Part 2 - Matt Scannell of Vertical Horizon - Text
More about the anniversary of Everything You Want, performing, and writing lyrics
Highlights from this conversation:
"There was a way that (Seinfeld) described the art of stand-up comedy that... I felt there were through lines to what we do."
"The tone that we want to set when we start a show is that we're in this together."
"The feeling I get when I walk on stage with Richard (Marx) is what I would imagine the other players on the Chicago Bulls felt like when they walked on the court with Michael Jordan."
We delve into the his lyric "Listen and wait for the echoes of angels that won't return".
"Go listen to 'Subdivisions' from the Signals record (Rush)… and maybe (first) read the lyrics. It's astoundingly great."
“I have so much respect for comedians.”
Cris Cohen: To start with... Follow-up questions I wish I had asked the first time.
Matt Scannell of Vertical Horizon: I like this segment. This is a good segment.
Cris Cohen: You said in our first conversation that you learned a lot from Jerry Seinfeld. One of the examples you gave was going to the writing pad every single day and making that a habit. It's not often that a musician will cite a comedian as someone that they've learned from. Besides the daily writing habit, what other stuff did you learn from Seinfeld?
Matt Scannell: It's a great question. I am not necessarily the best public speaker. You give me a microphone and you give me a song to sing, I can do that. But the space in between the songs is not necessarily my forte.
So, I found, particularly with Seinfeld, listening to him talk about his craft and
the things he needs to do to keep his craft moving forward, I liked the cadence of how he would explain things.
Obviously, he's hilarious. But I found there was a way that he described the art of comedy, stand-up comedy, that there were through lines to what we do. And we should all be learning from the greats, right? In any field, when someone truly excels, there are ways that people in all of the other fields can benefit by studying what they've done.
I feel like, on some levels, I have urged myself to slow down a little bit, not just run off at the mouth and say exactly whatever it is that came to my mind in that moment. But also, I really struggled with learning how to be a front man for our band. If you go back to -- and I do not encourage it -- but if you go back and look at some of the earlier videos of us playing live, you'll see me very much a work in progress.
I sort of was trying to be the tough guy. You know, “Rock and roll! Expletive, expletive, expletive!” And it's not who I am.
Listening to someone like Jerry talk about his craft, it kind of encouraged me -- within my own much smaller, but to me, equally important, little world -- to be more myself and be comfortable in my own skin.
And also be confident that I can engage with people, with an audience, by more or less just being an authentic version of myself. I don't need to be trying on a character when I walk on stage. I don't have to be putting on a costume when I walk on stage. It's actually much better for me to just walk myself on stage, you know what I mean? But that was a pretty big revelation.
But at the same time, I need to also give credit to Geddy Lee from Rush. Because what I realized, as I was studying some of these people in other fields, was that it was kind of right there in front of me the whole time. Rush is my favorite band. And those guys were always hyper-authentic to themselves. They weren't trying to be anything that they weren't. When you would hear Geddy talk on the microphone during their live shows, you didn't feel like you were watching a caricature of somebody.
Cris Cohen: Two thoughts I had off of that one. The first is, do you know a comedian / actor named Kevin Pollock?
Matt Scannell: Yeah, of course.
Cris Cohen: He had a great interview recently. He came up in the stand-up world as well. And one of his pet peeves is meeting people at a party who, when they find out what he does, say, “Oh, yeah. I dabble in comedy.” And he's like, “No. Because you never hear anyone say, ‘Yeah, I dabble in dentistry.’”
Matt Scannell: That’s wonderful.
Cris Cohen: “This is my craft.” And they put in the time. They studied and worked and developed to make it look easy. And it does look like it's conversational when it's done correctly.
But that's also the thing about stand-up is you can see someone who makes it look easy. But inevitably, there's an opening act that makes it look really hard and reminds you, this is not easy.
Matt Scannell: One of my dear friends, his name is Mike Falzone. He's a stand-up comedian. He's a very funny human being, who is very good at his craft. He also happens to be a really sweet guy.
I've gone to his shows here in the LA area. And he's said, “Hey, man. We’ve got to get you up there, because you really appreciate it. You're a funny guy.”
But I'm not a funny guy. And so how dare you, Mike Falzone. So, my answer to him was always, “No. You're absolutely crazy.”
I don't want to. I never could. I'm really just happy sitting back here watching you be a virtuoso up there.
But I do think that people think it's easier than it probably is. I don't know, because I've never taken that step. Nor will I. It's just not in my DNA. But you see these guys who are just killers up there. And it just happens naturally, organically. They're taking you on a journey.
