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Matthew West
Universal South Records
The new Matthew West album is out!
Released 6/21/05
Our friends at K-LOVE met up with Matthew West at the Spirit West Coast festival. Check out this cool video.
It's about being real; real with the joy in life, and real with the struggles. It's about finding peace in the middle of the chaos. Happy is about realizing that we are not the ones in control of our destiny. It's about taking a deep breath and remembering that the One who created this world is the same One who knows what our tomorrow looks like. - Matthew West
We recently had the opportunity to meet and chat with Matthew...
MQ:Tell us a little bit about your new album - you had an independent release out before that, correct?
MW: Yeah, it took me some time to get a record deal actually. I chose not to pursue a record deal as I started my artist career. I just thought it was important for me to not jump into anything that maybe I wasn't ready for ... artisticly. I felt like it was necessary to go out on the road and find out who I was as an artist before I got involved with a record deal. If you get in over your head - maybe you sign a record deal too soon - and you're not sure who you are as an artist, someone can tell you who you are. I really made a choice to go to college and study music there. Beyond that, I hit the road after college and toured college campuses. I was at about 200 college campuses around the country...playing shows and writing songs, and just finding out who I was and what I wanted to say through my music. I did a few independent projects here and there. The most notable one was a CD called 'Sell Out' and that's actually still sold on different independent websites. I sell it out on the road sometimes. We might see that resurface - we might be putting that out in stores to just sort of say, 'Hey, this is Matthews indie record.' So you might see that in the future. It has a picture of my hand holding a big candy bar - and the candy bar says 'Sell Out.' I just got my debut CD finished and released. It was released the day after Christmas of 2003 - it's called 'Happy.' So we were going around the country telling everybody 'Happy - day after Christmas' trying to get them to remember. (laugh)
MQ: Were you writing, for other people and such, before you started doing the artist thing on your own?
MW: Yeah. It was my first opportunity to come to Nashville - as a songwriter. It was kind of a surprise for me because I was used to singing my own songs and doing concerts even when I was still in college. But some people in Nashville took interest in me as a songwriter and thought I had some potential. They encouraged me to begin my career by learning how to write great songs. So I had the chance to start writing songs for other artists. I still do that now. It's great. It's so much fun. It's a totally different kind of thing.
MQ: Did you work with anybody as you got started in Nashville?
MW: I signed with Word Music Publishing and a woman there discovered me and had a vision for what potential she thought I might have. It was such a cool thing. In any career, you need somebody to believe in you. You don't need everybody to believe in you, you just need the right one to believe in you and she really did. She gave me an opportunity and encouraged me to start by writing songs. From that point as I was writing songs, they were out there pitching the songs to different artists trying to get songs recorded by other artists. I've had some cool opportunities with that.
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