If you attended a summer music festival this year, chances are Matt and Kim were there, too. Brooklyn’s dynamic pop punk duo of Matt Johnson and Kim Schifino made stops at more than 30 events including Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Outside Lands, Forecastle, Summerfest, Bumpershoot and Great Googa Mooga with additional appearances this fall at Voodoo Experience, Riot Fest, Breakaway and Rifflandia.
With a keen sense for pop melodies, sing-along choruses and stomping rhythms that become the equivalent of musical sunshine, it’s easy to be hooked by songs such as “It’s Alright” and “Let’s Go” from their current album, Lightning or older tracks — “Daylight” and “AM/FM Sound.” Their energetic and cheerful concert persona also makes an immediate and unrelenting impression on everyone from the front row to the farthest reaches of the audience.
During a brief interview with Johnson he admits that his group’s overall creative approach of keeping things simple works to their benefit as a visual and songwriting styes and when playing in front of thousands of people who may know little to nothing about them.
JPG: I’m curious about playing in a festival setting versus playing your other concerts. Is there a difference between how approach each one?
MJ: There’s a couple of inherent differences. First of all, we love doing festivals a lot because we’re able to gain people on a first listen. There are some bands that are fantastic but they play such complex, dissonant music that it might be hard to get ‘em on a first listen.
I take pride in that we’re very simple. We put beat and melody ahead. It’s really important for us that you can get into the show on the first time when you come in and are listening.
At a Matt & Kim theater show there are certain things that are easier. Everyone knows all the songs already and they’re ready to sing along, but we like that challenge in a festival setting that there’s gonna be people who just heard the name and want to check out something new. That’s great, and we always take a lot of people with us.
In the end the show result is pretty similar, which is we put everything we have and more into it. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen what we do. For two people who, theoretically, sit down and are playing we’re all over the place.
JPG: I saw you play Bonnaroo in 2011. I guess I would be one of those you gained on first listen.
MJ: (slight laugh) That was fantastic. Someone showed me pictures from our tent (Bonnaroo’s This Tent) that were taken from a helicopter and I could not believe how far people spread out on all sides. They said it was the biggest crowd they’d seen at that tent over the festival. It was a super awesome experience.
JPG: I noticed, and I don’t know if it’s New York bands or just certain bands, but, for example seeing Sonic Youth and Tortoise play their first Bonnaroo. Both acts looked as if they had this skeptical attitude that these “hippies” aren’t going to get it. And when the reaction after the first song was massive you could see the musicians’ faces kinda light up. Did you have any preconceptions when you went there?
MJ: All we knew was it was going to be hot. We had heard it’s a great festival and, like I said, we love festivals…The other thing about the energy at a club show, everyone knows your songs but here you have the benefit of having five, eight, 10,000 people or whatever it could be in front of you at the time and the energy that that creates is huge.
So, we knew it was going to be hot and we play such an active show where everyone typically is dancing. It’s not about looking at your feet. It’s about jumping around. ‘Well, it’s going to be so hot, are people going to be in a daze?’ But it didn’t seem to faze the audience. They still were being completely wild, even in 100 degree weather.
We did see some people pass out and have to get handed over the barricade with eyes rolled back. I remember seeing that happening right in front of me. ‘What do I do? I guess, we just keep playing.’ Then, a medic splashed some water on their face, gave ‘em water to drink and they started fist pumping immediately after coming back into consciousness. Well, that says something.
JPG: Did you play anything that day that now appears on your current album, Lightning, because there are a few songs on it that sound familiar?
MJ: No, there are certain times we put little interludes and bits like that or maybe we’re inspired by a certain bit and maybe that goes over into a song. At that time no full song was played from that.
JPG: As far as attending festivals, do you get to spend time seeing other artists?
MJ: At Bonnaroo we do come in a day early, which is great, but a lot of that is doing press. I looked at the lineup when it officially came out and thought, “Wow! This is really good.” but I find myself getting frustrated that I can’t witness everything. Sometimes I don’t like to look at a schedule beforehand because then I’ll know “Well, you’re gonna have to miss this.” And then I start saying, “Maybe we should…” I don’t know. Whatever turns out that’s possible for us to catch I’ll find out when I’m there.
