A Conversation with Jonah Matranga

As your humble Arts & Entertainment Editor, it is my duty to write and print the entertainment news I feel the student body of our fine University would most enjoy and find most interesting. So it is with some degree of apology that I admit that this week, I acted out a little selfishly. Coming into the last few weeks of my Senior year, I just want to interview who I want to interview, so I made a list of my dream subjects and I plan to go right down that list until I have that coveted diploma in hand. That being said, so far I'm 1-1, and you should be happy for me.

The first name on that aforementioned list is that of Jonah Matranga, a longtime favorite of mine. Matranga cut his teeth as the singer for 90's alt-rockers Far and has subsequently gone on to sing for New End Original and Gratitude, as well as releasing solo material both under the moniker Onelinedrawing and with his own name. I have endless memories of walking around my childhood hometown of Colebrook, New Hampshire with Jonah's voice pumping through my discman, and this interview is honestly my favorite thing I have ever gotten to do as a member of this paper.

In order to get Jonah on the phone, you don't have to email four different managers, submit examples of your previous work, or pull political strings by publishing a glowing review of his material prior to your request. You just email him. And he emails you back. The fact that it was that simple to talk to one of my all time favorite musicians is not just really cool, but the ease of contact itself displays a piece of a much larger picture where Matranga is concerned. He is just genuinely a top of the line, fantastic human being who cares about the people who enjoy his music. It was an absolute joy and a privilege to chat with him, and after you read this conversation about politics, baseball and fatherhood, you should all really go to jonahmatranga.com and give him a listen. Thanks Jonah!

BK: I have to start off by thanking you because my first kiss was to a Gratitude song.

JM: That is so awesome! Which song?

Drive away.

Oh, that rules. I love that.

I'll jump right in now. You seem to be creating and recording almost constantly these days, and recently you made that song about Trayvon Martin that a lot of people have been talking about. What was it about that case that struck a chord with you?

You know, I think the main thing about that case was that I just remember reading about it, and I literally just couldn't understand how someone could kill someone else, and admit to the police that showed up that he had killed him, and just have the police not investigate and just walk away because the guy said it was self defense. It was the most bizarre thing I had ever heard about, and of course I had read about the Sanford Police Department's history of racial profiling, but honestly it was just the idea that a human being could kill someone and not be that thoroughly questioned by the police, and just be taken at their word it was self defense and not arrested. I actually didn't really understand that could happen. It just seems like if someone was dead, you'd really investigate it before you let the guy go free.

Well, yeah.

Honestly, I felt kind of uneasy about the whole thing. I started out just going "Wow, how could this have happened?" and as the story unfolded, honestly it just got stranger and stranger. There were the 911 calls, and then Zimmerman's call to the police. It all just got creepy, and honestly it keeps getting creepier. It's been over a month since Trayvon was killed, and he still hasn't been arrested. It's just a little bit eerie.

Did you sign that petition?

Oh yeah, of course, yeah. And honestly, I think the police department and whoever else essentially conspired to not have George Zimmerman questioned. I think a lot of people are getting a really quick education in social networking. I think if this crime had happened 10 years ago, it would have gone right under the radar. I really do. I think they would have gotten away with it. And now that a billion people at once can hear the 911 call and see the video and find the petition, things happen a lot quicker and so I think it's harder to sweep things like that under the rug. The thing is, people get shot every day, and that's a problem. I mean, gun violence is insane off the charts, and that's an ongoing problem. Disproportionately, young black men get shot, and that's another problem. The fact is, all of that stuff we already know about. What especially inflames me about this one is, you've got the guy standing there going "Yup, I killed him" and they just kind of give him a little questioning and a pat on the back and let him go.  That's the thing that really sets this apart. The only good thing about this is it's putting more attention on these insane laws, like that Stand Your Ground Law and gun control laws in general, and who is allowed to have them.

It's admirable that you're willing to take this stand for him too.

It's funny, the one bad thing about social networking is that people can be so cynical about it. I've seen some comments saying I'm just jumping on the bandwagon and others totally misunderstanding my point, and saying Zimmerman isn't racist because he's latino, which is just a completely silly argument. But, it's not about that. I don't actually care that much about Zimmerman. I care about the Sanford Police Department, I care about the Florida justice system, I care about gun control laws and I care about any situation where a murder isn't investigated thoroughly. To me, that's the whole point, and everyone wants to make it all these other things. But I don't want to get off topic, so that's the main reason I think a lot of people are speaking up, but I think a lot of people are being kind of unreasonable and I think it's good to keep a light shining on this.

