tigers Jaw just came on. You know the vibe. This shit just hits so different now as a pop / hip hop producer. This PA scene, mixed with NJHC, just stood me up and gave me confidence to have my own voice, my own thoughts, and to fight back. Something about being in a shitty car and it smells like dirty vans and like…..axe to cover up the smell. BELTING Basement and car moshing and almost driving off a bridge. Listen. I know every single blog is about this. But fuck you fight me. ITS CALLED SELF EXPRESSION GRANDMA. SO STRAP INTO YOUR BOOT THINGS AND ENJOY THE RIDE TO NOWHERE. Its been crazy living in LA. I live directly on Hollywood BLVD, on the Walk Of Fame. Where I was almost killed two weeks ago over someones gang that my ass is not in. My guy looked at me and said YO YOU MATTY? And I was listening to Taylor swift in my headphones walking back from Starbucks and it was so funny how different my energy was. I was like bro can you kill me already dude because these Taylor tones are so good that they gunna just end up killing me anyway. So perfect timing. I think the guy was mad at my friend to say the least lol. But every night its loud 808’s, the sounds of the city, amazing energy, and neon lights shining in from lit up billboards off the BLVD. Its such a culture shock for me. I feel like im too aggressive just from being east coast. But its just what it is. It took me a little to adapt to being in sessions and meetings with seasoned people in this industry who have major cuts and recognition. But I just learned to double down on myself, and be as authentic as I possibly can be. Theres nothing like crushing writing sessions in the pop realm, then turning off my shit, unplugging, and run into the night with my skateboard and old punk records. It’s almost like my own secret that is becoming my blood. I haven’t been communicating with the ones who like my music, have interest in what im doing, come to my shows etc - since I touched down here….I just unplugged….started writing HEAVY and decided to dedicate months to getting better, learning, becoming smarter, discovering a vision that’s much broader than what were sold, finding myself, making sure my wisdom is parallel to my age - if not wise beyond my years. A lot of artists and bands SING, PLAY, PERFORM, PROMOTE. But I have decided to WATCH, ATTEND, and LISTEN. Everynight I sit down with tea, unplug, and spin records on my turntable…in the dark, in my living room, alone….all kinds of records. From The National, to Springsteen, to Title Fight, to Hendrix, to the rare Troublemaker LP and 7” I have…..Sharon Van Etten, Jesse Malin…..ugh. Its just bliss. Pure bliss. Right now im drinking coffee and bouncing from listening to Into It Over It and American Football. I spent all last night rapping my ass off, mixing, and singing ref vocals for other people. It was so fun. Im finding a lot of my new material is this spirit im talking about - but over hip hop production. I want to tell my life story and combat the stereotypes of modern rap and pop music with true intentions and unique tones of untold stories that press, radio, and this market usually doesn’t get fed. Ive also realized a lot of music I was promoting over the past year to come out (prior to the pandemic) hasn’t come out….and I know people are questioning that….what is happening? So before covid I had German solo dates booked - and then I was going to the UK right after. I have a bunch of single drops lined up with music videos. Some you can guess with who. And then the pandemic hit and I canceled everything and decided to pivot my focus into my passion for songwriting and production, instead of sitting around “waiting for shows to come back.” I pretended that shows were never going to come back and doubled down on my career as a producer, that at the time, still is, moving forward at a faster rate than my artist shit. So I packed my shit after offers, and opportunity presented themselves. Touched down on a Tuesday, with meetings that Friday. Off to the races. In sessions that following Monday. Fast forward here we are. Hungry, learning, learnt, turned 30. Looking at the next decade like Mcgregor at the weigh in. Fight ready. Ive learned so much since the fall that all of the music I had planned on releasing, I loaded it back up, tore it apart, and re built it. So its not stale, so its not expired, so its not “then”….so its NOW. Which im so glad I did, and im doing. I don’t think ive been in the booth more. My mind is so stimulated by this wave im on. And its got me in a good place. Now that the spirit of spring is here, my mental health is going to be taking a big leap as well and im going to do everything I can to just flood all of this content. I think Never Meant by American Football is the best song ever made. Me and Mike were talking about doing a song together a few months ago and that would be such a trip for me.

