Something recently dawned on Matthew Houck, the Nashville-based singer-songwriter who has been making exquisitely sad indie rock music for 25 years under the name Phosphorescent.
“It’s not really enjoyable to make a Phosphorescent record,” he reveals. “I don’t know if I put too much pressure on myself or what it is, but I feel there’s an expectation for what a Phosphorescent record is supposed to sound like at this point. And I do very much feel a little hemmed in by that.”
Houck yearns to break out of his carefully constructed persona as a ruminative, sardonic indie-rock shaman. Thank goodness for live performances, where the contemplative songsmith and multi-instrumentalist can stretch out, increase the tempos, and get “pretty unhinged” with his crack touring band. He’s slated to appear at the Broadberry on Wednesday, July 9, with fellow Nashvillian Rich Ruth opening the show as well as playing bass. “The live thing is where a lot of the concerns I have go away. It’s much, much freer.”
The Huntsville, Alabama native, 45, has also been trying some different things of late, like writing the score for “Oh, Canada,” the most recent film directed by Paul Schrader (“American Gigolo,” “Light Sleeper,” “First Reformed”). “I loved it,” he says of movie scoring. “It was free and fun, and I could step out of the Phosphorescent thing and just be a musician.”
The soundtrack features atmospheric instrumentals mixed with re-recordings of early Houck songs, and follows closely on the heels of his most recent album, “Revelator,” the first Phosphorescent studio release in [five-and-a-half] years, and the first for a major record label, Verve. He thinks it’s his best batch yet, but recording it was a hard slog. “They’re all hard,” he says. “It takes a lot of work to make it all sound like it just happened.”
Style Weekly recently talked about “the Phosphorescent thing” with Matthew Houck, on the phone from Nashville, Tennessee where he lives with longtime partner and collaborator Jo Schornikow and their three kids. Schornikow, a distinguished singer-songwriter in her own right, contributed one of “Revelator”‘s highlights, “The World is Ending,” the first time a non-Houck original has made one of his albums. She’ll be performing in the band at the Broadberry too. “She’s always there as long as we have someone who can help out with the kids,” he laughs.
Style Weekly: How did you get connected with Paul Schrader and end up scoring “Oh, Canada”?
Matthew Houck: Paul is an avid music guy and had discovered Phosphorescent a few years ago and reached out to just say hi. He came to a show and we met and said hello and it was kind of one of those things that’ll happen, you’ll have conversations like this where someone says, like, ‘We should do something together someday.’ More often than not, it doesn’t happen. But he followed up and said he had a film, and we talked about the concept of it and very quickly, we decided to just do it. It worked out well.
Did he leave you alone to do it or was he involved in the process?
Both things are true. He had a mostly finished cut of the film and he came down to Nashville and showed it to me. The film is about this guy [Richard Gere] who’s at the end of his life and he’s sort of looking back and, you know, reassessing. He’s revisiting the past in a way. So I got this meta idea and thought I could revisit some really early Phosphorescent songs that no one knows, songs from my first two records. And that’s what I did. I recorded a few of those and it was kind of eerie how well they lined up with the film.
What about the instrumental sections?
The score part was just me and my partner Jo, who is a wonderful musician. We projected the film on the wall at my studio and kind of live scored the parts that [Shrader] wanted music for. And then Paul came down and was, like, ‘do this more,’ ‘do this less.’ You know, kind of in his gruff way that he has.
Schrader has been quoted as saying that he chose your music because it’s “anti-anthemic.” Do you understand what he means?
I don’t think I agree with it, but I understand what he’s talking about. I guess I’m fairly flattered about this, but he had originally talked to Bruce Springsteen about doing it. In that sense, I understand. He was saying that Springsteen was going to make everything too anthemic and too big and he needed it to be a bit more downcast. I think I understand what he means about that. for sure. [Laughs]
I was going to ask about that. Your songs have been described as contemplative, even sad. When did that element of your music start to come out?
From the very beginning. And I don’t know why it comes out like that. I think there’s probably loads of psychotherapy or something that should probably happen. But I don’t know. For whatever reason, music has lent itself to me to that feeling, whatever that feeling is. I struggle with this because I don’t really know why somebody should make music like this sometimes [laughs]. But I know that the songs that I love from other artists that have, like, sustained my life are these kinds of songs. They mean the most to me. I agree, yeah, it’s sad stuff.
