Legendary artist Matisyahu lives and breathes music, combining creativity, passion and powerful songwriting
Photo courtesy of Matisyahu. Photo credit: Juliana Ronderos.
Daily Reggae connected with Matisyahu to dive into the legendary singer-songwriter’s new EP, “Hold The Fire”, his unique songwriting process, and approach to bringing the new music to life on tour!
We’ve been big fans of your music for many years now, and it’s incredibly inspiring to follow your journey and constant creativity! Speaking of creativity, how has your approach to songwriting evolved over the years?
Well, I would say that the songwriting process for me in the early days was sort of like I would get instrumental hip hop cassettes and then I would write lyrics over them, sort of like a rapper would write over beats like free association.
So all my early songs like “King Without a Crown” and “Close My Eyes,” that first group of songs, were all written in that way where I would get a beat or whatever and then just kind of almost freestyle over it. And then as time went on, things changed for me.
When I started studying a lot more, started incorporating a lot of Old Testament and Torah philosophy ideas into the words, not just speaking from personal experiences or what I’m seeing around the world around me but more now like actually kind of delving into ideas and concepts and from there sometimes even stories and concepts that would be worked out ahead of time between me, usually me and a teacher, a mentor that I was working with who’s a co-writer on the Light album.
And then other times it was like with the band, we would all sit together and create music together based on improvisations from tour, and then we would build those into songs and then I would lay vocals on top of that.
Then, on this record, this new EP, we did something called song camp where we got together with lots of different producers, writers, other people that do similar things to me and we would all get in a room together and kind of create together and collaborate so this was a huge collaborative piece here.
Congratulations on the release of your new EP, “Hold The Fire”! You magically blend musical genres including reggae, rock, hip hop and more! How do you stay motivated as a singer-songwriter?
My motivation for singing and writing and everything is, it's just something that I love to do. It’s a creative way, expression. I enjoy it so that's the main motivating factor – that I enjoy it – but I also do feel a push and a responsibility to create and to try to put out music regularly, especially in the industry, how things are now. In order to be relevant, you have to be putting music out constantly so that is also a motivating factor in terms of my creating music as well.
Can you share a memory from the creation of the EP that you hold close to your heart?
Yes, during the recording of “Lifeline.”
We had about four people in the room and we had the beat going and I remember we were in my son’s room, Laivy’s room, downstairs where we had the studio and just some really talented individuals, very positive attitudes, and we were all just having a great time while we were blasting the tune and we’re all sort of writing different lines and singing different lines and everyone takes a turn at the microphone, and then we all sing together like a group gang vocal and then someone would have an idea for a harmony and they’ll throw that on.
That collaborative process of being with everybody and being in my house, it was just a lot of fun.
Who are some of the musicians that you collaborated with on the EP, and did you have any memorable days or nights in the studio that you can tell us about?
One of the people that is most mentioned is Sircharles Coffey. We worked on another song together called “Rage” that is not on the EP but we’ll probably release on the next batch of songs. He just did such an incredible job with that, so creative and just interesting and different in a lot of ways than what I would naturally do, but at the same time very much in my wheelhouse.
I had this one track by a producer named Luke and I loved the track; it was also kind of different from a lot of the stuff that I was doing. So I was trying to figure out what I could do there creatively and interesting and I brought him in on it and I asked him to write on that one and he just did such a great job, just interesting vocals, heartfelt and creative, and I then added a couple of things but he was a big part of that song in particular.
For “Fireproof,” I worked with a couple of guys that just live in my neighborhood, someone connected us, Ami Kozak and Ben Antelis, and basically Ami has a studio in his backyard and we were all talking about times and, it’s funny, it's like everyone has to basically be done by carpool pickup at 3 o’clock. We were laughing about the fact that we were kind of stay-at-home dads but we also do music when we are not on the road or whatever and that track came together beautifully, just the three of us basically in the room working on it.
Then, Ben has a lot of contacts and people that he sent it to to mix and give it that pop kind of shine to it so it's a unique track for me. I was playing it for the uber driver and he was telling me that he thought it should be in a Disney movie.
It’s so rad you are touring nationally with Cydeways this year! What are a few of the songs from the EP that you are excited to play during the Hold the Fire tour?
It's interesting because when you're playing new songs you kind of start to feel out which ones work and which ones are really powerful for the audience and you start to find where those songs really resonate with you.
For me so far, “End of the World” and “Lifeline” have been my two favorite songs to play, with “Lifeline” really coming to the top. It's just such a fun song to sing. The lyrics are so potent and one of the main lyrics in that song is “me and my tribe, positive vibes, I keep ‘em close, won't ever let go, hold the fire” and when I started singing that and I started looking out into the audience, I had this kind of revelation.
At first it was like, I looked at that line as being sort of dedicated to the Jews, you know “me and my tribe.” People refer often times to Jews like, “are you in the tribe?” or whatever. And that was powerful for me and I would see an Israeli flag or a group of Jewish students or kids with yarmulkes on and I was thinking about them. Then as I was singing the song and I’m looking around the audience, it dawned on me that it's even deeper than that.
The fans that come to the shows, the people that live with this music, that are singing along to every word and living and breathing with the music, like this is the tribe, this is the Matisyahu tribe. And since I’ve been performing it, it's been a powerful moment for me every single time when I look out at the fans and I think about the fact that we are this tribe of people that have been kind of together now for some time.
It's beautiful.