One of the things that Mike does, that I think is also a different skill set, is he does these crowd-work shows, where he's just up there talking to people. And in the moment, things just come out of his head. That's like jazz improv at the highest level, right? He's got nothing. And now he's got something.
So, I have so much respect for comedians. And I do try to learn from them, take those lessons, and see how they can be applied to what we do in a musical context.
Cris Cohen: And then the other thought I had… I've been to a few shows over the last seven days. There was one act… and I'm not going to name names. They're a well-known rock band. They were tight. But it comes down to the whole idea that volume does not equal engagement. Their lead guy, he looked the part and he acted the part. But they were just kind of okay. They were a little dull in a way. It didn't really draw you in.
I thought you did really well when you were opening for Toad The Wet Sprocket and Gin Blossoms, establishing that rapport. And also, at that same venue I saw Crowded House. I'd never seen them before. And they were fantastic.
Again, a wonderful example that volume does not equal engagement. Because they have a much more mellow sound. But those guys were fantastic at making the audience feel comfortable. They made fun of themselves constantly, and they told stories. They really drew you in. And it was kind of a fascinating study.
And not that there's anything against the strutting. Because you have people like Freddie Mercury, one of the great front men of all time. But I still think, as you said, you can find who you are. And the more natural you are, the more you're likely to have that rapport.
Matt Scannell: If you walk out on stage, and you are blessed to the degree that Freddie Mercury was blessed, to just be himself and walk on a stage and command 100,000 people effortlessly with any little gesture that he would choose to make, then there you are being the best and most authentic version of yourself. And for me, again, in my much different little world, I just want to be authentically myself. And that was a great lesson to learn.
I'd say the real tone that we want to set when we start a show is that we're in this together, right? Where we're here with you, the audience. You are here with us. And we're going to start this energy cycle. We push out from the stage. You push back into us. And what winds up happening is we get this energy that just lifts us all up throughout the whole night.
Even playing a sad song, I think we can all feel closer together, and therefore lifted up. I joke sometimes that most of my songs are kind of bittersweet. But I hope that we don't leave the evening feeling kind of down. I want us to leave feeling lifted up or that “someone else feels the way that I feel and have felt.”
Singing together as a group is just such a beautiful, communal experience. I do believe that it is a therapeutic, cathartic experience. When you play a show, and you encourage people to sing at the show, some of those people may not have sung. Some may not have used their voice to sing in weeks, months, who knows. Just sing. It can be a very positive, beneficial experience.
I come from the perspective and my bandmates come from the perspective of: Let's all try to lift each other up and walk a little taller when we leave this show.
Singing with Richard Marx
Cris Cohen: Building off of that, in our first conversation, you talked about how you love Richard Marx like a brother, but you absolutely hate him because he makes things look easy.
Matt Scannell: He’s the total worst. [laughs]
Cris Cohen: But I saw a performance from this year with you and Richard on stage, both singing “Everything You Want” acoustically. Which, number one, I thought was really cool. And two, I'm really interested in… for a singer that you respect so much and for him to take on your song -- if that's the correct term -- I'm curious what you noticed about the song and what he brought to it. Because you have this whole different perspective on a song that you know well. And here's a very experienced singer who clearly loved the song, but maybe he's pulling different pieces out of it.
Matt Scannell: It's a really interesting question. I think the feeling I get when I walk on stage with Richard is… I would imagine it is what the other players on the Chicago Bulls felt like when they were walking on the court with Michael Jordan. We need to do the best we can, because Richard is effortlessly one of the best. The beautiful thing about what he does and the way he does it, from my perspective, is his live delivery is more or less perfect 100% of the time. Maybe 99.9999999% if I'm being really critical.
And I am not a natural singer. It's something I have to work on. That's why I joke and say that I hate him, because he just walks right on stage and sings perfectly. And I will have been backstage for the last 45 minutes doing “la la la la la la la,” and all that nonsense that I have to do to get this thing going.
On the one hand, it's perfect from a note and performance standpoint. But also, I'm sort of cycling through the emotions that I had when I was writing it. So it's not just about the notes that are being sung. It's not just about the words that are being said. It's about the feeling that created the need to write the song in the first place.
When I'm closing my eyes and singing with him, I'm feeling this person next to me. It's almost like our hearts are in the same place and our voices and our guitars. It's just so next level.
