Hey Mat. Most people know you from Power Wrench, but you also have a solo career and sing in Citizen. Which is the hardest to write for?I would say Power Wrench. If I write for Citizen, I usually present a pretty stripped down version of a song and then we all work together to make it come alive. If it's for my solo stuff, the music is generally very simple so there's no issue with that. I'm not a good guitar player, so sometimes I'll go to write a power wrench song and have nothing creative at all, or I'll have something in my head and I can't bring it to life out loud. I try my best.One time we wrote part of a song together and recorded a voice memo of it. Is that where you keep all of your song ideas? How many are there?If you go through my phone, there are so many voice memos of vocal melodies, riffs, drum rhythms, etc... they are usually all done by me humming or beat boxing so it's pretty funny to listen back on. I would say 90% of all of the songs I have written have been demo'd on my phone's voice memo.If you write 10 songs for a record, how much is left floating around after?None. Writing a song is a bit of a process for me. I never write just to have material. The way I think of it is, why would I pour my effort into something I might not want to use? Why would I waste lyric ideas and vocal melodies on something that could possibly not be released? When I start writing for something, I go into it knowing that I'm going to use it so I can try and make it the best I can. I never understood why a band will write and record 20 songs and then choose 10 of them for the record. Maybe I'm just not smart, I don't know.Do you ever write something and think it's awesome, then realize it sucks like a week later?Not as much as you think it would. I don't write songs very often, so I feel satisfied when I do. Sometimes if I write something and sit on it too long, I end up scrapping it just because I'm sick of it.What's your favorite song you've ever written?As of right now it's a song under Citizen called "Silo". We tried some new things and I think it ended up coming out pretty cool. I feel like any new song you write ends up being your favorite just because it's new.What demo of yours are we about to listen to and why did you choose it?I chose an acoustic song of mine called "Sunday Night". I wrote it while laying on my roof and immediately did a voice memo. Some of the melodies are kind of different, some words are switched around, I'm forgetting words, singing off key and everything in between. It's pretty cool to go back and listen to the first stages of a song and then listen to the final version and see how it evolved and came together.
