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Matt Pond - Wild Heart (Stevie Nicks Cover) New Tour Dates6.27...

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 12:58:32 -0400

Matt Pond - Wild Heart (Stevie Nicks Cover)

New Tour Dates
6.27 Dallas, TX @ The Bellmont Hotel
6.28 Fort Worth, TX @ Live Oak Music Hall http://bit.ly/1210PKe
6.29 Austin, TX @ The Parish http://bit.ly/10nxtrD
6.30 Norman, OK @ Opolis Production
7.1 St. Louis, MO @ The Firebird http://ticketf.ly/17LyWZa
7.2 Chicago, IL @ The Bottom Lounge http://tktwb.tw/bUcdGe
7.3 Minneapolis, MN @ Triple Rock Social Club http://bit.ly/Z5B8Ze
7.6 Nashville, TN @ The High Watt http://tktwb.tw/ZE1MTK
7.7 Birmingham, AL @ Bottle Tree
7.8 Atlanta, GA @ The Earl http://bit.ly/Z5BQ99

Dear K. (This miniature synthesizer’s consumed the last two hours. It’s definitely...

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 23:55:12 -0400

Dear K.

(This miniature synthesizer’s consumed the last two hours. It’s definitely possible to love and hate something at the same time)

Regarding your Tennessee Williams quote, we can’t all be ON ON ON. That’s just sleight of mind.

I know people who are consumed with what they do, swamped and scurrying. I can’t compete. I like letting things roll around in the old brain-box.

It’s quite possibly an incarnation of laziness. It’s also fermentation — simple mind, simple time, simple wine. I just don’t think I was made for ON ON ON.

Who cares if we lose a little time. I’m not worried about dying.

I’m worried about living. That’s what worries me. The future’s proving to be a disconcerting destination.

My slight pessimism for humanity is my own personal optimism. Death isn’t terrible = I love sleeping in the afternoon.

There’s boatloads of lost time down here. I didn’t even get out into the endless sunshine until it was starting to set.

Ran five miles, flipped off some swerving jerks, watched a few episodes of Strangers With Candy and now I’m waiting til tomorrow.

Tomorrow, I’ll pick up Chris at the airport in Orlando. Then we’ll practice and play on Record Store Day. Sunday, we’ll shoot a video for the Stevie Nicks song.

The track goes up on the Onion AV Club tomorrow. Thank you, thank you for the suggestion and guidance. Yes and yes.

The video’s going to be a love letter to Orlando. It’s not the city “they” say it is. A better version of myself could’ve spent a good amount of time there. I believe it’s like a sultry Baltimore.

My outward existence is only revealed in sudden segments. I live in these times and hibernate for the rest.

See? It’s only eleven thirty and I could so easily sleep. Good night.

sleep.

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 22:19:11 -0400

I have a thing for cotton sheets. Even in the summertime when it’s too hot to have anything touching skin, I love at least one calf wrapped up in a clean cotton sheet.

Apart from that and a few other scrappy facts, this life is mostly a mystery to me.

I’ve tried to identify the world with crisp scientific bulletins. Which are at best, fumbling, nearsighted misconceptions:

“Who’s that lady?” (a dread-locked, hippie male)

“There, a black cat!” (a mottled crane)

“Look, an oak tree!” (a streetlamp)

There are personal truths which maintain enough of an orbit for me to reasonably revere. They work well in songs but make for lousy conversation.

For example, the best flashback is the simplest. Upstate New York, five Augusts ago, sprawling in bed on a Saturday afternoon, two degrees from being a full-on derelict as an unexpected guest of my house-sitting friend, D.

Chlorine mane and a forsaken mind, there was some kind of spectral, humid force conducting the curtains, the katydids and the grasses out past the barn.

That right there is where half of my brain eternally stays. I guess if you lend me some swim trunks and slightly suggestive choreography, I’m good to go.

I love cotton sheets, I write songs to be heard, I write words to be connected and underneath all of this, I’ve tried to keep my ego in the well of low expectations.

Because everyone knows, a drowned ego can make an amazing pool float.

Luxury.

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 15:14:00 -0400

Dear Luxury,

It’s been a little over a week since we stopped spinning around the country. I’m on my stomach in bed, glaring at the trees until they give me back my spring.

