Matt Nathanson

tonight was kinda magical. ended the show in the crowd. thank you, baltimore (& the surrounding buroughs) for singing along to every song. ❤️ and thank you to Mix 106.5 for throwing a great party! . 📸 Morestomach Blog

what's that?! ANOTHER special #wayitusedtobe guest. today's your lucky day. let's see who it is...https://www.instagram.com/p/BrEHtXPA6o8/

we have a special guest #wayitusedtobe story... can you guess who it is? go find out HERE: https://www.instagram.com/p/BrD08vIgTKf/

this is my college admission essay… my second one. i wrote a first one, but it was a bust... i don’t remember what it was about but i remember it was self-consciously trying to be what i thought college admissions people wanted to hear. in true me style, i wrote this one the night before it was due. bennie was (still is) one of my best friends and he and i used to listen to records in our high school dorm room ALL THE TIME... just having our minds blown constantly… lots of u2. lots of REM. lots of the 3rd til tuesday album… we were also in love with the same girl… so that made my whole senior year very “dawson’s creek”... we used to stay up all night talking about how amazing she was. they ended up dating, i ended up heartbroken & in the friendzone (we're also still very good friends)… but that's another story for another time... #wayitusedtobe

don't forget... the webstore sale ends TOMORROW!! get your hands on whatever it is you've been eyeing up + enter USEDTOBE for 20% off at checkout https://store.mattnathanson.com

the first show i ever got paid to play was @ rumors cafe in wolfboro, NH, in the summer of 1991… about two weeks before my friend jeff (RIP) and i drove across country in his beat up volkswagen jetta to start college. i borrowed an acoustic guitar with a pickup from one of my boarding school teachers (thank you, mr. alton!), borrowed a PA from another teacher (thank you, bill wightman!), and did a two hour set. i remember playing R.E.M. songs, indigo girls songs, drivn’ n’ cryin’ songs… as well as a bunch of stuff that ended up on my first album, “please.” i’d spent every summer since i was born one town over, in center tuftonboro, so i had a bunch of friends who came out to cheer me on. this photo is a photo copy of the check they paid me with - $75 ...which might as well have been $1,000,000 i was so psyched… it was the first real money i’d ever gotten for playing music… before that it had been school talent shows and busking the sidewalks of harvard sq. for change. i still remember how rad it felt… like i was taking control of my life... heading to california and getting paid to play music… look out world, here i come! #wayitusedtobe

TONIGHT’S THE NIGHT, BOOK PEOPLE!! 7pmPST... right here on the book of face!

's cover photo

it's cyber monday, so get your game face on!! got a handful of NEW merch in the store AND doing a little sale to top it off. use USEDTOBE for 20% off on https://store.mattnathanson.com

it's our time to help. playing the camp fire benefit concert on 12/3 at the grounds in roseville. all of the money from tickets benefits the salvation army's efforts in the camp fire. https://bit.ly/2DqdHng

first photo is Howie Day and me, post-show, @ union college in new york, a few days before halloween. 2001. 2nd photo is 7 months later onstage @ the TLA in philadelphia just after playing “fake plastic trees” together. we wrote the lyrics on the lid of a shoebox (boot box, actually)… you can see it propped up against the monitor on the floor. and you can find the video on youtube. i remember feeling like, after years of touring, i had finally found an audience of kids who connected to my songs. howie and i toured together a ton. we both didn’t have record deals but he had an INSANE amout of momentum... and he always brought me along. it was an amazing time. because of him, i got my record deal with universal and had a real budget for the first time with “beneath these fireworks”. at that point my life was a wild combination of a total mess / a total dream… but finally getting acceptance from a larger audience (and the music industry) was SO validating. it’s the closest thing to a magical few years i've ever had. #wayitusedtobe

we're doin' it live! join Kelly Corrigan & i on 11/28 @ 7pm pst LIVE right here on facebook to discuss our first doin' it in the nook pick, Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. OH... and if you haven't already, join the club!! https://www.facebook.com/groups/doinitinthenook

my people! updated tour thingy... a couple more shows sold out, real low ticket warning in NC, madison & st louis. and low ticket warning for what’s left. don’t be like the guy who DM’d me & asked when im gonna be in toronto next 😂... read this, find ur city & get tix @ mattnathanson.com/tour ❤️

in kindergarten, the teachers asked us to write about our favorite thing in the whole world and then bring it in so they could photograph it and include it in the “my favorite thing” book they were putting together for our class. the first picture is the cover of my copy of the book. the second picture's my favorite thing… it’s pretty self-explanatory… but kiss really was the first band i ever loved. by a long shot. i had their albums, their comic book, their dolls… and even though i (apparently) couldn’t spell his name, gene was always my guy. paul, ace and peter were great, but when you’re 6 years old, no one's as cool as the guy who spits blood and fire. #wayitusedtobe P.S. gonna look through the hashtag now & post some of my favorites to my ig story...

