New Age Phonograph | Matt Connarton Unleashed

0:00 Speaker 1: Oh, that is so good.

0:02 Speaker 2: The song is out in the valley and that is New Age phonograph, and we have them on the line with us. Let's hopefully we can hear them.

0:09 Speaker 1: Hello. Are you there, Hey, Matt, how's it going? Oh awesome? Sounded great?

0:14 Speaker 2: Yes, welcome to the program, of course. So we have Matthew and Randy. How are you both doing today?

0:22 Speaker 3: Doing all right? Can't complain good? Good? No?

0:25 Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I'm excited to talk to you. I love your sound. That is just so so good. I love not only not only you're playing on that, but the production is great. We're gonna play another song, of course, at the end of our conversation.

0:39 Speaker 1: But so I'm bummed we.

0:40 Speaker 2: Don't get to meet you in person because I know originally you were on a tour and you had some trouble. How are things going now?

0:47 Speaker 4: Oh, well, the van's in the shop right now, so we're hoping to hear some good news back here in the next week or so.

0:54 Speaker 5: Yeah.

0:55 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's that's stressful. So what were you you were out on You're out on tour and the van brook down? Is that what happened?

1:02 Speaker 4: Yeah, we were actually in New Mexico and Arizona area when we started having a little trouble with it, and then we when we got into our Colorado section, that's when we were like, no, we got to take it home, got to get it looked at definitely something up with it. So yeah, there was no way we were going to go any further east. We were actually supposed to be on the East coast up in uh where it was not Quebec, Nova Scotia before we came down and saw you guys, So we were kind of bummed that we couldn't go hit that whole area on this leg of the tour.

1:43 Speaker 4: Yeah, we were able to come over the East coast on the first leg and we were just lucky to be able to do that.

1:50 Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, well, you know, there's there's always the future when you get when you get back at it. Now, are you in the meantime are you playing shows locally or what's kind of the situation there.

2:01 Speaker 4: Yeah, we have access, we we have an alternate car. So we've been uh planning on doing other shows here. We have one coming up locally in Roseberg in October that's at a really nice venue called the Rosebud Theater. And then we have a couple of little ones in between there that are just fill in things, and we're trying to pick up as many as we can along the way, but it's always hard filling in stuff last minute.

2:29 Speaker 1: Really. Oh yeah, oh absolutely? And where where are you located?

2:32 Speaker 2: You're in uh, and we were debating it's it's it's Oregon, right, but we were debating what is the correct way to say the name of your state?

2:39 Speaker 3: Oregon? Yeah, Oregon, Oregon.

2:41 Speaker 4: And we're in the Umquaw Valley. We're just a little south. Uh would you call it southwest? Yes, southwest Oregon. We're we're right around the little place called Roseburg.

2:54 Speaker 1: Okay.

2:55 Speaker 5: Uh yeah, so about our our and a half north of the California border.

3:01 Speaker 3: Okay, so yeah, south south. Yeah.

3:04 Speaker 2: I've never been there, but I've heard that it's it's a beautiful state, but I've never I've not personally visited there.

3:11 Speaker 4: Yeah, definitely. I moved here a few years ago or and now is a few years Well. When I first moved here, I was like, Nope, it doesn't get any better than this. You don't have the uh, the reign of the normal Northwest, and you don't have the heat of the south. So it's kind of a perfect moderate temperature right in the valley.

3:29 Speaker 1: Right, No, that makes sense. And what's the music scene like there?

3:33 Speaker 2: Because you know what you're doing to me when I listen to a new age phonograph and and we'll we'll talk more about the music in a moment, but but to me, it's it's, uh, you.

3:43 Speaker 1: Know, not not terribly common.

3:46 Speaker 2: Like when I listened to it, I don't think, oh, they sound exactly like so and so, you know, so, I don't know. I'm curious if where you are, where you're located, are there other artists that sound like you or do you really kind of stand out in the scene there?

