Welcome to the third edition #MattyMonday, the streaming debuts of songs off my new album “Meta Dada”.

ICYMI (or T, for “Them?”), Episode 1 featured Tracks 1 & 2: “Satan Gave Me Sunglasses” and “Media Casualty”, and Episode 2 featured Tracks 3 & 4: “In Our Coldest Time and “Mild”.

LPs are available at record stores in Green Bay and Appleton as well as on my Bandcamp page, but each Monday I’ll be rolling out the songs online—you name the platform, they’re gonna be on it. If you haven’t heard the songs before, I recommend listening to them first before reading all the context and lyrics. For those who have heard the music, I hope these posts will add to your experience. 

*Note* — I am and likely always will be an Album Appreciator, and if you happen to also fall into that niche, you might consider waiting ‘til all these songs are out (or, dude, just buy the record now) because I truly did try and shape these 12 songs for a single, continuous listening session. No judgment either way, though; mostly glad you’re checking out the songs, however be your bag.

Eyyy, it’s Side A! I keep thinking I’m gonna slow down to one song a week, but as is, it’s been so tough to not share all these at once. Enjoy another two-fer for today, anyway!

Track 5: “I Need Another Vice”

Bandcamp

Spotify

The players

Pedal Steel: Frank Anderson

Back-Up Vocals: Cory Chisel, Ryan Seefeldt

Drums, Percussion: Andy Klaus

Harmonies: Sam Farrell, Alex Drossart

Keys: Alex Drossart

Claps: All

Acoustic Guitar, Upright Bass: Matty Day

The session

I had Andy in mind for drums on this one because I hoped he’d bring a bit of extra musicality to some country drumming the way he did for The Priggs song “It Will Be Too Soon”. Boy, was I ever wrong. Iiii kid. I gave him no direction, yet Andy was fantastic. To a bit of his chagrin, we kept what may have been his second, at most his third take on drumming it. Andy’s an outstanding musician, but he’s not altogether used to working in more of a slapdash style as we embraced for these sessions. “Perfect is the enemy of good”—is that the phrase? It was certainly the ethos, and though I felt a pang of sympathy for Andy, he should never have questioned his completely loose and naturally spot-on playing; in fact that punk should’ve just been glad we let him hang out with us. Why can I not write this without ripping on him. I love Andy Klaus like a brother. He’s my daughter’s piano teacher for two years running, and just one of the greatest dudes. That’s him cracking open a cold one (of pop, if I recall) toward the end of the song.

And hey, I got a taste of this sort of trust-your-instincts-and-studio-engineers situation myself, as I went in intending to play bass in a very simple, unobtrusive way—to “serve the song,” as it were—but Frank Anderson was having precisely none of that. He told me to play… I forget how he would’ve worded it, but basically to play more interestingly. As per usual I hadn’t prepared my bass part, and with this newly insisted direction, I was unsure kinda like Andy must’ve been, but I didn’t whine about it like he did, that crying whiner. Granted, Andy may recall all of these events a bit differently, so I look forward to reading his blog responding to these allegations. The floor is yours, Andrew. Anyway, Frank was right. (Holy Concert Café flashbacks.)

Frank’s a brilliantly bold fellow, someone whose wisdom is cherished by many of us musicians. Cumulatively, I talked to Frank on the phone more than I talked to anyone else last year, largely at random moments, and primarily about music. Frank’s described himself as a Forrest Gump-type figure with music. (Check out the first interview and the second interview he did on Fox Cities Core. [He did a third interview with his excellent band Zebra Mussel, too.]) One of my favorite how-in-the-world moments of his was when he was in the parking lot of the mental hospital where/when The Cramps were performing inside. Frank’s dislike of The Cramps is one of the only areas where he and I disagree, but always respectfully.

Beyond his passionate opinions, Frank, having been a session musician for Butch Vig during the heyday of Smart Studios, is a boon to any session for musicality as well. Funny thing, though: when I asked Frank to play pedal steel on this song, I’d never actually heard him play before.