aw yeah... "used to be" is up NOW on Amazon Music!! just #askalexa to play it for you. she loves me. or listen to it right HERE: https://amzn.to/2DnHCNC

TOMORROW! ❤️ AUDIENCE

YO HUMANS! if you get AUDIENCE (and u should cause it rules) tune in THIS FRIDAY and watch me wear a blazer and sing a few mutha-fuckin-numbahs w/ aaron tap, sean douglas & some other amazing humans... on my favorite live music show, audience music https://youtu.be/dNzX2TZqWyM

taking over #throwbackthursday to talk about the #wayitusedtobe… i’ve played some pretty crazy shows in my life but if there's a cake to take, slope day 2004 @ cornell college takes it. (sometime i’ll tell you about sharing a dressing room with justin bieber @ a radio show -his first, ever- in kansas city) anyway, kanye’s first album had been out a few months and he was blowing up… like… HUGE. so you can imagine my horror when i got to the gig in my little rental car and was told that i was going on AFTER him contrary to what it says on the pass, the running order of the day was actually: dilated peoples, THEN kanye, then me (with a cello player!) THEN oar. to make matters way worse, kanye was about 40 min late for his set. so when he finally took the stage, it was to an enormous crowd of very pissed off people chanting “fuck you, kanye!!, fuck you, kanye!!” he won them back with the first song, only to lose them again, 3 songs later, when he took a break mid-set to sit by himself at a picnic table backstage. meanwhile, his band and piano player (john legend… yep!) were still playing and doing their best to keep the crowd hyped with a bunch of “put your hands in the air”s and “you having fun yet, cornell?!”’s. as you can imagine, that wore real thin after a few, kanye-less minutes and the “fuck you” chants started up again with new passion. there was absolutely no way i was gonna survive following this shit show… so, long story short, i convinced oar’s tour manager to tell the school that oar HAD to start their set at the time that was contracted, which meant… because kanye was so late… that my set was cut from the show entirely…. AND I STILL GOT PAID!! (big love to joel foreman for always having my back!) and that my friends is the #wayitusedtobe. now dig through your old photos and share your stories using the hashtag. i'll be going through and liking my favorites and maybe even featuring some up on my instagram stories.

:LET YOU GO: (ps- this is the last one of these "sings his sad heart" song blurbs... hope you've dug readying them as much as i have dug writing them!) .............. i wrote most of “let you go” in san francisco with jeremy. he was passing through on his way up north and i stole him for a couple of hours... my friend sara told me about this vacation she took to bora bora, where she spent the whole time in a hut on the beach... and pretty much didn’t see another human. bora bora didn’t fit the melody, so i moved everything to mexico… but that’s how we got the first verse. i really loved the idea of a song sung by someone who is SO codependent that they have to ask the person who dumped them for advice on how to get through the break up. and p.s.- i have 1000% lived that line “the only reason i still call our friends / is the chance one of them will say your name.” yikes! of all the songs on the album, this one has my favorite track. the way the music drops out and then launches you into the choruses just SLAYS me… that was adam and amir... and that cocteau twins pre-chorus… the ethereal vocals & the pulsing kick… was stacy’s obession for a day. when he finished it, it sounded so good i didn’t even want put the lead vocal on it.

tour! tour! tour! very psyched to be getting back out w/ aaron, acoustic/indigo guys/storyteller style... added a 2nd boston and 2nd san francisco show... and we made more room in orlando for my florida peeps! low ticket warnings on a bunch of these. bringing back the “wheel of nathanson”!... any weird songs of mine you’ve been dying to hear me play?? tickets @ mattnathanson.com/tour

:BACK TOGETHER: i wrote most of "back together" with teddy geiger in her living room, overlooking a canyon in one of those houses in los angeles that makes you want to move there. our demo version was slow and the chorus had this rad swagger. the lyrics really weren’t there yet though, it was just melodies and chords. once the song got to new york adam and amir and i sped it up… and that chorus started sounding SUPER hooky! the lyrics took me FOREVER. i didn’t even want to call the song “back together.” i sang the title as a place holder and when i went back to it, it felt trite. i kept trying to find different words that fit the melody... “alone together,” “run forever,” “stand the weather." my manager jonathan finally convinced me to keep it. it’s a relief when that happens, actually. when someone you trust steps in and breaks the compulsive, over analytical doubt loop you’re in. without those kinda people, i’d be rewriting some of my songs for the rest of my life. stacy and i finished the song in los angeles. he came up with the idea of singing a counter-melody in the second verse. i vamped, he approved and now it’s my favorite part of the song. the only good news about writing so many sets of lyrics for a song like this is that you have a lot of good scraps left over to use later... “back together" takes the prize, actually, for having my favorite unused lyric of the whole album: “it’s kinda funny that we never made out / it’s kinda funny how we drove ourselves crazy”… man, i love that line! gotta write a song to put it in.