I imagine you’re in Boston, mostly loved and mildly mistreated. Isn’t that the way we all want it, anyway? Leave perfection to the pademelons. Tigers need trouble.

My most vivid recent memories are of your stripes, alongside the flashing backdrop of a recklessly speeding motor vehicle. Remember staring into the empty east outside San Diego? Or on stage, under the frenetic strobe lights of Seattle? Chicago was a half dream, half nightmare. When I woke up, you were always there.

Tours, they feel endless. The days and nights rattle and resonate with exhausted energy. Explosions of guitars, tempers and impulses. Absolutely arbitrary and yet somehow everything makes complete sense.

And then *snap*, the thread abruptly breaks and there are no more shows.

Tigers and people you’ve gotten to know better than your own kinfolk disappear and scatter back to their settlements.

The van slows to a stop, the sheets become home.

I will never say that I miss anything. My main rule is to keep moving forward. Don’t look back, ever. (I repeat my mantras with my foot on an imaginary stump, while chewing a blade of make-believe hay)

But I miss my days with tigers. I miss feeling faster than time. I might even betray myself further and say that I miss those singular strangers who became my temporary friends.

Take care. And remember, it’s always ok to eat your owner.

Adjö. m.

Valentine's Day Eve/American Analog Set

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 21:44:54 -0500

Kentucky. We’ve been playing shows and running around in circles for almost two weeks. Snowy sleepless zombies, my northeastern upbringing isn’t a match for the gnarlier nights.

Still, the test is how well a human being can bring it together backstage. To let it all out, without self-destructing. To sprint without a spill.

We’ve loved every one of the cities we’ve played in, so far. From Portland, all the way to this hotel in Louisville. If that love doesn’t always echo clearly, please consider the gravelly-voiced source.

It’s Valentine’s day eve. Tomorrow, I’m either going to be my own worst enemy or my own best date.

I choose the latter. As much as it goes against my hypercritical nature, I’m choosing the hotness of optimism. All to the sweet songs of the American Analog Set’s, Know by Heart.

Yes please.

Vermont

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 22:53:51 -0500

We used to try to push our nights as far as they would go. Against the grain of reason and down dirt roads, pointlessly going after some kind of lucidity that was always beyond our reach.

We’d drive out to Old City Falls in Strafford, run through the woods and hopefully get caught in the ribs with barbed wire. Doing that was the sign of something far greater. Losing your breath and small puncture wounds in the chest were the reminders we could survive. As long as long as you could move your fingers, as long as I could move my toes.

It’s adventure I’m still senselessly tracking. Even if that means typing on a Monday night to see how far I can take the unsophisticated truth. From a temporary bedroom, the mind goes on forever.

I don’t want to know the future. Sometimes, I don’t even want to know next week. Somehow, that makes everything possible.

Upside-down optimism is what keeps me alive. And when I hit myself on the back of the head, it means I’m happy.

Our tour starts in two weeks. And I have no idea what’s going to happen.

I’m happy.

In anticipation of the new album coming out on 2/5, we’ve...

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 09:48:04 -0500

In anticipation of the new album coming out on 2/5, we’ve partnered with Noisetrade to give away an acoustic EP called ‘the ‘Natural Lines’. Get it for FREE here: http://noisetrade.com/mattpond

practice.

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 23:43:54 -0500

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ivIGDrdcWI&feature=youtu.be

These are my best friends.

bayern curve.

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 15:13:05 -0500

It’s kind of like building a bayern curve in your own back yard.

You can jump up and down on the rails, but you have no idea what’s going to happen until you hit full speed.

Along a similar wavelength, the motion of a tour is what I’ve been waiting on for over a year.

To be honest, it’s not like I’m head over heels for every mile of a wayward life.

All my greatest mistakes come from the long whorls of playing shows. I’ve slept in many hotel room closets as if they were makeshift panic rooms.

Still, I’ll call them great mistakes because I’ve never been familiar with flawlessness.

Each chip in the veneer is another chance. The more flaws, the more shots there are at the unsettling word “love”.

Check out the lyric video for ‘Love To Get Used’. ...