Soon as he plugged in I was floored—as advertised and then some. We decided that day to add a key change coming out of each instrumental interlude; I liked starting in the same key “Mild” ended in to somewhat orient the listener after that wild ride—but the key changes felt write for a country song with a simple melody/structure. Frank nimbly worked around those. We had him play a clean track, coming in after the second verse and going through the whole song. After this session I got to do a few gigs alongside Frank with Boy Howdy and The Electric Ranch Hands, and I gleaned all kinds of wisdom from Frank regarding instruments staying out of each other’s way (which I’m hoping to employ for Country Holla) and he did that masterfully on this track, just intuitively.

Originally I intended for Frank to take the first half of the solo on steel, then Alex have the second half on keys, which was also what we did for The Priggs’ “It Will Be Too Soon”, albeit with Bob Parins, then of the band of Montreal (and still, as we were shocked to find out, a Green Bay native) on steel.

But then Frank used some effects pedals that made his instrument sound incredibly like something Sneaky Pete Kleinow would employ, and it was pretty exciting since I’d expected him to just play it clean. I don’t know if we discussed Frank taking the whole solo, but it felt totally right.

For almost all our Wednesday evening sessions, I would leave work in Green Bay and drive straight to Appleton, and we did try, honest, to have dinner on occasion. I was told Frank’s a big McDonald’s fan, so got a bunch of that to eat—yet another glorious vice in the subtext.

Cory popped in for this session and suddenly it was a party. We showed him what we’d been working on and he started talking and singing in this crazy cartoony voice, and there was no way it wasn’t gonna make it on the song. Just way too fun. Fortunately I had the wherewithal to snap a few pics:

We bookmarked where we wanted Ryan’s Peppy LePew lines and had him add at another session. With retroactive apologies to Valentine, the actual French speaker on “In Our Coldest Time”.

Uh, Matty, what’s the deal here

Sometime in 2011, Tom Smith asked me to do a solo set to open for The Hooten Hallers at the Crunchy Frog. I think my Muddy Udders bandmates couldn’t do the date. So I challenged myself to not only play my first ever solo show, but to learn some new covers (Redd Kross’ “Play My Song”, Beck’s “Nightmare Hippy Girl”, Bowie’s “Black Country Rock”, and a one-man band, cigar box guitar version Alice Cooper’s “No More Mr. Nice Guy” a la Pat MacDonald) and to write and play a set of entirely new material. I was going to do almost the whole thing on acoustic guitar, with a tambourine around my ankle, and I bought a harmonica rack and some harps in different keys to make it happen.

I cleared a nice early summer day to just work on songs on my back porch on Stadium Drive, looking out at Lambeau Field, and finished a number of songs, some that were already started, others that I started and finished that day. A couple of these are good but still shelved; one was recorded for the fourth, still-shelved Muddy Udders album; two appeared on MU’s third album (“Rage Red, Sorrow Blue” and “I’d Trade It All For You”), and then “I Need Another Vice”.

Pretty fruitful day for me. Here are a couple shots from the show, billed as Matte Jones:

Worth mentioning that other than that show and a solo set I’m so glad I played at my grandma’s retirement home (about a year before she passed), the “Meta Dada” shows were the only “solo” performances I’ve ever done. I was glad I did that first one at the Frog, not just for the songs I wrote for it, but in the sense that it taught me I really wasn’t interested in playing solo, which was largely the reason why until this album, I never wanted to go it alone.

In 2012, on perhaps my favorite night of my favorite tour, Muddy Udders/F*ck Knights, after having a blast playing at two different house shows in Murfreesboro, TN, we hung out in some giant old house and passed a guitar around. Kyle Lewis was there, who I haven’t run into for a bit (looks like he’s still playing guitar for Maggie Rose). Roelke told me to play something I’d written. It was probably 4 a.m., but this one had stuck with me enough to remember it, and until “Meta Dada” I hadn’t played it since.