You did a great job with the song too.

Thanks, I mean, that was just a very sort of eerie thing for me. That song is not one of Dylan's more popular songs, but in 1963 when he wrote that, in the wake of that murder, at that time there wasn't all these social networking things so in that time these songs kind of carried the messages of injustices like that. Those were the things that helped shine the light. So it's incredibly sad the same things could happen 50 years later. And partly, there is so much symmetry. And it's so spooky that Bob Dylan's real name, Robert Zimmerman, is George Zimmerman's father's name. The whole thing is a little bit weird. That's one of my favorite songs of his, so I just had this idea it might fit really well, but I just had no idea. There were so many words I didn't need to change because the cases were so similar.

It is just a very linear storytelling of the situation.

Well, you know, that's all Dylan. It was cool too, I can basically take the structure of that song, and know that no matter what I do I'll be telling an awesome story, because it's Dylan. That's all on him. So that's another small thing I enjoy, is opening people up to what an incredible storyteller he was and is.

You've been really politically active in the last year, you've done a lot of tweeting and Facebooking about the Occupy movement. You went to Occupy in San Francisco and checked it out?

Oh God yeah. I was incredibly involved when everything was really booming, and I have kept in touch with people there and stayed involved with the Occupy movement. There's a lot of great stuff coming from Occupy now, in terms of groups that are just focused on specific activities. There's a group called Move to Amend, who are very much on Citizens United, which is the law that says corporations are people. So yeah, I'm still into that. I think that's one thing that this Facebook and Twitter stuff is amazing for. We all get to be our own little news channel. A lot of times the Internet just becomes a lot of yelling and name calling, and I get it, I get upset too, but I like the idea of being a reasonable, focused voice that just tries to get all the facts out there possible and to have a conversation beyond, like, what you had for breakfast.

Some of your own fans got a little snippy on your Facebook wall when you talked about Occupy things.

Oh yeah. Well, as long as I've been a musician, and as long as musicians have been musicians, there have always been people saying "less talk more rock." You know, "I don't care about your politics." And in my mind, any artist that worth anything has dealt with that. Pearl Jam has dealt with that a ton. So that's fine. I'm fine with that. I don't mind losing a fan because of it. It doesn't matter to me. I've never spoken up just because I had a microphone, I've spoken up because I'm just the kind of guy that speaks up. I just get to have a slightly bigger platform than other people. I don't think that my opinion is more important than anyone else's, I just wish that everyone was doing the research to express their opinion rationally. I think that's part of being in a democracy, really.

Do you think you would be as interested in Occupy and in the future of America if you weren't a Father? Has fatherhood shaped you politically?

You know, that's a great question. I think it has, honestly. I think there are a lot of ways to become passionate about stuff and I know a lot of people who aren't parents that are incredibly passionate people on all levels. I kind of feel like some parents are kind of snobby about that. With that said, yeah, I mean, if I read an article now on the rising cost of college education or healthcare or unemployment or whatever, it's different because I have a daughter who's going out into the world, who's going to college and who will need a job, and yeah, it does. It makes it that much more connected to me and there's no way around it. Just seeing her face and seeing her scared to go out into the world, yeah it brings a piece that just wouldn't have been there before. I think being a Dad has made me nicer in some ways, and maybe gentler. Also, it has made more angry sometimes. Because I just feel like "Let's be better about this world we're raising our kids in." That kind of thing.

Speaking of college, Wikipedia says you were an English major in college.

That's true.

I'm an English major as well.

Nice.

Who are your favorite authors?

That's a great question. I will first say, and I do have favorite authors, my nickname when I was little was "Bookman" because I read so much. I do love to read. That said, I am perhaps the most poorly read, unscholarly English major ever. I was gonna be a music major and basically my English advisor said "Hey, you're really good at this and you love this, but you could take every music course we have at this school and still be an English major." So I will qualify that. But that said, as books that have really transformed me, reading Kerouac for the first time, reading Faulkner. Actually, the book we were reading at the time my advisor gave me the advice to be an English major was William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, and that was great. Reading James Joyce kind of blew my mind. There's this author Robert Pirsig who wrote this book Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and I haven't read the book in a while, so I'm not sure how it's aged, but at the time I read it it really got to me. I just started a book of essays on fatherhood by Michael Chabon called Manhood for Amateurs. He's a great writer. I could go on. Writers blow my mind, they're totally intimidating to me and someday I want to write a book just because I'm scared to try it.

You could write a book just about touring, probably.

