We’ve been fans of Heartland country rocker Matt Jordan since we came across his music in 2021. Jordan’s upbringing heavily influenced his musical style, blending elements of rock, country, and americana to create a sound uniquely his own that seems more akin to the music and sounds of the 80s than it does with any other era or decade. New album ‘Low Lights’ is a triumph and you can read our review of it right here.
Originally from St. Louis, MO, the songwriter splits time between his hometown and Nashville. Drawing inspiration from the vast landscapes and rich storytelling traditions of the Midwest, Jordan’s songs often reflect themes of love, loss, and the timeless pursuit of the American Dream. We were thrilled to catch up with him recently to talk all about ‘Low Lights’ and a lot more besides.
Thank you for your time today, Matt. We’re loving ‘Low Lights’, it’s great to touch base with you to talk all about it.
Likewise, man, thank you for your continued support.
You’ve got music on Spotify stretching back to ‘Alive’ in 2015. How do you think you are growing and evolving as an artist and writer?
That’s a good question. I’ve been doing this for a long time but for a lot of years music was my side hustle. I was working in business, selling software, and music was kind of a hobby that I took seriously but it wasn’t until a couple of years ago, right around when we released my last album, ‘The Gamble,’ that I went full time with it.
I feel like since then I’ve found my voice and my sound as an artist. When I was writing some of those earlier songs and when I moved to Nashville in my early twenties, I was really thinking that I would be a songwriter for other other people. A lot of what I was trying to do back then was to try and write for other artists, right? In the last two years I’ve really honed in on who I am as an artist rather than commercial viability or whether somebody else would sing or cut the song.
Your song ‘Boulder’ from ‘The Gamble’ album won the American Songwriter magazine ‘Still Standing’ competition. Tell me a little more about that.
American Songwriter is a really great publication over here in the States. It’s a great platform to get infront of some new people and get some industry validation at the same time. The ‘Still Standing’ competition came with a link to a Bear Grylls podcast in which the winning song would be the theme song to his podcast – that podcast is on hold right now so we don’t know if that is going to happen but there was a financial prize too and a really nice write up that they did on the song.
It was kind of cool in 2023 to win an award for a song that had already been out 18 months – it was a good reminder for me to realise that they way music is consumed today – a song can still have a life 2 years to 10 years after its release. Release dates don’t matter the way they used to matter.
You live in Missouri and you’re in and out of Nashville and have been since studying there at Belmont University. What’s the best and the worst that a town like Nashville can offer you as a writer and performer?
I think the best and the worst it can offer is that, literally, everyone is there! The industry is there and it’s such a connection based industry. I’m in St Louis 75% of the time and then either in Nashville or out on the road and I think I miss some of those connections and face time with industry folks that would be helpful and I am aware of that.
Being in St Louis, though, means you get the most authentic version of me and my music that there is, right? I’m from here, I grew up here so I don’t have Music Row working in my ear telling me what’s working on radio or advising me on what I should be trying to do. I’m gonna write what I wanna right, which makes it a more authentic process I think. I remember when Florida Georgia Line took off and everybody started to try and sound like them then Sam Hunt took off, now everybody wants to sound like Morgan Wallen. And that’s cool but I don’t ever want to be chasing somebody else or somebody else’s sound.
You started out life as a drummer! Do you still have a set that you crash around on at all?
I still have a set because we rehearse at my house but I don’t sit down with it much anymore. I discovered that there are a lot better drummers than me out there! (laughing)
You tend you gravitate towards singers who also play guitar. Springsteen, Petty, Kip Moore. Do you have a favourite band guitarist who you admire for their pure guitar skills?
Mike Campbell from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers has got to be up there. He is such a great guitarist and what he does really well is being a songwriter’s guitarist. What I mean by that is that he just knew what would make a song better. As far as great riffs go, I think Mark Knopfler from Dire Straits is one of my favourites – that ‘Money for Nothing’ guitar riff is such a monster, man.
I find your lyrics, both on new album, ‘Low Lights’ and previous album, ‘The Gamble,’ very cinematic and very evocative. When you write a song are you driven by the lyrics and titles or do the melodies inspire you first?
That’s a good question. I can only speak for the two albums I’ve done but it’s kinda been project dependent. What I mean by that is that ‘The Gamble’ record was almost exclusively driven by lyrical ideas. Most of those songs started with lines and titles that we wrote around and then we built the tracks out later. With ‘Low Lights’ we kinda gravitated towards starting with the music and the production – so I would build almost full songs out on my computer here in my studio and then expand on them from there, so music and sound was the driver much more on that project.
‘The Gamble’ was sequenced carefully to tell a kind of concept from restlessness through to redemption. What were the drivers behind the sequencing of ‘Low Lights’?
What was interesting about that is that we live in such a singles driven world. What I like about albums, and why I continue to make albums, is that it gives me a foundation, as a writer, to find themes in the songs and the music. We wrote a bunch of songs that didn’t even make it onto the record because they didn’t fit the theme that emerged on ‘Low Lights’ – and that theme was kinda like an outsiders vibe, right?
I think you hear the angst of being an outsider in the first part of the album and then the back end is a little bit more celebratory. There’s a point somewhere around track 6, ‘Outcasts, Misfits and Me,’ where the vibe kinda changes and we lean into being OK with being an outsider and then the title track comes in last on the album where we tell you it’s OK to be like that and show you that there’s a place where you fit in that you can come to.
I think albums are making a comeback right now. So many artists I speak to tell me that their music should be listened to as a whole body of work and in sequence.