I wanted to talk about my recent trip to Joshua Tree. I was invited by Christopher Thorn from Blind Melon to live at his studio for a few days to write together. I didn’t really know what to expect. I met him once or twice thru Clinch, and just around the Sea Hear Now circle back east, and I was familiar with No Rain (his hit). We got on the phone, picked a weekend where it’d work for both of us, got some covid tests, and boom. Packed my shit again (right off a flight back from New York, where I shot 3 music videos, and did 1 remote session in 2 fucking days), and drove out to the desert. There is no address so I had a map. It was epic. It was in the desert desert. Like THE DESERT FAM. Coyotes at night, snakes and shit. The air was so dry, your lips would get chapped to let you know death was right around the corner so you better man up baby boy. Beforehand - from all the traveling and flights, and burning myself out on videos and sessions, I found myself listening to a lot of acoustic Nebraska Springsteen type shit. John Moreland, or even like acoustic bayside, Lucero, Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits…..just pure music with no samples, not gridded, not sold, no machine, no click, just real live country music inspired by the human condition….of the earth. It was just speaking to my soul…..so when we booked this to get in the room together….man was I ready. I don’t think ive had an experience so fruitful to the soul. And ive played shows in Slovenia, and sipped espresso on a bridge that looked like a painting, staring at subtle mountain tops off in the distance like I was a character in some book. We started working at night and ran it up till like 3 am. As the sun came down the lights off in the distance miles and miles away were so clear because we were just the only life form around….and it would just shine into the studio windows and reflect on the perimeter making it seem like we were surrounded by New York City. It did a lot for my soul to play drums, acoustic, sing, play piano, shred electric, even mix a little. I felt like I made a very fast lifelong friend. Its been a minute since I got on with someone like that. We talked a lot about growing up touring. And wed finish each others sentences regarding topics that ONLY people like us would know. Like Subway being a life line for DIY touring, or the weird strange feelings of comfort from rest stops in the middle of nowhere at 4 am, the rest stop coffee that you get to just make the next 2 hours of the drive into town bearable. But then you see your boy from your band in the other aisle so you throw shit at him. Then you all stumble back into the van/bus and just disappear into the night. This shit was so needed for me. When Id wake up, id make espresso, and just sit out front and listen to Joe Rogan, at this random chair that was behind his studio, facing the mountains. Just endless property waiting to leave you 6 feet in the ground. I sat there and sipped my espresso, and just reflected on the long journey of my career. How many random moments like this ive found myself in since I was 15. In the middle of the desert where Springsteen hangs out with my heroes, off the strength of my songwriting. Or in Romania drinking coffee, fucked off, on a bench far from the venue, by random train lines in the pouring rain by myself. The farthest from humanity I can be. Or the random VFW hall in my head that I don’t even know where it is, with my little punk crew, who all smell like complete shit and cigarettes and soda, fucked off god knows where, just to finger point and sing along to this band we found on myspace that were in OUR hometown the weekend prior singing to our band. Theres just an endless string of memories that can go on forever, with stories that just fulfill a lifetime, of conversations that just make the white lines on I95 move faster. Or just everyone is quiet - reading a book - texting - exhausted from the night prior - and you just ABRUPTLY turn on teenage dream by Katy Perry SOOOO LOUD - take your shirt off and start dropping it like its hot from the passenger front seat, and catch a mid afternoon front flip stage dive into the backseat. From those youthful days of this underground spirit, to existing in a realm of pure monsters of my craft, I truly believe this next decade could co exist and be one for the books. Damn I feel good. Also me and Sasso started a book club called BSU and you can’t be in it because you probably read books and the only rule for our book club besides not speaking about book club is, you can’t read books. Okay im going to go buy a bike right now so I can ride It to Mexico and get abducted by the cartel and sold for bitcoin. FAREWELL EARTHLINGZ.

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