Yeah, that's the obvious one. I've also got kind of a parenting book on my mind that I think would be cool. Those things would be fun and interesting. I think I'd love to give a shot to writing fictional short stories or even a novel someday. I don't take that lightly at all. It would probably be horrible, but I'd like to try it because it seems like such an intimidating endeavor.

Even your lyrics are pretty literary and deep sometimes.

Thanks man, I think what I like about that is getting to try to say something in a short amount of time and so it would be fun to try and stretch that out a little bit and see what I could too with more space.

You're awesome at being not too overly verbose and making everything relatable, but you can always still tell what was going on in your life when you wrote it.

Thank you, that means a lot to me. That is absolutely the balance I have tried to strike in that I think anything really good that can truly last comes from a personal place, even if it's just a totally simple pop song. I think you have to have that heartfelt level to it on one point to really get somewhere. Even really silly songs honestly, I think nine times out of ten will have something to it that started from a personal place with the person that made it.

I always have this argument with my friends who are into you, but the Gratitude record is my favorite thing that you've ever done.

I think that's true for some people.

I know a lot of Far fans too, and I know some people that love your solo stuff the most. It's cool that you've had such a diverse career. Is that something that, when you take on a new project, you say to yourself "this can't be similar to anything else I've ever done?"

No, I mean, if anything, I would wish that one record to another had a little more of a thread. I think that by the time I get to the next record I'm always working with different people or in a different place in my life. I've had so many instances where somebody knows one of my bands, and they've even heard the others but they don't know that it's me, and I just love that. I once had a person, I was playing a New End Original show when New End Original wasn't popular at all, and I had a person come up to me at the merch table and say "You know, I was really mad at you for the first 20 minutes of that set because I thought you were up there ripping off Jonah." And then he figured out that it was me, so that was really cute.

When I bought Thriller on eBay in high school, someone had died, and their sibling or their Mother or someone was selling their CD's, and they didn't really know what they had. So I bought the New End Original CD and when it came in the mail, I looked on the inside jacket you had written "Travel - Jonah" to the person.

I love that. That is an awesome story. By the way, since you mentioned the Gratitude record, that is a very, very personal record to me. I still love it so much.

Lyrically, that record is really important to me.

Me too. "The Greatest Wonder" is still a song I sing often at shows.

That's awesome. That just came out at a time in my life when I really needed it, you know?

Oh yeah, I know about those records.

So speaking of those records and your influences, how long had you wanted to make a covers album before you finally just did it?

Well, I mean, I've always loved playing covers, and even more than that I've always loved listening to my favorite artists do covers of other songs that they love. It's been a way for me to find out about other artists, and I feel like, a lot of times, if someone covers someone else's song, you kind of get to see that artist as a fan. You get to see what they love, and you get to see them out of their element. So I've just always loved the idea of covers, and this last covers record was really fun to just do it up right and get people's ideas and do that whole thing with it. I think I'll always keep doing covers, they're just super fun.

The Bruce cover is my favorite, because it's the most different from the original.

It's funny that you mention that one, because I made that as a unique recording for someone, and it came out so well and I liked it so much that I knew it had to see the light of day. So I would say, all things considered, that's probably my favorite on the record too. Although, I do love the other stuff, but that one is really special to me.

I was going to ask how you whittled it down to one Bruce song.

I do these things called "unique recordings" where people ask for songs and someone asked for "Born to Run," and I thought "how am I going to do that?" but the more I listened to it the more I thought gosh, these lyrics are so beautiful and spooky, and I just kind of went from there.

Born to Run is one of my top 5, all time favorite records.

It's incredible, and I think that a lot of people have a certain image of Springsteen, and I think that when people listen to his songs with all of the kind of big stuff stripped away, you just hear this incredible, incredible poetry. So, I hope that I kind of opened some people's eyes to Springsteen with that.

I hope you do something off Nebraska sometime.

Yeah, the only other Springsteen song I ever really messed with was, well, I've played bits of "I'm on Fire" with other things, because I just think that song is so genius, but I've also done a recording of "If I Should Fall Behind," because I just think that's so sweet. What do you think I could do off Nebraska?

I would love to hear you do "Atlantic City."

OK, I'll go home and listen to it and mess around. I've been really creative lately, so who knows?

That would be so cool. So baseball season is coming up, how do you feel about the Sox this year?

You know, I don't know if you've seen my YouTube channel, but I made a song called "2-0-0-4." That song is about the 2004 Red Sox, but even more that it's about the fact that no matter what has happened since 2004, I'm cool. My feelings don't get as hurt anymore. Last season sucked, but honestly, we've won two World Series titles. Any Boston fan is in the golden age of sports. It still hurts, but not that much.