JPG: Besides performing you also had an event where you discussed your videos at the Cinema Tent.
MJ: We’ve definitely gained a reputation for our videos. People, all the time, say how much they love them. To me, who’s a film school guy and worked in different capacities of film before I started doing the band fulltime, I’ve always had a big part in coming up with most of the ideas for the videos and seeing them all the way through. That’s why there’s always been a consistency for a Matt and Kim video.
In the same way a movie has a DVD extra where you can listen to the commentary, we decided to play the video once and then play it again with the audio off and talk about what’s happening, a behind-the-scenes look. There’s a lot of things like our “Lessons Learned,” where we stripped in Times Square. “It’s Alright,” (slight laugh) another one with very little clothing. Then, there’s “Block after Block” where we’re going around New York doing flash mobs shows.
Basically, we gave an idea of ‘This is what happened. Yes, there were cops. And we did this, this many times.’ We talked about one of our videos before for an interview. It was interesting the information that a lot of people don’t know about it, so we decided, ‘Let’s tell people about all these and hopefully it’ll be interesting.
I’m so familiar with the videos due to the whole making-of process and telling the stories that went along with it.
JPG: You talk about keeping them consistent, what are you aims for your videos?
MJ: It’s an old advertising idea. I want to be intrigued by the idea with one sentence. Very simply…like food is thrown at Matt and Kim for three minutes. ‘Yeah, I’d like to see that!’ or Matt and Kim synchronized dance in bed while sleeping.
We came from this background of having no money to make videos initially. So, it was always, ‘We need to come up with a billion dollar idea that could be made for 500 bucks.’ (slight laugh) It was always having a very simple idea that had some intrigue and a short description as opposed to ‘Well, the band plays in a well-lit room and there’s a subplot that involves a guy and a girl and we cut back and forth a bit.’ No, there’s no idea there. You’re just shooting things. We always liked the simplest idea that can still be intriguing.
JPG: That correlates with the music. You talk about keeping the videos simple and the music simple but they work in a very impactful manner.
MJ: I really believe in that. In writing music I found that it’s easy and you feel safer to add more tracks, add more layers and leave nothing hanging out but, sometimes, that waters it down. If you can break it down to its most raw elements that’s when things stay with you the most. I’m glad you see that. That’s one of my creative theories across the board.
JPG: That reminds me. On “Overexposed” is that an actual bass or just the low end of the keyboard during the instrumental break?
MJ: That’s bass. When I started playing music it was playing bass in punk bands. There’s very little guitar but there’s bass in that and in “Much Too Late” there’s just one string of a guitar that I play through that. I think I’m about ready. I want to play one string of a guitar onstage for a very different Matt and Kim thing.
JPG: As far as the music, at what point did you feel that you were on the right track? Rehearsals? Shows in Brooklyn? Playing shows nationally and you saw that people all over got it?
MJ: It’s interesting that you say that because I never thought I would ever make a living off playing music and I’ve been lucky enough to do so over the past six years or something like that. We started as two people — Kim never played drums, I didn’t sing or play keyboards or synthesizers – but when we started playing at parties…I remember playing our first show in a basement in Queens, a friend convinced us to open. We didn’t even think we were a band. He just found out we were playing instruments together. So, we wrote a few songs…I don’t know.
After that people kept asking us to play and we made a little EP of five songs in our practice space, People seemed to like that. At the time MySpace was huge so we it put up there, and then we started traveling on that…
It’s weird because I just remember growing up and there were bands that were such real bands to me that were in retrospect much smaller than Matt and Kim are. I have to write “Musician” when I’m doing my immigration paperwork going into other countries and I think, “Wow! Can I really put that? Am I like someone who writes “Poet” and works in a coffee shop?” For some reason I can’t see myself in the same light. It’s confusing where I might have realized, “Oh, these songs are really connecting,” because it was in a way very gradual.