Now, certainly I have my 10,000 hours. I'm confident up there on the stage and I'm not trying to diminish what it is that I do, that I feel I can do at this point fairly well. But it is a sight to behold and an experience, certainly a deeply felt experience from my perspective, to be on stage with someone at that level who has taken my song literally into his heart and he's emoting that song with me.
Cris Cohen: And then staying with that song and because the general theme is the 25th anniversary of the album, I contend that one of the best lyrics… I'll put it down as one of the best ever crafted was “Listen and wait for the echoes of angels that won't return.” Which I think is a fantastic turn of phrase. And I'm wondering if you can relate how that came about.
Matt Scannell: When I think back to that time in my life and the experience of writing that song, how my heart was feeling, there was so much uncertainty. There was so much desperation. There was this unrequited love that was viewed as friendship from the other side. And what I was really trying to grapple with was all the beautiful things that I could see for us, that we could have had if things had been a little different.
All those beautiful vistas that I could see being just so naturally ours were becoming gray and disappearing into the mist. That's how I was feeling. But I also knew that she had all these dreams of meeting Mr. Right, whatever you want to call that, right?
She had hopes that someone would come in and sweep her off her feet. And some of her dreams of what that could possibly have been were turning into somber and harsh realities. The first two verses are kind of talking from both perspectives… on the one hand from how I was feeling, but also how she was feeling, how I perceived her to be feeling.
Cris Cohen: And that imagery just popped into your head? Or was it something you kind of slaved over?
Matt Scannell: No, that line just came to me. I remember that line was just there. It was a feeling that became those words. I do have the original lyric sheet. It would be interesting to look at it again. But I would bet you there are no crossing outs or circles with lines drawn through it. I think it was just there.
And it was also nice in the last verse to switch it around a little bit and have it be “anger of angels.” I think that took a little bit longer to find. There was a sense that something that was natural and beautiful had been forfeited.
And there were consequences too. There was some pain there.
Cris Cohen: I'm also wondering… because you guys had been at it for a while by the time this album came out. You had experience under your belt. You had been conditioning your mind to create lyrics and put these connections together.
One of the reasons this interview happened is because of my work with Sister Hazel. I was talking with Ken (Block – lead singer). I told him one of my favorite lyrics he's ever written was from the Chasing Daylight album. It's from the song “Your Mistake,” where he says, “I want to be rain that tastes like wine,” which is fabulous and could mean so many different things. And as good as he was when he started, I don't know if he could have written that line when they were just starting out. It's like it had to be that whole experience that led up to him creating amazing lines like that.
Matt Scannell: Yeah. I think that is a really important and valid point too. Because, you know, speaking for myself, I am a much different person now than I was back then. And I'm happy with where I am right now. I'm not looking back, pining for yesterday. Part of that may just be the wisdom of my 50s.
But I completely agree with you. When I look back at myself at that time, there was so much desperation and angst and uncertainty. And to be completely fair, there is still a heck of a lot of angst and despair and uncertainty.
I just think that I'm a little bit more capable of dealing with it. There's that old adage of “whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger.” I feel like at this point, just by virtue of rinse and repeat, day after day, we're doing this crazy thing called life. Like, okay, I've dealt with this type of thing before.
But to the point of lyric writing, I think I was very lucky as a songwriter to have had the Everything You Want record be the record that was going to get the big push from the major label. I wasn't really ready until then.
If it had been a younger world, a less competent version of myself as a writer, if I had been someone who hadn't been really trying to refine the craft, hone the craft, and then we got the big shot, I'm not confident that I would look back as fondly. I imagine that I wouldn't look back as fondly on that record as I do.
On some levels, it feels to me like I'm not that different now as a lyricist as I was then. But the records that came before that, it was a significantly different experience. And maybe it is that, once you get your 10,000 hours, you've learned how to do this thing.
Now, it continually changes. And collaborative songwriting, for example, was something that I was really not comfortable with. When Richard Marx and I became friends, he said, “You want to write a song?”
I was basically, “No, I don't.”
It was out of fear. It was a lack of confidence. Because up until then, the vast majority of the songs that I had written were completely introspective. And I would be alone in a room writing a song. So, to have someone else in there was scary. To have someone at his level was petrifying. And to think about what he would have thought of me, if I had done a bad job, was unacceptable.
But I have been learning over time how to do different aspects of this craft. And I've still got so far to go. But I do know, if I sit down in a room with someone, I can do this. And it's no less of a kick now than it was back then to get a phrase, get a rhyme, get a feeling. These are magical little things that you are pulling unwittingly out of the ether. You're trying to harness and refine and hone and turn into its own little being. And that's just special. That's magic.
