So you're gonna be playing here in Chicago tomorrow at the park west. Yes. We haven't been at the park west in a while. But you have played there before?
I have, yeah. We used to play there pretty often in sort of my heyday in the 90s and then kind of occasionally over the years but I haven't been there at least in a few years. I think if I'm not mistaken. What do you like to do when you're in Chicago?
Well the best thing in Chicago is this place Chicago music exchange because they have like the most guitar pedals in the world and a lot of great stuff to look at. So I usually have to stop there for something. I'll stop there tomorrow. But there's a lot, you know, the people there are great.
Chicago is a great place for me. It was if not one of the best cities, if not my best city kind of during when I had the most success. And so I feel really tight with it. Plus it's the big city of the Midwest and I grew up in Nebraska.
So Chicago was the closest thing, you know, serving not as far as the coast. So I've always had really good fans in Chicago and sometimes we've done giant outdoor things and sometimes we play little teeny places. Usually these days we play kind of a little bit smaller place than park west. So this will be a nice change I guess.
And you have a new record coming out but it's not available just yet. Is that correct? That's correct. It's not available probably till the beginning of next year.
It was a Kickstarter what I want to say, campaign that I did to pay for the record. I've worked really, really hard on it. I recorded 38 songs and I'm kind of putting together what the record is going to be out of that right now and then I'll be mixing it in the fall and I'm doing some other incentives for the Kickstarter thing that I owe people also in the fall. I'm making like a bronze cat and some 3D print things and stuff that you could get when you pledge money.
So are we going to at least maybe hear a few new tracks at the show tomorrow? No, probably not. We, you know, I probably won't start learning and playing things till we have the CD there for people to get, you know. But we do have a new lead guitar player on this show with this guy named John Mormon.
It's M-R-E-M-E-N. I guess you don't have to write that down because we're on the radio. That's okay. So you've said talking to people who aren't necessarily.
But that makes it kind of an extra fun show for us because we've just started playing together and he played a bunch of stuff on my record. And so I think we'll have a good time. It's a mixture of things from kind of all through my career. So the last time you came out with the record was in 2011.
And now these days, streaming services are very popular. So like how do you feel about that? Like the new records coming out and probably you'll have lots of fans wanting to stream it and listen to it. But what about, you know, actually buying the physical copy of the sound vinyl?
I mean, like how do you feel about that? Who knows? You know what I mean? In a way the records are like a cool thing for us to be able to go out on tour to promote.
You know, it's like touring is mostly how we make money these days. But I have to say, I've always been for technology. I know it's upsetting when it changes things we love and everything. I love being able to go on, I subscribe to Apple Music and I can just go on and hear anything they have whenever I want.
And that's an incredible thing and everybody's going to do it. Right. So yeah, it is daunting to think about that. I hadn't really quite considered that that had changed a lot since 2011.
But I think you're right. It has become much more into the mainstream. So I don't know. I guess I don't plan to make any large amount of money from when I put out a record.
But we will make, you know, nice vinyl and it will be available all the other places to purchase online, et cetera. Well, I also appreciate the fact that you came out recently with a 4 CD box set for your Under the Covers set that you did with Susanne. Oh, yeah. That was great.
Yeah, there's British label, I think. They used to put out like Elvis Costello records when I was a kid. And so I thought that's awesome. I know that label.
But yeah, they put out a box set. That's really cool because it kind of caps our whole thing for shoutback remaking those records. And we'll probably do something else at some point, but not under that deal. You know, it's nice to see it kind of wrapped up in a box.
But it was just the packaging, the booklet, the graphics. Like everything was just really wonderful with that. I love all that stuff. And you guys put in these little detailed notes about every song.
And I mean, I really appreciate that as a fan. But I mean, I hope other people appreciate it too. I mean, are you a record collector? I am not a record collector like you'd think of one that really was.
On the other hand, I have quite a bit of vinyl and I have friends that are hardcore vinyl people. I've done things like on my last record, I believe it was on modern art, we actually mastered it onto vinyl and then recorded the vinyl back in. So that's what the download or CD is, the sound of the vinyl. Okay.
I do like vinyl and what it does. And you know, but the really great thing about it and it's funny because you're matching it is in the past, before there was the internet and it's just no one can imagine it now. I think we can barely imagine it now. Those of us that came from before it, you know.
But there was all you had with that album in your bedroom if you came home from school and you didn't want to like talk to your parents or whatever. That's all you had and it was such a world and because it was the larger art, you could kind of really immerse in it and hold it and look at it. So I do really think it's cool that hardcore music people now get into getting the vinyl of things because it's a chance for us to give them the cool thing we used to get, you know. Oh yeah, for sure.