Lotta history there, huh. For the song itself, of course I’m showing a progression of attempts to fill The Void. Placed in the context of “Meta Dada” it works to further this evolution of figuring out how to get through life. The old kicks lose their thrill. It’s an ill-fated search for meaning, rather than actively creating it for oneself, imposing it a la Nietzsche’s active nihilism. I say ill-fated because that last verse—which so perfectly contained the happy accident of Frank making an atonal slide noise after his solo, perfectly sounding like a speeding car on a highway—I’d really intended as pondering suicide as some morbid final vice, and I’d meant for that last B Major chord to go minor and simply ring out for drama. Sam felt otherwise; particularly in that great studio setting, he was the one who pushed for it to end on a party, which made for Cory’s hilarious ad-libbing and everything, effectively taking what I’d intended as a low point and making it a high one. Just a great call.

After the sonic far-out-ness of “Mild”, about the only move was to 180 to something rootsy. Seemingly, at least; we tried to do something similar to Pete, Paul & Mary’s “I Dig Rock & Roll Music” where the accompaniment morphs with each verse.

Lyrics

Once upon a time I breathed my first

Every following breath got worse

So began my search

For ways to make life nice

First I found cartoons, then fruit snacks

Got lost in library stacks

Different distractions

Something to suffice

I Need Another Vice

Guess what: girls came

I did, too

Chased ‘em ‘round like Pepé Le Pew

Threw myself into

The nearest pair of thighs

(Mon chéri…)

I need another vice

Drugs, drugs, drugs, drugs

Drugs, drugs, drugs

Oh man, I’m pretty f#¢ked up!

A new view for my vulnerable eyes

I need another vice—I need one!

(I need another one)

I can hear the highway from my house

To me it sounds like Santa Claus

Every exit presents a paradise

I need another vice

(How ‘bout a Dilly Bar?)

Track 5: “Sunburn”

Bandcamp

Spotify

The players

Drums, Percussion: Ethan Noordyk

Trumpet: Brent Turney

Spiritual Chant: Ryan Seefeldt, Alex Drossart, Sam Farrell, Matty Day

Additional Electric Guitar: Sam Farrell

Keys: Alex Drossart

Electric Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, Upright Bass, Acoustic Baritone Guitar, Acoustic 12-String Guitar, Whistling: Matty Day

The session

I’d known Ethan for probably a decade. He was the drummer for the Overserved Gentlemen, featuring our mutual friend Craig Baumann (who I’d met back when he was in the Milwaukee band We Are Your Father), as well as Dan Kimpel. Dan not only plays pedal steel for Country Holla, but he lent me the upright bass I play on much of this album.

One day I went into my favorite local brewery, Stillmank, and was totally surprised to see Ethan working there—I had no idea he’d even moved to Green Bay. I’m still pumped about that; he’s such a good guy, and I’ve gotten to do some ice fishing out at his place on the Bay. Like Frank in the previous track, though a few years later, Ethan was also a session player at Smart Studios. He got that gig after drumming for a rockabilly band called The Blowtorches. Coincidentally, I was asked to fill in for the ‘Torches in 2022 for what would be their four-show swan song. The singer and bass player, Steve Golla and Dan Howe, are with me doing Country Holla now. Tidy stuff, huh?

Ethan’s mostly been playing jazz, both for the Standard Collective and for the Green Bay Jazz Orchestra, and occasionally filling in with Brass Differential. He was stoked to play on something a bit different. He was always totally inventive playing with Overserved Gentlemen, and he was game for anything, even my customarily underperformed demo. He brought a huge box of percussion instruments to add to this one. But his drumming and preparation were just incredible. Sam and Alex had never met him before, and he knocked their socks off.

