By Andy Sears

“Everyone likes to talk, everyone likes to talk shit” is a line that sticks out off of Matthew E. White’s song “Rock n’ Roll is cold” from his sophomore album Fresh Blood released this past month on his own Spacebomb records. It’s a testament to the buzz that he’s created around himself and his big band R&B recordings that he arranges, produces and performs under his law firm-like name. It perhaps may also be a recognition that even though his notoriety might be coming from the indie-rock world, he is passionately a child of rhythm and blues music. Nonetheless, the thirty-two year old from Virginia is still relatively new to the idea of making his own records and has spent much of the past decade playing other musical roles, all which have paved the way for him to launch his own record label, acquire the skills to write and arrange for session players to come in and knock out studio tracks, and even seek out artists like Natalie Prass to produce and represent as a Spacebomb Records inaugural artists. So upon the eve of his show in Allston tomorrow at Great Scott, we caught up with the multi-talented producer and artist to chat with him about all things music, his love for R&B in particular, and his thoughts on the Marvin Gaye/Robin Thicke lawsuit.

AP: Your newest record Fresh Blood is just your second, but you’ve been involved in a lot of other musical projects over the years. Was there anything holding you back from making your own stuff before these two records?

MW: I don’t think I really had the vision together, and I don’t really think I had the technique together either.  Records are more than just self-documentation ya’ know, if that was something I was interested in I could have made all kinds of records. I’m not really interested in just self-documentation unless I think I have something to say, and saying something unique, and I didn’t really have that. I didn’t really have that for the first few years in the music industry and with me being involved in stuff. I did that have that per se on my own. Big Inner was really the first time I felt like I had a unique voice or a unique vision that I really wanted to get out there on a record.

AP: When you say you want you record to be more than self-documentation does that mean your records try to be more than just song after song or have a bigger message?

MW: It’s not about making a bigger message, its more about just making something that’s more worth-while ya’ know. My seven year old nephew could make a record documenting his life but I don’t want to listen to it, because ya’know, he doesn’t know how to play music. That’s just not what I want to do, I don’t want to listen to records like that and I don’t want to make records like that and I mean that when I stop having something to say I’ll stop making records. Hopefully I can facilitate a life where your always learning and growing and can figure it out but if that’s not the case… you kind of find where you fit in and I don’t mean that in a sense that my records have a bigger message or a message you can put into words, it means just that they are artistic for me, they feel like just something I want to get out, everything from the lyrics, the songs, to the production, that’s stuff that all has a vocabulary that I’m developing and want to get out. I don’t just want to make records for people, I make for myself. Then only think if it’s something that I want to share.

AS: Big Inner was recorded in about a week, was the process the same for Fresh Blood as far as pulling people in to get the actual tracks done?

MW: Yeah yeah, almost everything about this record was very similar. It was co-produced by Trey Pallard, who co-produced the Natalie Prass record with me. So that was a little bit of a different of a process, but mainly I’ve worked with Trey, and basically it’s the same guys. Even Big Inner which was recording in a week, there was a lot of preparation for it in terms of rehearsal and that kind of thing. Same thing with this, sort of write the songs and bring in the people that we’re going to work with, workshop them and go into the studio and work it out. We put a little bit more time in on this one. But their building blocks on how it worked out were pretty similar.

AP: For your writing process, were these songs you already had lying around or did you write them when it was time to make a new record?

MW: There were kind of fragments or pieces of songs in development that were around, but you kind of get done with your album cycle and you got to make your next record so you get writing again, so you take some stuff you had in the past, write some new stuff… One of the nice things was that Big Inner wasn’t a raging fits of my early life kind of record. Those songs definitely weren’t lying around… those were songs I wrote to make that record because I didn’t really write songs before that. That wasn’t a new process. You know a lot times they say you have your whole life to write your first record and six months to write your second one and there’s a lot of truth to that for a lot of people. But for me I wrote the first in just about the same amount of time I wrote the second basically.

AP: You seem to cherish making music with a bigger band sound, how do you take that on the road in terms of deciding what sounds and parts to cut and what to keep, and I guess who to bring along with you too?