4:02 Speaker 4: Well, there wasn't much of a scene not that long ago, but lately the Roseberg scenes picked up a little bit. And there's there's a few bands that I would say are like the top competing bands in the area, but nobody really sounds like each other. There's a local band called Widespread Haze. They have their own hippie jam vibe going on. There's James and the Lost Dogs. They have more of a classic rock like electric guitar feel. And then with us, the way it evolved with the foot drums that we play or that I play that whole That whole thing gives us a real retro vibe and we just have kind of our own thing going on due to the limitations.

4:51 Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's something that too, I think is really interesting because it's so it's just the two of you, right, there's there's no one else, or maybe you have guest musicians join you sometimes I don't no, but yeah, New Age Photographs as an.

5:02 Speaker 1: Entity is just the two of you. Correct.

5:05 Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's pretty much been me and Randy since we started it up. I play the foot drums to round it out. And then this last record has harmonica ron Ron the Hartman Perkins. He's featured on the whole thing. He featured on our first record, but we put him on this whole thing because they had a real good blues rock vibe. This this whole new album called the Old.

5:32 Speaker 3: Ball and Chain.

5:35 Speaker 4: That one's uh. That one was all kind of new new material. The old one, the old record, or the first record we put out, had a mix of some new stuff and some old stuff. But the latest record, the Old Ball and Chain, it it really has evolved to where that's kind of our vibe. That's kind of what we sound like if we're in a room and we just tried to catch sure what we sound like in a room.

6:02 Speaker 2: Okay, you know what else I like too is listening to the studio tracks so it sounds like a full band. And again, I know you're both multi instrumentalists, and obviously you know when you've got the foot drum going, you can you can do that while while playing something else. But but it's interesting that are people ever surprised when they listen to your music and they don't know anything else about you and then they find out it's just the two of you? Does that surprise people? Or maybe they go see you live and they're surprised at how big a sound you're able to create with just the two of you.

6:30 Speaker 3: It is, it is.

6:32 Speaker 4: It is an interesting thing because it's a kind of hard to market because there are places who say duo oh, and they think this acoustic duo is going to show up, and we're like, well, we can do that if that's what you guys want for the evening. But if you really want a rock band, we can really kick it off.

6:49 Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly.

6:51 Speaker 4: Yeah, It's definitely been something where a lot of people are surprised when they hear us, they're just, oh my god, you guys are amazing. How do you even do that? Because it's just the two of you. But it's this weird little custom foot drum that I came up with that has a little high hat on top of it, and because of the symbol and the back beat of the bass drum and the snare, I mean, the only thing you're missing is the fills from the toms. And we don't do anything too complicated. It's all straight back beat.

7:27 Speaker 4: It's all blues right right.

7:29 Speaker 2: I remember the first time I ever saw somebody do something like that live, and it was just Jesus was more than twenty years ago, but John Hyatt was on tour and he was in the area and I went to see him at the For people in area who know the Capitol Theater or Capital Center, I think back then it was the Capitol Theater and now it's the Capitol Center. Maybe it's the other way around, but anyway, he was doing this. It was a solo acoustic thing. But he comes out and he's, you know, he's As he starts to play, it was a surprise.

7:58 Speaker 2: He starts stapping his foot and it was obvious that I didn't see a drama on the stage. It was like it was like he just had a mic like on the floor there and he just tappened. But it sounded really good and it you know, and just that one little thing changes everything, like it's it's like I remember thinking, he opened I don't remember what song he opened with, but which I'm embarrassed about because I love John Iyatt. But although he played everything that night that I really wanted to hear, which was great.

8:26 Speaker 2: But I just remember he starts playing and he's strung, and I'm thinking it's just gonna be him and his guitar, and then he starts tapping and it just changed the whole vibe. Like it was this energy burst immediately in the room and it was so cool. But that must be that must be one of the most fun things about doing what you do. Right when you're playing and people are surprised and you can see they're surprised, or they come up to you afterward and say, wow, that was that was more than I expected.

8:50 Speaker 1: That was great. You know, that must be really cool for both of you.

8:53 Speaker 4: Yeah, I told my little brother, I said, uh, I think we've been we've been looking around for a drummer, and he goes, you know what, I'm almost more impressed when I see you just doing what you're doing and it's just the two of you, and I'm like, yeah, that you're You're right, I guess as far as a musician seeing see another musicians play.