I know that you are a huge fan of Willie Nelson [Phosphorescent recorded a tribute album to Nelson in 2009, “To Willie”]. Who were some of the other songwriters that inspired you?
It’s Bob Dylan, it’s Willie Nelson. Those guys are really, like, towering touchstones. I think I was lucky to find Dylan early on. I went backwards for a long time from Bob Dylan, back to Woody Guthrie and Carter Family and all that kind of stuff. I was just trying to get to the beginnings of the stuff, you know, But at the same time, I liked Pearl Jam and Nirvana and that stuff too. It was later on that I kind of found the more underground music that really spoke to me.
Have you ever met Willie?
Yes, I have. That record, ‘To Willie,’ had been out for like a week and I got a call, an unknown number came up on my phone. I was actually on my motorcycle at the time in New York. I didn’t answer but I felt it in my pocket. And when I got off the bike, it was like, caller unknown, but there was a voicemail. It was Willie Nelson saying how much he enjoyed the record and wondering if we could get together and say hi.
Wow. Hopefully you saved that message.
Oh yes. It was just one of the coolest moments ever. It turned out that he was playing a show in New Jersey a week or two later and I went and met him and sat on the bus and smoked with him, you know, did the whole thing. He brought out the vaporizer, like, within a couple minutes and was just a lovely, lovely person. I can’t describe the experience. It was moving in a way that I can’t explain.
Talk about the live show you’ll be bringing to the Broadberry.
The live shows are where I get to scratch my itch about ramping things up and getting louder. The band I have right now is staggeringly good. I can’t even tell you how good they are. [Houck will be supported in Richmond by Schornikow on keyboards, Dom Billett on drums, longtime collaborator Ricky Ray Jackson on pedal steel, and Rich Ruth on bass.]
For a long time, you were associated with Brooklyn but you now make Nashville your home. Did Brooklyn just get prohibitively expensive?
No, our apartment got prohibitively small once we had a baby. We came down and saw a fine place in Nashville and thought we’d try it, and we’re still here now.
I know that you primarily record your music in your home studio. So you moved that too?
Yeah. My studio now is, well, it’s gotten really big. The only place I could find was a really big old warehouse and I sort of built out the walls and then I realized I had room for a grand piano, you know? I just sort of started acquiring gear. I got a big old ’70s console, so it’s turned into a real proper place. And now, I wouldn’t be able to move it back to New York if I wanted to.
You started your career in Athens, Georgia, originally calling yourself Fillup Shack. Do you remember what it was that brought you to Athens?
I played an open mic there. I was traveling around at that time, just playing open mics and trying to scrounge up a little money. I went through Athens and kind of immediately felt the smell of the vibe there. It’s a really special place in the South, you know what I mean? There are no other towns really like that, where you could have an original band and with people making art everywhere, and there’s clubs and a cool record store. All that stuff. It was like, wow.
Was the town still resonating from the days of R.E.M. and the B-52s?
Not really. By the time I got there [2000], it was the Elephant 6 collective, the whole Neutral milk Hotel and Elf Power thing, Of Montreal. All that stuff was super. And Vic Chesnutt was a huge [presence]. I knew that he lived there. I thought, if this town can have guys like that and music like that, I’m interested
How long did it take to get your first record deal?
The first record was [in 2003] with this late local label in Athens called Warm Records. I had been in Athens at that point for a couple years, just steadily playing gigs and recording that album. I worked on it forever. Whenever I could scrounge together enough cash to go into the studio and record some stuff, I would do it. So that took a while and I gave the demo to the local label and [they] said yes.
Did you have a band? A regular band?
No, it’s always been whoever I could gather. I’ve worked with a lot of different people over the years. It’s always been my project and I bring in whoever I can, whenever I can.
Looking back, do you remember the first song you wrote that made you think, okay, this is where it begins, this is the start of my journey as Phosphorescent?
I’m still trying to find that.
Phosphorescent will appear at the Broadberry on July 9 with Rich Ruth. Cost is $30. For tickets and info, go to https://thebroadberry.com/