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 18:01:43 -0500

Check out the lyric video for ‘Love To Get Used’. This was directed by Philippe Grenade at Fortune Films. http://www.fortunefilmsusa.com/

You're playing Boston soon. This makes me happy. Hope all is well.

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 12:32:41 -0500

It definitely makes me happy as well.

Since I was born only few hours north of the MA, it’ll be the closest I’ve been to home in years.

See you in a couple months. Yes. m.

Sharon Van Etten and The xx.

Sun, 02 Dec 2012 13:21:21 -0500

Today, I’m struck by how much I believe Sharon Van Etten. I believe The xx, too. So that when I listen, it’s like I’m listening to people who are out scavenging for truth. Or more.

It’s not easy to question the core of your beliefs in front of an audience. I feel lucky when the needle brings it down to my ears.

Crabs.

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 21:35:05 -0500

Friday nights are my most downplayed nights.

The expectation is too heavy. Did I properly conquer the week? Do my fingers ache enough from practicing? Am I appropriately hoarse from belting it out? Is my hard drive full of freshly written jams? Are my plans sufficiently triumphant? Where is my trophy?

Instead, I spend most Fridays at home alone. Staring at my horseshoe crab shell in silent mutual respect.

My plans are to wrestle the dogs, listen to some Otis Redding, drink three beers and fall asleep trying to tackle The Immoralist for the hundred millionth time.

When we’re on tour, every night will be a Friday night. Taking it to the limit won’t merely be an Eagles song, it’ll be our life. A perpetual motion machine, forbidding privacy, inviting irresponsibility, impossible to stay awake and impossible to sleep. For better or for worse, it’s the place where I’ll hide in a hotel bathroom and think up the first lines to our next album.

Until then, it’s just me and my crab.

* Fun fact. The only trophy I ever won was for just showing up to a beginner’s ski race in New Hampshire. Because we were all winners.

PA

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 10:11:00 -0500

On a recent podcast of All Songs Considered, the show starts out with Messrs. Boilen and Hilton discussing one the Rock Bible’s golden rules for naming bands:

Don’t name a band something you’ll be sick of explaining for the rest of the band’s existence.

Back in 1998 I came out of the gate flailing fast.

Since the beginning, I’ve never been able to connect the idea of this band’s name with the right words in my mouth.

I think it partially meant how I got loud, as in a public address system. It might’ve even been a vague nod to my favorite television detective, Magnum PI. But most of all, I believe it was a shout-out to Pennsylvania.

Philly was some strange magic. Down to the exact second Shangri-La came on my car stereo and the thought hit — that I wanted to transmit thorny personal messages through stately orchestrations.

My home was on the fourth floor of a 10,000 square foot commercial loft in Chinatown. Technically, it was unlawful to live there. Therefore, if you’d like to think of the past version of me as a low-level, full-time fugitive with an eyepatch, you are welcome to do so.

There were some unbeatable dance parties, seemingly endless spins across that painted blue floor. Inevitably accompanied with unstoppable social disintegrations, unsurpassable disorder. I was a janitor as much as I was the Justin Timberlake of my mind.

Our practices were the pieces I remember the most. Since there was no limit to the noise we could make, we’d drink cold-drip iced coffee from Ray’s and race through our set at hardcore speeds.

The loose threads of a song coming together with a shaky crew of your closest friends is about as hardcore as it gets.

Thing is, after a decade of living in Brooklyn and Bearsville, it seems disingenuous to keep dragging those vestigial letters after my name.

I still love Pennsylvania. I still believe in performing songs as a migrating ensemble. But there was a point last year when I had to stop arguing with myself. Nobody wins. And at least one of me has got to make something of himself.

It feels good. It feels like I’m putting the past in it’s place. I get to leave the missteps and the mistakes where they belong. I get to start thinking about all those albums I still want to make.

I would never claim I could do this on my own. Chris Hansen’s put his blood, sweat and tears into rocking with me, into tolerating me.

In February, when we release our album and go on tour, I’ll be onstage with Chris and people named Tierney, Tre and Ranson.

They’re amazing people.

Each one of them could easily have a band named after themselves.

For now, they’ll do me the honor of standing with me under the temporary shelter of some songs about the lives inside our hands.

Saw you at UC Riverside last year at lovely show at The Barn. Please come back.