9:13 Speaker 5: Yeah, And also well, basically we have to rely on each other. We show up for the gigs, you know, we have to. We're married.

9:21 Speaker 3: So yeah, right, it's hard.

9:24 Speaker 4: To keep a drummer around, right, right, right, Randy. Actually, she uh wasn't uh wanting to do. She didn't have aspirations to be a musician. It was just something kind of like my little brother and I started the band. But then before we even got anything going, he moved up to Washington, Okay, and uh Randy was like, well, uh, we got the drum set. Do you wanna do you wanna me to learn how to play drums? And I said, well, we have a bass sitting around. Do you want to just play single note based stuff?

9:57 Speaker 4: And she was like, well, yeah, I do that and then I showed her a blues scale and now you can't stop her. She writes her own bass parts. Yeah, just based off of the blues rock scale that I showed her. Yeah, and uh, we played cover stuff. She's like, oh, I'm not playing roots and fists. I'm gonna just play this. I'm gonna jam out and feel my way around it. And then write her own bass parts for everything.

10:22 Speaker 2: That's cool, that's awesome. Well, Randy has a bass player myself. I respect that. That's really good. That's really cool, awesome.

10:29 Speaker 4: And then yeah, we also we met doing karaoke, so yeah, she actually had to kind of be pushed into singing a little bit.

10:37 Speaker 3: Oh because.

10:39 Speaker 4: When we first when we did our first record, it was definitely a lot of well all just sing backup and I was like, no, no, you can do full stuff. And I think it was my mom who was like, make her do more songs. Yeah, So definitely her on the album next time.

10:58 Speaker 3: Like that.

11:00 Speaker 4: Definitely when we came up to the latest record, we actually we wrote a few of the songs together and tell them tell him how you came up with with the the main songs that you wrote.

11:14 Speaker 5: Oh, well, two of them. I woke up late night and it was like half an hour forty five minutes. I had both the mostly written down. Now not music, just lyrics, and so I took him to him. I was like, put music to this, please, yeah, yeah, yeah, And literally the song pretty much wrote themselves.

11:32 Speaker 4: She came to me with lyrics. The lyrics were in a structure where it was like, oh, okay, this is perfect.

11:39 Speaker 3: And then of.

11:40 Speaker 4: Course there's only one song on the record that she wrote that she didn't sing. That had to do with times constraints. Okay, So mostly the stuff she wrote she sings now.

11:52 Speaker 2: Yeah, excellent, excellent, and it's nice to you know, you know you've really got something when it comes together easily like that, right, you know, when you don't have to when to I mean, you know people talk about, you know, it's a lot of work writing songs and everything and getting recorded the way you want them, and it is a lot of work, right, But when when you have something that you know, okay, here's the lyrics, Oh okay, I can work with that, here's here's an idea for the melody and everything, when it comes together fast, then you know you've really you've really got something when it's when it's easy, you know what i mean.

12:22 Speaker 1: So I'm sure that.

12:23 Speaker 3: Was yeah, yeah, for sure.

12:26 Speaker 4: Almost all the best songs that that I think we've done just came came to us. They weren't really difficult to write. We only struggled with UH with UH Bruce, with our comedy song Bruce. Yeah, and that's because Randy came to me with the concept in most of the lyrics, and then we tried to fish it out and make it funny with that one. But my my songwriting method is literally come up with the chord structure and then ones I come up with the chord structure, like the stuff just drops out of the ether.

13:04 Speaker 4: It's I sometimes like those aren't even my songs. I'm just like the caretaker of them because they're just they just come out of nowhere. And you know it's probably a subconscious thing, sure, but but nothing's too I've been writing songs since I was fourteen, and so it's like, oh, here's the basic structure, verse, chorus, verse, let's throw in a solo here, Let's make sure we come up with an intro an outro if we can. But other than that, the song structure is the framework, and then the lyrics, if they're difficult to work on, those usually don't make the records.

13:44 Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense, Yeah, it makes sense.

13:49 Speaker 2: I'm really curious too about recording because you know, sometimes, at least this is my observation, sometimes you'll hear an artist who's doing something like what you're doing, or well, like I said, nobody sounds exactly like you, but but but kind of a kind of a similar vibe where you know you wish you don't want it to be too you don't want the production to be too clean, you don't want it to be too slick, And sometimes you might hear something that you know you wish the production was a little grittier, you know.

