2012 has been an eventful year for Richmond’s own Matthew E. White. With an opening slot on the Mountain Goats’ nationwide tour, a budding record label, and the release of his critically acclaimed first solo album, White’s career is poised for the advances most musicians dream of. Released August 16th, White’s album Big Inner concludes years of musical and personal maturation for the multi-instrumental singer, songwriter, and producer. The most accurate description of Big Inner is that of a musical atonement; it leaves you feeling both deeply moved and refreshed. Take, for example, the song "Gone Away.” In his soft, mellow way, White sings the lines, "He will break your kingdom down, He will tear your kingdom down." At its zenith, the song develops into pure gospel. A full choir surfaces to pick up the intensity of lyrics that could be taken religiously or symbolically. There’s a sense of a modern day expiation of sins. White’s lyrics, in true gospel fashion, effuse the hope of redemption, and in my case, provide a light the end of the tunnel for someone with too many hang-ups. Powerful horn arrangements and a choir swathe White’s breathy vocals with soul. Upon first listen, it was hard to reconcile the sage, prophetic image formed in my head by the music with the fact that a 29 year old had composed and performed it.
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White’s most recent success makes it easy to overlook how many years it took for him to reach the point where a record like Big Inner could come together. To White, this solo project is the beginning of something much bigger: Spacebomb Records. A collective headed by White and three other Richmond musicians--Pinson Chanselle, Cameron Ralston, and Trey Pollard--Spacebomb plans to serve as much more than a record label. As White explains below, Spacebomb has a vision, and Big Inner is merely its first realization. White’s sincerity comes across in conversation just as it does on the album, as he manages to own the rare disposition in which talent and ambition converge with humility. I couldn’t help but feel inspired by my chat with White, as he related a lot of lessons about his previous musical projects and the trials he faced. Read on to find out about the future of Spacebomb Records, how one orchestrates a 32 piece musical performance, and why Big Inner couldn’t have been made anywhere but in Richmond.
You’re originally from Virginia Beach, but have lived in Richmond since college. How has living here shaped your career and more specifically, your sound?
I really think, especially with this record, it couldn’t have been made anywhere else. This record is basically acoustic, but may not come across that way. The only thing electric is the bass. When dealing with 30 or 40 musicians, as I was for the making of Big Inner, it really matters who they are. Thousands of people can do the same thing on the synthesizer, but when you have vocalists, strings and horn players, the actual sound is very dependent on who is playing. These people are Richmond people. It’s not like I’m hiring out of towners, going to Nashville, etc. Everyone on the record is from Richmond. The sounds you’re hearing are the are the sounds of Richmond playing music. I’ve been forming relationships over past years through Patchwork Collective and Fight the Big Bull to get people to believe in and trust in a project like this. To get that many people in the studio, the relationships are what really make it work. Big Inner is so Richmond-centered. We did everything here.
What has your life been like since the release of Big Inner? I heard your song on NPR’s World Cafe Live the other day and definitely felt a twinge of pride hearing a local artist. What was it like getting that sort of national press for the first time?
It’s been cool. It’s always good to feel like your work is being well received. Most things that have come out have been positive. The scope of things now is bigger with NPR, Pitchfork, and the New York Times. I have been teaching music lessons to families in the West End--that’s what I still do. It’s kind of surreal to go to these houses and be able to say, “Hey your music teacher is Rolling Stone.” Other than that, not that much has changed yet. I’m still doing what I do and trying to make it work, I just have a lot more going on. That said, if you get in the habit of deriving your self worth as a musician from reviews, it’s not good for your creative musical future. You don’t want to wake up and read a bad review and have that mess with your day. The success of the record is based on the fact that I was making this in a bubble to some extent. I want to keep my habits as far as making music and writing goes. It’s important to not deal with the press much in any other way than to enjoy it. I don’t want it to infiltrate my process.
At Hopscotch Festival, you played with a 32 piece band under the name “One Incantation Under God.” The influence of gospel pops through a lot on the album, both in subtle ways and as in “Brazos,” where you and an accompanying choir sing “Jesus Christ is our lord, Jesus Christ, he is your friend.” What was the influence for that type of call and response gospel style?
The soulful influence, stylistically, is just gospel music. That genre has meant a lot to me as a musical genre. It really influenced American music more than people realize. There’s so much that comes straight from gospel tradition that’s gotten reused in soul music. I have spent a serious amount of time listening to gospel. There’s also where gospel went: into soul and then 60s and 70s R & B. So if i’m using those influences, a lot of that goes back to gospel tradition.
As far as the “One Incantation Under God” reference, it was just phrase I came up with that I thought was clever. No particular loaded meaning, no story. I just had to figure out some names of things. When I recorded the record I didn’t have any, and suddenly had to figure out all these names! It was going to be this big thing, for months just brainstorming names. I had all these phrases and ideas. The Festival wanted to name the performance because it was a one-time affair, it was a special performance. All 32 of us are from from Richmond except Phil Cook of Megafaun.
Let’s talk more about Hopscotch, a festival I’ve seen described as SXSW before it got huge. You got to play alongside some big names. Did you walk away from it with a different perspective for your own band?
No. I barely saw anything at Hopscotch. I saw a show on Thursday, went to a day party on Friday, but had to go to bed early for a video shoot Saturday. So yeah, I saw very little music at the festival [laughs]. I’m friends with Grayson [Currin], who curates the festival. I think the way he approaches the curatorial aspect of the festival is special. It’s really well thought out, a pretty heavy musical statement from a curator. He takes the festival and makes an artistic statement out of it. What he’s asking people to be in and do--I think that’s really special. No other festival has asked me to do what I did--that 30 person thing was the curator’s idea. He said, “We’ll give you a platform and the money to make this happen.” He could have easily said “Your touring band is six people, want to play at a place like Strange Matter for 200 bucks?” Yet he takes risks with his curation, artistic and financial. The show went great, but had a lot risk attached to it. It could have gone horribly. He could have gotten an email two days before saying the band wasn’t together, people got wedding gigs and had to bail, and just--sorry. But Grayson is very courageous and imaginative. That’s the type of thing I like to be a part of.