For me, that’s how I grew up. I listened to tapes and CDs back then. We put so much love and care into writing the songs and sequencing the songs that I want them to be a part of a whole body of work and not just be another song on a streaming platform somewhere. You can still release seven singles on an eleven track album and play into the singles market whilst giving a proper home to them all on a project too.
Are these ‘Low Lights’ songs all new songs or did you write some of them when you were putting ‘The Gamble’ together?
There are, almost, all new. ‘Steering Wheel’ was written during ‘The Gamble’ era and, looking back, there’s a part of me that wonders whether we should have put it on that album. Sonically, it feels a little more ‘Country’, if you will, and ‘Low Lights’ is a more of a Rock and Pop record. The reason we didn’t put it on ‘The Gamble’ is that we didn’t know what was going to come next and we knew it was a good song so we decided to hold it to have an anchor for the next project.
It’s almost like the bridge between the two albums then?
It is. It could have been used that way as the first single for ‘Low Lights’ or something like that. I think it fits on ‘Low Lights’ but I wonder, now, if it would have made a little more sense being on ‘The Gamble’ instead?
In an ideal world ‘Always a Girl’ and ‘Run Tonight’ would be the two huge big hit songs and MTV video smashes from this album for me. Which radio stations and platforms do you target because there’s an elephant in the room that says you’re too Rock for Country and not Rock enough for Rock radio, if that makes sense?
I do wonder about that sometimes. We play shows primarily with Country artists and sometimes we’ll get off stage and I’ll think, oddly enough, that we are not ‘Pop’ enough to play with them! (laughing) Or, conversely, when we opened for Travis Tritt this past year I wondered whether we weren’t Country enough, right?
What I am finding is that people just seem to want real music these days and they don’t worry too much about ‘what’ that is. We’ll play with some red dirt guys who are real Country sometimes and those are some of the longest lines at the merch booth – people just want something authentic so I don’t worry about ‘what’ we are too much. Kip Moore is a big influence on me and my music and if you take out ‘Something ‘Bout a Truck’, which was a Bro-Country song for all intents and purposes, he’s done his own thing and found his lane in that space between Country and Rock so I look to him and Erich Church a lot as inspirations and guides as to navigating that space and not worrying too much about the genre.
Genres don’t seem to matter amongst the fans and listeners as much as they used to but as far as press and playlisting goes, I have to be somewhat cognizant of that in terms of a song like ‘Run Tonight.’ That song doesn’t fit on Country playlists, it’s kinda a Don Henley, Bruce Spingsteen ‘Tunnel of Love’ era song. I know that song will never be a hit on Country radio but it’s probably my favourite song on ‘Low Lights’ so i will put it out and whoever digs it, digs it, and if it gets picked up in places, that’ll be great.
My favourite song on ‘Low Lights’ is ‘Steal Away the Night’ – those Jersey boardwalk, Springsteen vibes get me every time!
Yeah. That’s a fun song to play. ‘Run Tonight’ and ‘Greatest Story’ are probably my favourites. ‘Run Tonight’ is the closest, sonically, to sounding like the stuff I grew up listening to which is a sound I’ve been chasing for a while. ‘Greatest Story’ was a fun song to do as a duet with someone as talented as Kayley Bishop.
Just before we pick up on ‘Greatest Story,’ is the use of the name Mary in ‘Steal Away the Night’ a nod to Springsteen, who used that name in lots of his songs?
Oh yeah. Springsteen’s done that, Kip Moore’s done that. It’s a cool nod to those guys and the tradition of doing that, which goes right back to the 70s and 80s I think.
‘Greatest Story’ is probably the most lyrically clever song on the album in terms of the analogies and metaphors with reading and books.
I had that hook and the idea for a long time. My co-writer Jarrett Hartness, who I co-write almost everything with, and I wrote that song three or four times before we got to the version you can hear on ‘Low Lights.’ It was always the same hook and idea but it went through a lot of changes in the process. Jarrett was in Arkansas on the final time so we jumped on zoom and found the literary metaphors which meant the song landed in a place that we always wanted to get it to, it just took four tries to get there!
Where did Kayley Bishop come into the process?
That was an interesting development. I didn’t know Kayley. Jarrett and I were both in Nashville one night and we went out to see a writers round. Jarrett and I had been writing a duet called ‘Play the Part’ for a while at that point, we wanted a duet on the record. Kayley was playing at the round we were at and Jarrett had written with her before – once Kayley started singing I was blown away because she’s got one of the best voices I’ve ever heard in Nashville. We met after but there was no talk of working together.
Months later we’d written ‘Greatest Story’ and it was just going to be me singing the song. I was listening to the worktape and I called Jarrett and said, ‘Hey man, I kinda think this song should be a duet.’ I thought that a female voice singing the second verse would make the song more emotional because both people would be missing each other, rather than just the guy. Jarrett put me in touch with Kayley and we sent her the song – it was a real organic thing how it worked out.
So is the mission statement for the rest of the year shows, shows, shows? I wonder if you could play the ‘Low Lights’ album in its entirety because I don’t know which songs you’d leave out?
We’ve been looking at the set list recently in terms of understanding what old songs need to fall out to make way for some of the ‘Low Lights’ songs. That’s a hard thing to do. We could play the album in its entirety because there’s enough upbeat and fun songs to keep the live energy high. ‘The Gamble’ would have been a harder task to do that with live because there’s a more mid-tempo feel to a lot of the songs on that record.
‘Boulder’ is still in the set. ‘Fifth of July’ is still in the set, that’s always been a popular song. We like to throw in some unreleased songs as well. It’s a challenge but it’s a great challenge to have!
Check out Matt Jordan’s terrific ‘Low Lights’ album – out in all the usual places right now.