And when you recorded on all these songs with the season of house, I mean, there's like 60 songs on this box. Did you guys come up with, I mean, were there any songs that like didn't work or? Yeah, there were songs. Yeah, there's I mean, mostly we made everything work that we wanted to.
We did quite a few more songs for the 70s one. It was originally supposed to be a quote double album, unquote, which just met a lot of songs and we recorded somewhere up into almost like I recorded for my new record, maybe 35, 36, seven songs for that. And then they were mad it was taking us so long and so they said, well, just give us a single CD. And so we had to kind of choose what was best at that time and put it out.
So there are a bunch of other things from that. And I know because she brings it up with me a lot that she would like to, you know, get that stuff out and mix it and finish it and put it out. But I can't say when or exactly how we would do it. Okay.
So when you came out with the record girlfriend, that came out in, I think, like 91. That's correct. So was like, I mean, I would like to think that college radio supported Matthew's week back then. I mean, what are your thoughts on college radio?
I mean, it's still around. I mean, well, that's the thing. Like, I don't really know college radio now, I would say, but I would hope it's like it always was, which is a place where people actually played something like that. And so rare now, of course, you know, I'm sure it's probably only on college campuses.
It was a huge deal. Like when I was a teenager and the groups I liked when they started making it like I think of REM, because I knew those guys when I was really young and they, when they got in the back of Rolling Stone, they would have a college chart, top 10. And when I remember when they got to number one on the college chart, you know, but it was like the stuff we liked was only on the college chart back. And even as a girlfriend became successful, it was very much college radio support.
And what they, there was a magazine called CMJ probably still exists in some web form, maybe not, that was like the gold standard of college radio tracking and everything. And the guy who signed me at my label had run CMJ at one point. So he was really tight with college age people. And the fans, even in the record industry of the record tended to be the younger and our people, the older people didn't quite get it, you know.
But because it went well on college radio, it got up to the top of that and then they were able to get it on some alternative radio and rock radio. And what we witnessed happen was right around that time, you started to get stuff off the college chart starting to make this new sort of realm of radio. And then there was just a ton of stuff that came along with me around me after me. And it became what we knew as alternative rock radio, which at the time was super fresh sounding, but also a really wide range of stuff, all kinds of different groups.
You know, you could have a country type thing or like XDC from England or like, you know, who's going to do the replacements or, you know, other things that were a lot different. And so you kind of had this wonderful, the stations themselves would be particularly good in a place that where that was working really well. And Chicago is one of those XRT, you know, there was one in DC that was just unbelievable station for a while. And so it became like commercial, I guess, you know, and then as the 90s went on, I mean, all I remember what really changed is stuff became more like Pearl Jam imitation bands and then it kind of that moment of the sort of screaming rock like Limp Biscuit, I don't know what you call that genre, exactly.
But you know what, I don't know how old you are, but it was this time when everything became bad and kind of hard to fathom what it was or whatever. And so it's kind of after then I lose track of what exactly they are. I guess it became, then it became adult alternative or type stations, but they tend a little more used to tend a little more toward kind of Americana sort of thing, maybe not play so much rock, but both those formats are great for me. And you know, people listen to the satellite radio too, or only the kinds of music they like.
But you know, Cal Radio is still pretty important. We still get a lot of young bands who look to us to, you know, play their songs because no one else is. That is awesome. Yeah, because no one else is.
Right. That was the best and going to college campuses, you know, because it's like more outlawed, not like, you know, super serious. And I always dug that. And if I have time, I still sometimes go, you know, to places, but it's nice to know from you that it's going strong because it's the thing that no one will ever stop it being populist, you know.
Right. Well, the instructors don't start giving you playlists. No, they don't. So thanks so much for taking out the time to talk to us, but I do have one last question for you.
Okay. And I just want to know, like, what do you like to listen to when you're driving alone and you have some time yourself? What do you like to listen to at high volume? Oh, wow.
Well, I'll listen to stuff I'm working on at high volume. If I'm driving to kind of get a sense of what's going on in the mixing I'm doing or whatever in the car. Although I have learned to work at lower volume sort of in the studio and get it figured out. The sad answer really to your question or interesting or whatever is that I usually won't play anything.
I will opt for silence, like if I'm on a car trip now, I think because I just spent so much time doing music. It's like then I don't want to sort of hear more, but it's more pronounced when I'm working on my own stuff. If I'm far from like finishing an album or something in between, then I might listen to just cool older records that I like. I'm trying to think there's this pretty things record I like to turn up really loud.
It's an album called Parachute that is just kind of cool and organic, but really interesting to these records. But there's all kinds of stuff, probably more from that era. It'd be what I'd be cranking up. Cool.
Well, thanks so much. I'm really looking forward to the show tonight. Oh, great. I hope we see you there.
Great. Thanks so much, Matthew. Have a great day. Thank you.
Okay. Take care. Bye.