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 11:16:51 -0500

Coincidentally, a college sports score flashing through my computer screen this morning made me think of that show at The Barn.

Even though I was still stumbling around on my crutches, that was a good night.

Thanks. yes. m.

Absurdly glad you're coming to Columbus, but shows at the Wexner Center are almost always OSU students only (I am not a student). If I can't weasel my way into a ticket, any way I could get on a guest list or something of the sort, please?? Dying to see you; Columbus is my home.

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 21:30:29 -0500

Understood. Write to me at mppa@mattpondpa.com the week before the show. We’ll find a way to get you into the show.

See you in Columbus. Yes. m.

Hi Matt, I just want to know if you will play in Montreal during the year!?? Thanks and I hope your next cd will be amazing!

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 20:43:34 -0500

As far as I understand, the plan is play everywhere.

Since Montreal is obviously one of my favorite cities, I’m hoping it’s sooner than later.

Thanks. Yes.

You should bring back your old tradition of touring with like, 7 different guitars. Always awesome to see the full rig on stage. Although I imagine it was a minor pain to keep them all in tune.

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 20:40:19 -0500

All those guitars were in different tunings. It was the drone of a dulcimer that I was trying to introduce to my songs.

These days — and with help — I’ve translate all my songs back in regular tunings. Everybody is happier.

I played Sugar Bush in the car for my sister when Spring Fools first came out. Not even knowing what it was called, she said it reminded her of Vermont. I love that song. But I love all your songs, so no big deal that it didn't end up on the album. I'll be seeing you in St. Augustine on the 7th, glad you're coming back here. Are all your shows going to be acoustic from now on?

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 20:28:39 -0500

Sugar Bush was written in Vermont and Mexico City. So you’re definitely on to something.

For the most part, our shows won’t be acoustic. But Chris and I like the occasional challenge of trying to kick ass with just a couple guitars.

See you in St. Augustine. And thanks. Yes. m.

US Tour w/ Jukebox the Ghost

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 12:54:31 -0500

We are most definitely thrilled to announce that we’ll be hitting the road with Jukebox the Ghost in Feb/March.

Tickets go on sale on November 30th. Also, feel free to grab our track ‘Love To Get Used’ here: http://on.fb.me/QM3tBa

Soon, I believe there’ll be more shows to announce for this tour and upcoming tours.

It’s on. Yes.
Feb 06 – Portland, ME – Port City Music Hall *
Feb 07 – Hartford, CT – Arch Street Tavern *
Feb 08 – New York, NY – Webster Hall *
Feb 09 – Baltimore, MD – Ottobar *
Feb 10 – Charlottesville, VA – The Southern Cafe *
Feb 12 – Cincinnati, OH – The Taft Theatre *
Feb 13 – Louisville, KY – Headliner’s *
Feb 14 – Columbus, OH – Wexner Center *
Feb 15 – St Louis, MO – Firebird *
Feb 17 – Nashville, TN – Mercy Lounge *
Feb 18 – Atlanta, GA – The Masquerade [Purgatory] *
Feb 19 – Ybor City, FL – Crowbar *
Feb 20 – Orlando, FL – The Social *
Feb 22 – Houston, TX – House of Blues Houston [Bronze Peacock] *
Feb 23 – Austin, TX – Stubb’s Jr. *
Feb 24 – Dallas, TX – House of Blues *
Feb 26 – Phoenix, AZ – Crescent Ballroom *
Feb 28 – Los Angeles, CA – The Echo *
March 3 – Portland, OR – Mississippi Studios *
March 4 – Eugene, OR – Cozmic *
March 5 – Seattle, WA – The Crocodile *
March 8 – Minneapolis, MN – Fine Line Music Cafe *
March 9 – Chicago, IL – Metro *
March 10 – Cleveland, OH – Grog Shop *
March 11 – Toronto, ONT – Horseshoe Tavern #
March 13 – Ithaca, NY – The Haunt #
March 14 – Boston, MA – Brighton Music Hall #
March 15 – Philadelphia, PA – Union Transfer #
March 16 – Washington, DC – 930 Club #

* = w/ Jukebox the Ghost, Matt Pond & Lighthouse and the Whaler
# = w/ Jukebox the Ghost, Matt Pond & The Spring Standards