Co-writing a Song with Neil Peart of Rush
Cris Cohen: And you put yourself in that uncomfortable situation more than once, as one of the few people that's ever co-written a song with Neil Peart (of Rush), who is considered a fantastic lyricist.
Matt Scannell: Can I just say -- sorry to interrupt you -- if people somehow are not familiar with Rush, but specifically Neil's lyrics, go listen to “Subdivisions” from the Signals record. And maybe even don't listen to the song first. Maybe look up the lyrics and read the lyrics. It's astoundingly great. I have chills it's so great. And he did that. He created those words. Unbelievable.
Cris Cohen: Yeah. You could go through even obscure stuff that never got radio play. One of my favorite lines is on the Counterparts album. There's a song called “Cold Fire.” And there's a line in there that says, “The flame at the heart of a pawnbroker's diamond is a cold fire.”
I'm like, holy crap, that's good.
Matt Scannell: Oh yeah. He's up there. He’s on Mount Olympus.
Cris Cohen: Right, so what did you take away from that experience?
Matt Scannell: We wrote a song called “Even Now” for the Burning The Days record. He told me that he had a title and the concept. The title was “Even Now.” The concept was, “You still think about me after all this time? (Even now.) There's still some uncertainty for you after all this time? Well, then I guess we're even now.”
And I just was like, Oh! What a play on words! That's a great idea. I can't wait to sink my teeth into this lyrically. I'm no Neil Peart, but yeah, let's write those lyrics. Let's write this song.
He comes over to the studio, opens up this folder, and sits down.
He said, “So are you ready?”
And I was like, “Yeah, I'm ready.”
He pulls out a piece of paper that's like the heaviest stock. It's all printed out. He had it printed at the world's finest print shop with different fonts. He places it down on the desk in front of me, and he says, “Tell me what you think.”
It's the title, and then the lyrics. I'm looking down at it like, “Those are amazing. That's… the lyrics are… they're done.”
That part of me that was hungry to jump in was all of a sudden like, “Okay, what can I do?” And it's not surprising, right? Because that's how he functioned within the context of Rush. He would provide a bunch of lyrics. They would go through them, make some little edits here and there. Or I know Geddy (Lee), as he was singing, would sometimes say, “These words are a little rough for me as a singer. Can we find something else that would work?”
But within the context of me as a songwriter sitting down with one of my great heroes, and subsequently one of my absolute best friends ever, I was like, I'm done. You don't need me.
And I picked up an acoustic guitar and I just started playing. As I was reading the words, I just started playing the guitar.
Fortunately, I was recording as I did it. And then I just started singing. And I started singing the words as it went down. More or less, I wrote the music and the melody for it instantaneously as I read the lyrics down.
When I was done, Neil said, “Is that something that you've been working on?”
And I was like, “No.”
I don't know what that was. But I do know that, when you are more connected to the muse and more disciplined in your relationship with the creative process, things come to you a bit more easily. It's a muscle that you are keeping finely toned. And so that moment was plausibly more easily achieved because I was kind of ready for it. But it was this really beautiful thing.
But I miss him so much. What a man.
Cris Cohen: And it's interesting. You've said this before about trying to be in the present. But you've been doing all of these interviews in celebration of the 25th anniversary. So, this look back, how might that be influencing what you're going to be doing going forward?
Matt Scannell: That's an interesting question. The short answer is: It's not. The past is the past. The future is the future.
The one thing I will say, that has been lovely, is I feel like I'm seeing some family friends that I haven't seen in a long time. It's nice to kind of reconnect with some of the songs on that record that we haven't played in ages. And I love those songs.
I love them like family. But it does not impact me in terms of what I want to be doing moving forward. And that's a nice feeling. Because there are so many ways that that could be different.
I could be sitting here going, “If I could only write another ‘Everything You Want.’” You can't write another “Everything You Want.” You need to write another new song. You need to do something new that you haven't done before.
(But) because of “Everything You Want” and the success that it had, I am not freaking out and feeling the need to do something that's not genuine and authentic (just) to make money or give us success. All these other considerations, I don't have them. I don't care. And that's the gift that the songs from that record have given me. I cannot even believe the sort of… luck is the first word, but good fortune, and the gratitude that I feel towards this music, towards Everything You Want. I really can't put it into words, because everything about my life changed and mostly for the better.
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