Tell me more about the Sounds of the South. When was that?
In 2010 Megafaun was asked to/came up with the idea to reinterpret [ethnomusicologist] Alan Lomax’s Sounds of the South. Megafaun asked a bunch of people, including Justin Vernon and Sharon Van Etten to do it. I wrote most of the arrangements and was musical director. It was a really wonderful experience. That’s where Reggie met Justin, and why he’s in Bon Iver. That was the beginning of a lot of stuff.
You’ve played alongside Megafaun quite a bit. One of the members, Phil Cook, played keys on Big Inner. Tell me more about your relationship with them.
I met Megafun playing at a record store 2006. We played first and then they played, and it was like watching my long lost family perform. [I thought,] “Who are these people? Their musical values are exactly the same as mine.” We started talking and their reference points were so similar. I have weird ones to begin with, and so does Phil, especially. But we’re really all on the same page. We hit it off, played shows together here and there. We would always talk about trying to get a chance to work together and then the Sounds of the South thing came up. Phil and I spent a lot of time working note by note together. There was a really steady path to us meeting them and finding a way to work together, and then me bringing him on my project. Joe, the drummer of Megafaun, recorded for Spacebomb. His project is yet to be released. Phil will in the future record a solo record for us. We’re coming from such a similar place, it’s easy and special to work with them.
Tell me more about how Spacebomb is coming together. I noticed you’re working with Natalie Prass, a musician from Nashville. Do you see a perhaps distinctly Southeastern group of musicians coming together with Spacebomb, and also through events like Hopscotch?
The Spacebomb community isn’t limited by East Coast or the South, though I do feel the core members of Spacebomb’s reference points are very similar, and we’ve grown as musicians in similar paths. There are strong ties to American music, but not so much Southern. I think the bigger thing is I have very little European music influences. From punk or indie or jazz, European music has been a big influence on a lot of people, but for whatever reason it hasn’t been to me. It’s not on purpose, it’s just where we are coming from. Even with jazz, I’m primarily more influenced by American jazz musicians. The songwriters I like are American writers. I like Atlantic records, Motown, and 70s LA stuff. There’s been very little David Bowie, U2, Morrissey, any sort of European punk rock to influence me. That’s a whole side of the independent music world I’ve had very little exposure to. The one thing about Big Inner that’s interesting is that there’s zero punk rock influence. I’m not trying to avoid that, it’s just something that hasn’t been [present] for me. Older people really like this record--my parents and my parents’ friends. People in their 50s like it. It’s not loud [music].
There is a Spacebomb family. There are people who work better in the family than in others. To have Spacebomb mess with your record, you have to have no band and be willing for us to be heavy handed. We bring a lot to the table. With Natalie, it’s worked wonderfully. It’s all about finding the right people, wherever they’re from. It’s not a geographic thing but the core people are bringing a sense of a lot of American music to the table.
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Tropicalia was very regional, in the sense it was South Brazilian. At the same time it was pulling in so many different genres so effectively. I think we do that work. We are Virginians, we’re Southern Americans--that’s who we are. It’s not any sort of focal point, we’re bringing in other influences, but we are Virginians. All four of us Spacebomb musicians were born and raised in Virginia. I don’t even know what that is--I can’t get far enough away from myself. But it is that, just like those Brazilian guys are Brazilian.
You’re 29 and have heaps of musical experience but you just decided to release a solo record. Why?
To make a record like that, there are a lot of skill sets and relationships that have to build to a certain level. I’ve gotta get to the place where I feel like I can write songs that are honest. Also gotta get to a place where I can administratively grasp how to get 40 people in the studio and make it not sound terrible. Not only from an arranging standpoint, but also administrative. I’m thinking, “We have a week in the studio. How do we make it work?” There’s a lot of ripening that has to happen in a community, and in myself, when you’re trying to do it all under your umbrella. Administratively and musically, all those skills have to come together to make a record under your roof and it’s not a cluster fuck/pain in the ass. It is an age thing, it takes TIME to learn how to write horn arrangements. It’s a craft. There a lot of artisan work coming into this record. Everyone is using their skill set in a little bit of a developed way and then I’m trying to use all of those skill sets in a way that creates a unified voice.
I’d previously been in a band called The Great White Jenkins, and always thought we could make an amazing studio album. We never did. In my head, I was kind of imagining what my record ended up being. [The Great White Jenkins] didn’t have ideas lacking, but [couldn’t] get it together enough [to] get from point A to point B, from the biggest details to smallest details. My horn arranging maybe was good enough at the time, [but] there’s a difference in having an idea and being able to get that idea out and imprint it on the world.
That’s what Big Inner is. You have to come up with ideas, but magnify relationships with all these people onto the record. To actually get all those people into the recording studio enough times to make a record and have everyone be happy and have it work out is tough. That takes all the skills sets I learned through Patchwork Collective and Fight the Big Bull. So I do think it’s an age thing. I couldn’t have made this record when I was 25. I couldn’t have made this particular record that came about from years of work and making relationships.
What are your next few months looking like? Any tours planned?
I’m going on tour opening for Mountain Goats this fall. A lot of my fall is going to be spent trying to make that work. It’s my first time touring on this level and there are some tricky things to it. Things are growing at a rapid rate. I’m switching from being a person making a living teaching and doing music on the side, [and] now [it’s] reversing. [There’s a] weird inbetween [feeling], like “Where’s my income coming from?” It’s kind of surreal.