a little something i wrote about my new song BEST DRUGS. enjoy! .......... i’d been carrying around the line “you come on like the best drugs” since the “modern love” album. i'd never used it because somewhere along the way someone told me it wasn’t very good… (and since i'd never actually DONE a drug, i figured maybe they knew something i didn’t about how they worked). fast forward 9 years and i’m in a writing session with my buddy jeremy and i pull out the line (& the guitar riff)… and he doesn’t think it sucks! (AND he knows a thing or two about drugs) so we end up writing a verse & a tag, but it’s less of a song, and more of a round… we have trouble finding a chorus. the first time i went in to write with butch, i pulled the verse and the tag out and presented it like a problem to solve. he immediately got a hold of it, cracked it open, and came up with chorus chords and a melody... and a KILLING track! i finished the words at home i was especially proud of the middle 8: “i can see the beauty in the mess and imperfection / when you’re running through me / i get pulled in all directions / swallowed by the beauty / and lost in inspiration” look at me being all positive! and finally, two fun music nerd things about the song: we'd been talking about how magical a song “everyday i write the book” by elvis costello is, so butch put a clavinet-sounding homage to it in the verses, under the vocal. and “sweet soul music” is my lyrical tip of the hat to an obscure-ish u2 song i love called “hawkmoon 269." click through to check out "best drugs” & my album "sings his sad heart” https://mattnathanson.lnk.to/singshissadheart

i still have 4 songs left off the album that i haven't written a blurb about...i'm gonna do one now, if that's cool... the completist in me needs satisfying. i almost overthought "gimme your love” out of existence 4 different times while we were making this album. we did a bossanova version… a late night, washy keyboard, hipster version. and that adele song “right as rain"... we have a version like that too. and the lyrics… man, it took almost a year of tweaking (and avoidance) to have them end up, pretty much, right back where they started. i have serious trust issues when it comes to inspiration. if something comes easily, i doubt it and pretty much spend the rest of my energy trying to disprove it… fun stuff! this song pushed all those buttons… when we were writing it, the chorus lyric came out all at once, in one big chunk... “gimme your love, it used to be mine.” and i thought… “i’m DEFINITELY gonna change that.” i also rhymed “darkness” with “darkness” which felt super lazy… was gonna fix that too. god love amir… that kid came out to san francisco and hung in with me @ JJ’s studio for DAYS while we ate chinese food and fine tooth combed every word adams’ guitar riff saved the song. that descending, motown riff. this song wouldn't have made it without that that was the rudder... then amir sang those amazing background vocals, i tacked on a melody/lyric danny parker and i wrote as a post chorus… and we were off! when the song finally made it’s way to stacy, he came in with fresh ears and we stripped stuff back even more. hung everything off the riff and the vocal. and kept it small. this is gonna sound super hippy, but songs tell you what they want to be. you just have to pay attention and not let your ego lead. and more often than not, your first creative thought is your most clear and potent. and i’m learning that that’s really the job… do your best to trust yourself, then trust the song, then get out of the way. https://mattnathanson.lnk.to/singshissadheart

most of the feb/march acoustic headline tour is sold out (which totally rules, btw!)… i know it was frustrating to a lot of you that some of the shows sold out as fast as they did… truthfully, it took us by surprise... so we went back to see what we could do to make more tickets available. we were able to do a couple things: - we added a 2nd show in boston. get tix https://bit.ly/2QH9fnv - we added a 2nd show in san francisco. get tix https://bit.ly/2Ps26ak - we moved the ORLANDO SHOW to a larger venue and it is the ONLY FLORIDA SHOW on this whole tour (and it’s a saturday night which is perfect for a lil’ roadtrip… you feelin’ me jacksonville / tampa /miami / etc.) get tix https://ticketf.ly/2CPV7W8 also, there is a low ticket warning for a handful of the shows that aren’t yet sold out… so, if you plan on coming, don’t sleep on getting tickets. this tour is gonna be SUPER fun (we will be bringing out the song wheel again!) and all the shows are definitely gonna go clean. so head on over and get tickets HERE: https://mattnathanson.com/tour/

B-E-A-UTIFUL PEOPLE!! doing a giveaway with Live In The Vineyard (happening nov 2nd-4th) for a pair of tickets, hotel accommodations, airfare for two + more. enter away https://liveinthevineyard.com/contests/matt-nathanson/