14:26 Speaker 2: But when I listen to these tracks, I think the production matches what you're doing in the sense that the production is great. It's it's totally pro It sounds amazing, the mix is great and everything, but it's not but it's not overly slick, which is what I hear a lot of sometimes where where it's like, Okay, this is too slick for what this vibe and the sound is that this band is making. But I love the production on on this on this album, Can you tell me about that? How did you record old Ball and Chain that's the newest one?

15:00 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, how did you record that?

15:03 Speaker 5: So? Once we had what tracks we were going to put on the album. We actually recorded here at the house. We invited Ron over for a couple of days. Uh, we gave him some input on what he wanted to do on each track, and then we recorded him probably three or four takes each probably, and then after that we took them to a local place way back recording and they we listened with them and kind of you know, we you know, we've told them, you know, we're recording them at home. We want to have that kind of live feel, you know, so when you listen to him, you know it's what you're gonna get basically, you know, nothing to like you said, overproduced or anything like that.

15:47 Speaker 5: So uh yeah, and then they you know, put a little extra on it, which you know, it worked out pretty well.

15:53 Speaker 4: Yeah, Uh definitely. When when we were recording this one, we knew we were kind of sudden up tour and it was a big tour, and uh, in order to do that, you know, you gotta you gotta kind of give people a sound. You don't want to overproduce it. I wanted it to sound just like we do if we're sitting in a room together. We don't play to a click track, ever, and so it was like, this is what we sound like, this is our vibe. We want to be able to sell ourselves, Like, hey, if you come to see us, this is what you're gonna get.

16:26 Speaker 4: Is you're going to get this if we if we added too many overdubs or we did too much fancy production on it, it just wouldn't sound like us in a room, right And and I mean not to toot my own horn, but I think we we sound really good. We we've been working on this a while and it's evolved to the point where it's some really good blues rock and we've got a good dynamic. We we uh, we're comfortable on stage now. It's quite a while to get comfortable on stage. And now that's where we work out all our marital issues.

16:58 Speaker 1: They got there, Oh that's perfect. Yeah.

17:04 Speaker 4: On the whole tour, I was side seat driving Randy because I'm a control freak. Yeah, And so it became a thing where like one day I was like, I just don't know how you put up with all my side seat driving and she was like, oh, yeah, well you know, and it just became like a thing where that's where we work.

17:23 Speaker 3: Out all our issues. We just do it in front of people.

17:25 Speaker 5: People just kind of love the dynamic of your husband versus wife type of thing.

17:29 Speaker 1: You know.

17:29 Speaker 4: Yeah, usually on my side, but they're always on your side.

17:36 Speaker 2: They should take the bass player's side if you ask me. There you go, I support that. I support that.

17:43 Speaker 4: Well, well it helps me too, because I got to keep my ego in check, right because you know, I'm just doing all this stuff over here, and then I think it's the Mat Show, but it's it's not the Matt Show. It's the Matt and Randy show, right.

17:57 Speaker 5: Well, I mean it's crazy because you know, I'll think, you know, he he's lead, singing, guitar and drums.

18:07 Speaker 3: You know, I'm we're playing and sometimes singing.

18:10 Speaker 5: So I'm like, you know, but yeah, I do have to keep him in check.

18:13 Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh, by the way, the obvious question, where does the name come from? New age photograph?

18:21 Speaker 3: Oh man.

18:22 Speaker 4: So me and my little brother worked for quite a while trying to figure out how to how to give the vibe because both of us like old music, both of us like new music, and we'll cover everything from old lead belly stuff from the nineteen thirties, howling Wolf's stuff, from the thirties and forties all the way up to uh we were working on flowers from uh that some What's is that the newest song we do?

18:53 Speaker 3: No stuff? Yeah?

