With Prizefighter just out of the press, it was a great occasion for me to have a quick chat with Matthew Mayfield. Process, ghosts, and rock’n’roll were at the core of our conversation. Interview.
PRIZEFIGHTER AND PROCESS
Unis Son: Prizefighter seems to be very personal and it’s very different from Gun Shy, your previous album, which was softer in some ways. What was the process of writing Prizefighter?
Matthew Mayfield: To be honest, it just kind of fell in my lap. It’s the longest I’ve ever gone between records, five years, I think. We had the pandemic and budget issues and all kinds of stuff, a lot of changes… The whole theme of the record, it’s just about getting back up. Having been knocked down by this business for 21 years, the songs kind of just fell in my lap. Undertow, Fumes, Die in a Ghost Town… some of those were there before. Probably a month or two before we were going in the studio, I had a bunch of songs that I thought were garbage and then this whole batch of good ones just kind of came to me.
US: Yeah, and Die in a Ghost Town, which I think is one of my favourites, you ask: do you believe in ghosts? So now it’s time to answer that question: do you believe in ghosts?
MM: I do, I do! Well, I’ve never seen one. But I made another record years ago called A Banquet for Ghosts, and I think they’re the things that just won’t leave you alone. The stuff from the past. Even if they are people that are living on this planet and that still have a heartbeat. I think that haunts you more than anything, having to give up on a relationship or give up on something that feels close to you. That’s the ghosts I know.
US: I’ve seen that you’ve mentioned on Instagram, that ‘rock and roll is still alive, but not well’. So how do you feel about rock in the current music industry and the industry in general? What would you like to see more of?
MM: To me, rock and roll is not just a sound, it’s an attitude. My heroes are mostly rock artists. And I consider that you could go to Johnny Cash and say he’s as rock and roll as it gets. He never really picked up an electric guitar. So, different. But I think there’s a rebellious nature to it. And everybody’s playing by the rules now. I made a hat and it freaked some people out because I used a red hat. It said ‘make rock and roll dangerous again’, not Make America Great Again. But it freaked people out. All I was trying to say was ‘yeah, you guys are going to freak out, but let’s make rock and roll dangerous again’. Make it fun, you know.
There’s just something about it that’s so soft and everybody’s just walking on eggshells all the time. And that’s not the rock and roll that I grew up with. That’s not the soul that I have. I don’t have a mean bone in my body. When you see a rock and roll band like nowadays, like Queens of the Stone Age or Foo Fighters, they’re killer. They’re amazing. But you don’t see enough of them. And they’re mostly catalog acts. They’re all bands that have hits. But you’re rarely seeing proper drums, bass, a couple of guitars and a singer doing that thing. It’s rare in my world. There are a lot of great rock and roll bands. But to me, I just feel we’ve lost some of it along the way. I am trying to bring it back.
ROCK SOULS
US: I feel we could be surprised in the coming years because it feels like it’s reviving, to me at least, from a non-creative point of view.
MM: I totally agree with that, 100%. And I think it’s coming back. It’s like, I mean, music just moves in cycles, you know. I want to be on top of that tidal wave when it starts crashing down on the pop scene. You know, it’s going to happen. It’s going to be a renaissance of sorts, a reckoning. And I’d love to be on the top of that wave when it comes crashing down. I’m not a snob, but there’s some stuff out there that I would like to see go away, I guess. I don’t think I’m alone in that.
But I think being a rock soul, it’s just something you’re born with. It’s something I’ve always loved, something I’ve always been just completely enthralled with, constantly trying to pick up that electric guitar. I’m a guitar player first, a songwriter second, and a singer because I have to be. I wrote the songs and there’s nobody else to sing them. I love dirty guitars, and arena shows and a lot of my favourite bands just have a recklessness to them that I think everybody’s playing a little too nice these days.
NOW PLAYING: DIE IN A GHOST TOWN
And I don’t mean you should be a jerk to your fans, or Axl Rose, you know what I mean? I love Guns and Roses, no offence, Axl, if you’re listening. Or Liam Gallagher. I love Liam. I think he’s amazing. People say he’s an asshole. I don’t care. They don’t make rock stars the way they used to. That guy is a rock star. There are parts of that that are really obnoxious. And there are parts of that that are the magic that is required. If Noel gets up there and starts singing all the Oasis songs, no one cares.
There’s a reason why Liam has to be the guy, you know? That feud and that Liam’s not-giving-a-shit-about-anything attitude… I love that. It comes off as arrogant, sure. But he seems to have a sense of humour about what he used to be. He talks about the same stuff I’m talking about, which is rock and roll stuff. So I’m certainly not playing stadiums like he is. But I think we’re cut from a similar cloth to some extent. I just don’t get in as many fights.
US: And speaking of bands and recommendations, do you have any recommendations or inspirations that you’d like for people to listen to?