MW: It’s the guys from the record, the bass player and the drummer. I try my best to keep them around as much as possible. Ya’ know, we have a really great rapport with each other and we added a guitar player. I wanted to do two guitars bass and drums. It’s almost weirdly rare to see that, strange thing to say but its true, it’s a strange thing to see just two guitar players, bass and drummer, really minimal effects or anything like that, just playing songs. To me the songs are the root of the record they’re the root of the live show. You just use your taste and judgement to make decisions about what you leave and keep but that’s just sort how my songs are played.

AP: When you come to a city like Boston, and you have all these horn parts and string parts all written out, could it be a thing where you could just grab players for a night?

MW: I could if I had the money to do that yeah.

AP: But still in a city like this I’m sure there would be students that would love that.

MW: There’s a lot of practical and administrative problems with doing that on a night to night basis. For one, I don’t think it’s right to ask people to play for free when your making money. And you don’t know how good people really are. Even on the smallest details when we try to find the right people for parts, most times guests have a hard time handling that type of thing. It’s also a lot of preparation to get a stage set up for things like that. At the beginning of the month we played a show in Brooklyn with a thirty piece band with all the strings, the choir and all the horns. It was a pretty cool thing and I’d love to do that more, but its prohibitively expensive and administratively challenging.

AP: I love “Fruit Trees” what exactly are drinking “in the shade with crushed ice?”

MW: Coca-colas

AP: No deeper meaning to that song, it’s all on the surface?

MW: Nope, it’s all on the surface.

AP: What about the album title, “Fresh Blood,” it evokes a thought in me of inviting someone to come and tear something apart, like I don’t know I used to work at a haunted house when I was a kid and we used to yell that when new people were coming in.

MW: That’s funny. To me it kind of has this duel meaning that is slightly dark in that way that you’re describing. It’s obviously in its most accurate, literal meaning… it’s very personal. It’s very meaningful. It kind of has that element to it. It’s also just slang for newness, or freshness. A new beginning kind of thing. It’s also lyrics in the record. So those things all kind of made sense together. I kind of had that name for a long time and wasn’t sure if I was going to use it. I just kept coming back to it and kind of realized that I think that’s what the record is called. I just had to tell other people that.

AP: Is “Rock and roll is cold” a dig at the industry or just different genres of music?

MW: No, not really a dig, it’s just sort of a reality check a bit. It’s also very tongue and cheek, it’s fun. I don’t think anyone should take it too seriously. To me it’s less about rock and roll being cold and more about R&B being free. I think when you look at the last seventy-five years of rock n’ roll history and the last seventy five years of R&B history; rock n roll has almost become a caricature of itself and it sort of flooded out and it isn’t particularly vibrant in the same way R&B is. R&B is an older genre, but the most exciting music in the world is R&B music, as far as I’m concerned. Ya’ know like there’s no rock n’ roll situation that is making music as exciting as Frank Ocean, or Kendrick Lamar, or D’Angelo, ya’ know those guys are making exciting, vibrant, completely relevant music and rock n’ roll doesn’t really have that. It’s a little bit out on its own, but it started like that very early on, a caricature of rock n’ roll. Ya’ know the Rolling Stones certainly are a caricature of Howling Wolf and its great I love that, but they were all becoming carbon copies early on. R&B doesn’t really have that and because of that it’s still alive and vibrantly.

AP: As a producer and arranger, and talking about the roots and tradition of music, does the Marvin Gaye lawsuit impact you in any way or make you think or double check things?

MW: No, I’m hoping that lawsuit won’t hold up.

AP: Yeah, most people are saying the appeal will go through?

MW: Yeah, I don’t think that it’s right. We’ll see. Music is about learning from other people. And I have no problem…I’ve heard things here or there where I think I’ve heard people play things that I’ve wrote and they’ve modeled what they wrote after it and I have no problem with it. That’s how art works, and how people figure out what they do. I sort of keep my hands clean in that regard, in the sense of that I really don’t get caught up in that I just want to make what I make. It’s certainly from some sort of tradition but I’m just going to make what I make and not worry about it though. It’s scary though, that particular judgement is problematic I think if it were to become the way the law works. I don’t think it accurately reflects how things are created, but we’ll see.

AP: I’m digging the Natalie Prass record too, are there any other new artists that will be coming down the Spacebomb Records pipeline any time soon?

MW: Not really, I mean yes there will be, but we don’t have anything else recorded right now.

Matthew E. White is playing at Great Scott tomorrow, Sunday April 5^th with Wilsen. Tickets $13 adv. $15 dos.