18:55 Speaker 4: K Jellison, Yeah, Well, we've just got stuff that goes all through. We're nineties kids, eighties nineties kids, so we've got a bunch of eighties nineties stuff that we'll do and then all the way up to modern stuff. And so we're trying to say, how how do you say that we're new, but we also have love old stuff and the phonograph part is the old party and then the new age is like, well, you know, hippie crystals and stuff. So we were like, how do we associate the two that sounds that sounds right and the vibe with just the alliteration.

19:34 Speaker 5: Yeah, and then also with just the two of us and having our you know, being a kind of broke down sound. You know, we try to say we take songs back to their bluesy roots. So when we're playing some of these songs, it's not exactly how you're you know, cover songs, not how you're going to hear them all the radio. So we're trying to you know, we're trying to figure out that point you know, what matches that vibe as well, so you know, hopefully people have an idea. Well, okay, so there's something new and old going on here and maybe you know, peaks their interesting.

20:06 Speaker 5: We never do a straight cover song. We do a cover song. However, we play a cover song, yeah, yeah, so it never comes out quite.

20:13 Speaker 4: Like, oh, play me that that Hank Williams tune, and it's like, oh, well we can do that, but it's not gonna be as country as you want it.

20:24 Speaker 2: Do you do you ever run into a situation like does anyone ever complain you like, oh, you played that wrong?

20:30 Speaker 1: Or have you ever run into that?

20:33 Speaker 3: No? Actually we haven't.

20:34 Speaker 1: That's good.

20:35 Speaker 4: We haven't really had anyone complain that we played anything wrong. Yeah, And I think that's when we do cover songs. We just don't play any of them right.

20:43 Speaker 1: There you go, they're all They're all.

20:45 Speaker 4: The way we do it, right. We were talking the other day about a CCR song that we did and we're like, man, when we hear it on the radio, it's like, man, that's so slow. Now to hear that song, we play it fast and it's just how like I used to bust around a lot, so a lot of these songs I wouldn't like listen to the radio version and then play it. I was just looking at the chord chart trying to flip to the next song and play the song. And I grew up with a lot of these songs that we play and I would just play them that way on the side of the road.

21:21 Speaker 4: And then they I brought him to Randy and I was like, oh, so I got this. What was it? The Tom Waits. I got this Tom Waits song and we play it like this and then we play it and then she hears it on the radio and she's like, nothing like how we play it, And I was like, well, that's just how I play it.

21:41 Speaker 1: I get. Yeah. See, I think that's cool.

21:44 Speaker 2: I think that's much more interesting anyway, because for me, I know a lot of people don't feel this way. A lot of people like if they're if they're somewhere and they hear a band playing a cover, they want to hear it, especially if it's a cover band quote unquote, and that's like their their mission, so to speak. You know, they want to hear it's exactly the way the original sounds, and it's like, to me, it's always been, well, what's the point, Like, I already know how the original sounds. I can listen to the original, I can go, you know, listen to the radio, or listen to it online.

22:13 Speaker 2: If I really want to hear the original, I want to hear your interpretation of it, you know.

22:17 Speaker 1: Because otherwise, otherwise, what's the point.

22:19 Speaker 2: I know a lot of people don't feel that way, but that's always been my My feeling is I want to hear your interpretation. I want to hear how it sounds from your perspective, and I just think that's so much more interesting.

22:33 Speaker 4: Yeah, I never I never would have heard of Holan Wolf. It wasn't if it wasn't for the Doors playing back door Man.

22:39 Speaker 1: Good point.

22:39 Speaker 4: And if you've ever heard the Doors play back door Man and then Howland Wolf's back door Man, they're completely different songs.

22:46 Speaker 1: Right right?

22:47 Speaker 4: You say, Bob Dylan's version of All Along the watch Tower, yep. I feel like I showed that to Randy the other day and she's like, oh, I like that's cool, but that harmonica, you know, Okay, Yeah, definitely the interpretation of that song is definitely better than the original.

23:07 Speaker 3: But at the same time. If you're a.

23:09 Speaker 4: Huge Bob Dylan fan, you don't want to hear knocking on Heaven's Door by Guns n' Roses.

23:16 Speaker 3: You want to hear.