You're right, it's not that bad anymore, comparatively.

Right. I mean, you know how it was before 2004. Every loss was like the end of the world. Last season, the whole season felt a little funny to me. We had these great players, but it felt a little weird to me. I hope we come back a little hungrier this season. Last year, I feel like everyone just expected us to win the World Series, and I think maybe even the team did too. So I'm psyched to come back hungrier and maybe a little more humble.

Yeah, that clubhouse just did not seem to gel at all.

It didn't seem like it to me. And by the way, it has always seemed to me that the Red Sox, God bless them, have a horrible track record of throwing people under the bus when things go wrong. The way they treated Manny, the way they treated Pedro and the way they treated Francona, all of it really bummed me out.

Theo jumping ship was quite a blow too.

Yeah, that was weird. And I don't really understand that whole thing, he's a Brookline boy and everything, but I think he just wants new challeneges, and he probably saw a lot of stuff out there that he didn't like and couldn't change. So maybe it was time for him to go. Who knows.

You're from Brookline too, right?

I am, I went to Brookline High.

Do you miss New England at all?

I do. I was just back there. I don't know if I would ever move back, but I do. I miss the people, I miss the seasons. I miss a lot about it, honestly.

You've been pretty active on BandCamp too, how are you liking that as a way of distributing music?

I'm really suspicious of every website that tries to help musicians, because I think they all try to take too much money from us and stuff. But BandCamp is pretty cool, and I just got onboard for a few different geeky reasons and to just try it out. I think I'll stick with it. I just try to take every interface I work with and every bit of technical stuff and make it as friendly and personal as possible. I've been able to do that pretty well on BandCamp, I like it.

You've been on majors and indies, and at this point you seem to want to go your own way.

Yeah, I mean, the whole record industry has just imploded. I have just discovered that the more that I've done this, what I really love is the personal connection with people and kind of getting to do it on my own time at my own speed and not be pressured by outside forces and money. Obviously the easiest way to do that is just to do it myself. That said, I'd still work with a label, with the right label and the right people. I loved working with Jade Tree and with everyone else I've worked with. It's fun to just do things on my own right now.

How was the Vagrant experience after Far being gone for so long?

I just feel bad about that. I think Vagrant are really nice guys and really hardworking and it just, they were great. It was just a bummer about Far. We just couldn't keep ourselves from fighting, basically.

The record turned out awesome, though.

Oh, I love the record. I absolutely agree with you. I love that music, and that whole part was honestly really fun. It was just when it came to touring, we just had such different ideas about it. Some of us wanted to get on a bus and get on every tour we could, and some of us just wanted to take it a little more mellow, and that was a big problem.

Well, I like that you guys didn't force it and fake it and not talk to each other behind the scenes but keep it together enough to play shows.

I've never understood that. I personally do not possess whatever tool you need to possess to do that. I don't have that tool. It works for me.

SO after everything you've done in your career, you seem to be, at least what I can gather form your Facebook and your Twitter, you seem to be pretty comfortable with the way things are going right now, just doing small releases on your own for the fans. So, what's next?

Well, to address the first part of that, I am having a lot of real moments of just pure happiness thinking about how things have gone. I'm proud of how things have gone and I feel incredible lucky. I've raised my daughter doing this, I've made a living doing this. I still have fun doing it. I don't know a lot of people in any profession who are still enjoying themselves, so I feel really happy about that. So I think what comes next is I continue to try to do things in these personal ways that have been so much fun for me, but honestly I have some crazy projects coming up. I'm working on some really kind of Gratitude-y sounding rock songs with Ian Love from Rival Schools. I also just got sent some songs by J. Robbins from Jawbox that he wants to work with me on.

Those are two names I'm excited to hear.

Me too. I'm just kind of psyched to work with different people. Bob from Gratitude, the bassist, I just wrote a song with him. Jeremy from Gratitude, I'm gonna visit him at his recording studio and make some noise with him. I'm just kind of going for it. I just figure, I still have fun doing it, I can still sing, I still have fun singing, so I'm going to do as much of it as I can do and stay happy.

It seems like you're in a really good place.

Yeah, I'm going to get my kid out of the nest. Hopefully she gets off to school and starts her life. That feels really good and scary. I don't know what happens with the rest of my life, whether it's making music or doing something else, but I have to admit, for doing something for all of my adult life and still be doing it, I'm looking around seeing how hard it is to grow up and keep your heart and make some money. The fact that that has worked out for me, I wish that for everyone, I honestly do.