I got to play an acoustic guitar with nylon strings that my grandma had given me; she had an idea to try to learn it in her 70s, but figured I’d get more use out of it. I also got to use Cory’s acoustic baritone, and my man Travis Pashek’s Gretsch electric, the red one I often played with The Foamers?.

Brent came recommended by Alex from playing together in Big Mouth and the Power Tool Horns. I’d always imagined trumpet there, but we had to wait quite a while to track it, really toward the end of all the recording, because of scheduling issues. In the meantime, I’d actually considered commissioning Theremin for what was going to be the trumpet part. I’ve followed Via Mardot on Instagram for a while, and she put out a post saying she was open for some commission work. I had this clever idea that she could try to harmonize two Theremin tracks, and I thought she’d be really excited about it, too, not to mention the cash I’d send her way. Turns out I was quite out of my league: she was soon busy recording with Roger Waters his updated solo version of “Dark Side of the Moon”, which struck us all as pretty funny when we found that out—Matty Day or Roger Waters; tough call there! The Theremin idea was really just me trying to come up with an unexpected, potential improvement due to the scheduling issues, but I loved what Brent did on it. He drove to Appleton from Stevens Point and knocked out his part with aplomb in like half an hour.

While I’d consider this song an instrumental, it was just begging for some sort of intense utterances or chants, which clearly meant we needed Ryan Seefeldt again. Ryan, Sam, Alex, and I—known, by us, as The Deadbirds—threw our hearts into this chant of Ryan’s concoction. Like David Lynch discussing “Eraserhead”, Ryan describes this chant as incredibly spiritual, but refuses to expand on that assertion. Perhaps unsurprisingly, we originally overdid the very-fun-to-do “wee-a-wop”s, and trimming them down was a comically serious endeavor.

Alex brought in all kinds of color to this one, and Sam added the wounded electric guitar swells before the buildup.

Another huge assist on this one goes to Domenic Marcantonio, leader of Beach Patrol, for which I was bassist for a year. I was desperate to add castanets to this song, but no one I knew had any, so I was prepared to drive to Oshkosh to buy some for over $100. I made one last desperate trip to Heid Music in Green Bay to see what I could possibly find, when I ran into Domenic, and when I told him my idea he suggested I use musical spoons instead, right there on the shelf for $10. Yes, yes, yes! I owe you one, Nick!

Uh, Matty, what’s the deal here

This is another tune based off an idea I’d held onto for a long time; I just found a partial demo of it from 2011, oddly enough like “I Need Another Vice”.

Of course it’s got this southwestern flare, but I’d still classify it as a surf tune. My first foray into instrumental surf was “Rugburn” for Muddy Udders. That one was sort of my attempt at a Ventures style song. Then I pushed myself into more of a Dick Dale direction with my next one, and called it “Drugburn” , also for MU.

I decided to name the track “Sunburn” so’s to complete a not-terribly-connected trilogy. I’d always imagined giving it a big cinematic sound, like The Shadows meet Ennio Morricone. I never could quite imagine Muddy Udders in a studio session that would be able to suggest that scope, but we never got around to trying it regardless, and instead the “Burn Trilogy” completes here.

The sense of “Sunburn” here, suggests an overdoing, with regard to “Vice” before it. But it still feels like an empowering piece rather than weakening, especially moving past the cold and dungeon vibes of earlier, not to mention replacing the dingy electric glow of screens with healthful sun.

Performance

Unfortunately, the video of the full “Meta Dada Soiree” release show in Green Bay did not work out as hoped. (Read more about it here.) But—thankfully, my father-in-law happened to record this full song; my mother-in-law had to leave the performance to take care of my baby daughter (since my wife was up on stage for this one), so my father-in-law filmed it so my mother-in-law wouldn’t miss it. Serendipitous:

Lyrics

(Approximately)

WEE-A-WOP

Half way through the album, six down and half a dozen to go! All gratitude to the fine folks who helped make these recordings.

‘Til next Monday,

-Matty