MM: Oh, yeah. That list is long. I’m a fan first before I’m an artist. There’s some stuff happening from Alabama that’s really beautiful. Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit are really great. My friend John Paul White is great. He was in that group, The Civil Wars, with Troy Williams. And they’ve got a really honest Americana, poetic nature about them.
Then, some of the catalog stuff I’ve been listening to it’s all over the place. I sent in a playlist the other day to someone who was asking. They’re like ‘man, what’s wrong with you?’ It was, like, Fleetwood Mac, and then it was Pearl Jam, and then it was Jason Isbell, a song called Speed Trap Town. And then it was Brandon Flowers’ Crossfire. I just love great melodies. That’s what gets me. What intrigues me the most about music is if it sticks. You feel like you’ve tapped into some kind of magic.
GETTING BACK IN THE RING
US: So, what’s next? Is it a tour? Do you have any plans for new music?
MM: Yeah, I’m definitely going to play this one live. It probably won’t be till late summer-early fall, just because there’s some booking stuff. You know, welcome to the music business. It’s always topsy-turvy, I guess. But I want to play this stuff live so bad. I’ve only played maybe one or two of them at shows. There’s not a song on that record that I wouldn’t want to play live. The record’s so fresh. We had this couple of really great videographers in there the whole time for every song. So we’re putting out video content all the time from the sessions and Die in a Ghost Town is the latest one.
And then there’s a song called Monsters. That’s kind of a deep cut, just me and a guitar and Paul Moak, the producer, just went down on keys next to me. It’s a one-take kind of thing. I put it at track six because it is the beginning of side B.
I really want to just keep leaking those songs out. As an artist that’s made a lot of records, there’s a lot of songs that I kind of stay away from. That could be better ones. But in this record? I don’t have any of those. You know, there’s nothing that I feel couldn’t be a single in its own right, and that’s the best feeling in the world as an artist. There’s no filler, but I might be the only person who feels that way.
NOW PLAYING: BELLE OF THE BALL
Then, yeah, I’m always writing. Even if it’s garbage. I live in a little two-bedroom condo, nothing special, but in the second bedroom, during the pandemic, I felt like Scrooge McDuck, with the typewriter and just like ‘ah, that’s garbage’. Throw it over your head. I usually write everything by hand, but I did that and I left all the garbage on the floor. And then I came back when I was ready to, I knew I had something special. And those scraps of paper are the ones that gave me the lines I needed.
I legitimately was like ‘this is garbage. I don’t want anything to do with it. I’m throwing it into the corner’. And then you go in there and you crumple it out and look at it and go ‘oh, dude, those are the two lines that I needed for this song’. So, that’s just how I write. I enjoy it, that’s my favourite part. The writing in the studio is my favourite part, but, I also really, really miss playing live for people. So, I’m excited to get back in the ring.
SWEET MEMORIES
US: For the final question, what’s your earliest musical memory?
MM: Ooh. So… I grew up in a house where I lived in the same room with my brother on bunk beds and I was on the bottom bunk. My dad would play guitar all the time and he has a great voice. He’d never tell you this. But he’s got a beautiful voice. Great guitar player, really good. He showed me my first chords when I was a little kid. But when I was five or six years old, I could hear him playing Neil Young, singing Old Man, Blackbird by The Beatles, or Sweet Baby James by James Taylor, a lot of folk stuff, on this old 76 Martin HD 28, which I currently am sitting next to as we speak – we traded. I gave him one for Father’s Day and he gave me that one back.
So, just hearing him sing through those thin walls, I would cry. I mean, I’d weep and I had no idea what he was singing about. When you’re that age, you have no idea. We have no idea what Blackbird‘s about… but the sound of it was something that would make me cry my eyes out. And if my mom or somebody came in the room and be like ‘what’s wrong?’ I’d be like ‘I don’t know’. I’m not sure, but I think that’s the power melody. Even if you don’t know what the words are, and you’re a little boy in his bunk bed, the power of music is right there. Because I wouldn’t cry for any other reason other than the sound.
There’s a reason why music is a universal language, but as cheesy as that sounds, I think it’s honest. There are kids, that I see at shows, that are young. They’ll come with their parents and they don’t know what I’m singing about. They know I’m singing from a place of honesty. I’m delivering a passionate convicted performance and they can hear it. You could see it in their eyes and sometimes you can see it behind their eyes. You could tell that there’s something that’s ringing, there’s a bell that’s ringing and I love that. ‘Cause I see my young self in those kids.
All I want is to make sure that the next generation of kids that are coming up know that they don’t have to be sorry for whatever their style is, whatever their feelings are, whatever they want to sing about. They’re allowed to. I’m very grateful to see that. It’s just fun to see people light up the way I used to, you know.
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I’d like to thank Matthew Mayfield, for taking the time to chat with me about these wonderful themes, and Caroline for making this conversation happen. Prizefighter is available on all platforms.