23:17 Speaker 4: Bob sing knocking on Heaven's Door. So it just depends on what you're in for for the night. A lot of people, especially the places we go, they just want to have a good time, and so that was kind of the thing we tried to evolve to be was first of all, not to just do cover songs. We got our own stuff, and so if people aren't coming up just to see a cover band, you know, like if we were called the Petties or something and all we played was Tom Petty, then yeah, you'd want it to sound like Tom Petty.

23:49 Speaker 4: But when you're coming to see us, we play original stuff. So then when we Pepper and the cover songs, it's like we give them our own little twist.

24:00 Speaker 1: Yeah definitely, Yeah, yeah, No, that's that's excellent.

24:04 Speaker 2: So what's so what's kind of the future trajectory? I mean, do you have do you have more things that you're going to be recording or the new album hasn't been out for that long, right, so you're probably focused on on promoting the current album largely, I would imagine, right.

24:18 Speaker 4: Definitely go pick up the new album. No, watch the new album. I'm sorry, you'll watch the latest video on YouTube.

24:27 Speaker 3: Oh yeah, we have a we did our our album release party.

24:36 Speaker 4: Okay, we recorded a video there that we just got edited after we got back from the well, after we had to come back from the tour. Yeah, we threw that up and uh so messing Around is one of the I would call it a single if we had singles.

24:55 Speaker 3: Yeah, off that record and we made a video for that. Go check that out.

25:00 Speaker 4: There's a wolf Hollan at My Doors another one that we did from the first record that we had a little video and we produced all the videos ourselves. It's it's the age where you can shoot your own stuff yeh, super cheap and edit it yourself, and so they aren't high production things. But we're just trying to push the latest record. As soon as we get the van fixed, we're gonna see what we can salvage from this tour and start setting up for the next tour. We're just gonna try to keep going as much as we can while we got a little momentum going.

25:40 Speaker 4: And we do have a bunch of songs that either are sitting on the back burner and we have them written, or when we talk about doing another album, we've been talking about, well, you know, if we're going to write some new stuff, then we might work together a little bit on some new stuff. But all that stuff just kind of evolves on its own. When we came up with the first record, we put a lot of singer songwriter stuff that I had written before on there, but then there was stuff like call Me the Wolf.

26:16 Speaker 4: That was one where I was just while we were even talking about writing the record, I came up with the baseline and wrote all the lyrics down, and then that song just kind of evolved on its own while we were writing that record. Okay, so we gave ourselves we said we're going to tour on this one for two years. So next year we'll be the second year, and we'll start working on the record next year for whatever we're going to release in twenty twenty seven.

26:44 Speaker 2: Yeah, So okay, okay, very good, very good. Well, in a moment, we're going to play that track messing Around. We'll play that at the end of our conversation. I think that'll be and I might even sneak in another one after that because I love what you're doing, really really good stuff. So Matt and Randy thank you both so much before we let you go. So what should people know about where to find you online? To keep up with everything that you're doing, everything, all things New Age Phonograph. Where's the best place to go?

27:14 Speaker 3: Okay?

27:14 Speaker 5: So we're very active on Facebook and Instagram. You know, a new Age tentograph. We keep it simple, so if you search for new Tinograph you'll find us YouTube as well. We always joke we have not really a big presence on TikTok. We are on there, and then we're on all streaming you know, Spotify, Apple Music, all that kind of stuff as well. We have band Camp. We're kind of all over the place.

27:39 Speaker 4: If you need to be directed anywhere, New Age phonograph dot com has has all the links to everywhere that you want to go. And as long as people are looking after us and trying to find us, we're pretty easy to find. We were super excited when we typed it into Google and we were the first hit that came up. Yep, So there's no other New Age The.

27:59 Speaker 5: Actually have like an artist description like our ages and information.

28:03 Speaker 4: I'm like, wow, good, there's no there's no other New Age phonographs out there. We find that in our area there's several bands that have the same name, and it's like when we that was another thing coming up with the name, wanted us to be, to be something that nobody else had.

28:18 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's very important.

28:20 Speaker 2: Absolutely absolutely Okay, so uh we're gonna let you go and we'll hit that track again. Thank you both so much, Randy and Matt, thank you so much for joining us this morning.

28:29 Speaker 1: Thant and we have absolutely you two. Okay, take care, bye bye,