Few album titles are more appropriate than Matthew Logan Vasquez’s Does What He Wants. Still on hiatus from his regular gig as Delta Spirit’s frontman, Vasquez named his third solo release in response to having the freedom and being completely responsibility for making his career decisions rather than relying on a band’s democratic practices to move some matters along while putting others on the scrap heap of unused songwriting ideas.
Like the 11 tracks on the album, Vasquez is open, self-aware and a combination of idealistic, pragmatic and critical. In other words it was as much a fun conversation as it was a discussion of his latest album as well as his earlier, grittier solo releases, his journey to a better creative place and how it all correlates to family ties of the past and present.
JPG: Thematically, this record goes from father to son and then to son.
MLV: Yeah. There’s a lot of that. I almost called the record Fatherhood, and I probably should have…daddy vibe. Obviously, that was a big impact. Solicitor Returns (released in 2016) was written before I knew I was gonna be a dad. It’s where I was at in my career.
This record covers [fatherhood] a lot. Solicitor Returns is such a reaction to Delta Spirit; the things that I wasn’t able to be in the band. This is (slight laugh) in a lot of ways like my idea of Delta Spirit, what I bring to the table for Delta Spirit.
I think it’s two of three things that I’m gonna put out on my own before I consider going back to the guys. It didn’t start out this long. I had every intention of getting back with Delta Spirit. I kinda had a crazy weird epiphany driving up to Dallas last year to play a show in Deep Ellum and somebody had decided to commit suicide on the freeway. And you’re just looking at this dead body and I have this collection of songs and things weren’t creatively gelling in the band right at that moment. It was just like, “Fuck this!”
We were gonna work on these songs and try to do it in the middle of my record cycle but it occurred to me that that’s not what I need to be doing. I need to just focus on the material and finish it. So, I did. And I brought in some really cool people to do it with me.
JPG: You mentioned working during the “Solicitor Returns” cycle. I watched a video of you during that period and you mentioned that you were working with Delta Spirit on a new album. That was six months to a year ago. So, hearing you now, obviously, things changed in a big way.
MLV: Yeah, must have been a year ago because we were talking about putting out the record…Initially, I was just going to do the Solicitor Returns record, and then I wrote that song “Austin.” So, I made an EP out of it because I thought that would really be fun to make, and it was the only way it was going to come out was if I made it.
I had every intention of coming back to the band and…you get the gut thing. It proved to be good. We all really needed a break from each other and to focus on different things and different aspects. Kelly [Winrich] is producing bands. Will [McLaren] is in bands and producing bands. Jon [Jameson] played in Muna who played Lollapalooza last year and toured Europe quite a bit last year. Brandon [Young] has been DJing and playing drums, figuring his thing out. In a lot of ways it’s just life shit and organizing and…it’s good to step away from the corporate clique. I thought it was going to be shorter.
It just came to the point where I’ve had so much material and I haven’t been able to release it and give it what I believe that those songs had. Part of that happening and proving me right was the Middle Brother thing and having “Blue Eyes,” the song, be so popular. That song, we passed on it for “History From Below” for Delta Spirit. It wasn’t that it’s a bad song. It’s not like the guys’ opinion ever is that a song that I write, that I bring to them, is a shit song. It’s more that it doesn’t fit the ethos of what the band is.
JPG: What would that be?
MLV: The ethos of the band is…it’s funny, it’s like a full true democracy, creatively at least. Songs that I see don’t make it, sometimes, are the ones when everybody collectively doesn’t have a lot to bring to the table. Sometimes it doesn’t push a song through. Sometimes, it doesn’t matter like “Yamaha” (off 2012’s self-titled album) was a song that largely everybody was like, “Oh, I love that! Great! Awesome!” With a song like “Blue Eyes” it was like, “Okay, well that’s a fingerpicking thing” and there wasn’t much thought on it other than, “That’s a nice one.”
JPG: Well, there are songs on Does What He Wants and even Solicitor Returns that sound as if they could have been a Delta Spirit song, like “Headed West.
MLV: Yeah. Totally. “Headed West” was definitely a possibility of being a Delta Spirit song. “Personal,” I wrote when I was 19 years old and I’ve been trying to put that on a Delta Spirit record since Ode to Sunshine [in 2008] and haven’t been able to fit it on a record. (slight laugh) “Old Ways,” that’s an old song, too. That was about the same girl that the Delta Spirit song “California” is about, and I kinda wrote it from Kelly’s perspective. It was like, “You fuck with my friend, you fuck with me, too.” I’m gonna write this mean song. So, I wrote one. It felt really good. A lot of chords in that song.
Sometimes, I think our band can step on its own foot because there are four other really brilliant musicians in my band and it’s hard to get shit done. I was able to record Does What He Wants in three weeks and make all the decisions and just get things done.
Part of that I needed to happen for the sake of my family. I spent all last year living with my mom and financially restarting when we moved to Austin. Not all the opportunity that we had hoped for as a unit – my wife and I – came through and it was a slower year for Delta Spirit because we played smaller venues because we wanted to do this intimate thing but you end up not coming home with as much money.
It’s crazy. The bigger things get, the more you build this, it becomes a big ship. You’re paying a lighting guy, a front of house guy and then you have a big management company and a lawyer and a business manager and all of sudden that ship gets really hard to turn. It starts leaking money. (laughs)
But I found some really great musicians in Texas that play every day and play around a lot and I’ve had these great experiences playing these smaller places. I had no bones about the fact that this job isn’t all super fun and lots of money and celebrity. If I wanted that I’d live in Hollywood still.
JPG: When you mention other musicians, you’re touring with a full backing band?
MLV: I have to play in a full band to present this music. For the last two years I had a California band and a Texas band. Now, I just play with the Texas guys, and they’re great: A. Sinclair’s rhythm section and Spencer Garland who’s a fantastic piano player and electric guitar player. They’re cut from the Austin scene, grew up all over Texas and play good music. Five-part harmonies and I get to be Napoleon. And we all know how that ended. (laughs)
JPG: I was thinking that maybe you’d tour solo or do something similar to what Mike Doughty recently did. He had the band Wheatus open up for him. Then, there was a break and they came back onstage as his backing band. Previously, he toured just himself and a cello player. So, if you said you were playing dates by yourself I’d totally understand because it would be cost effective.
MLV: Sure. I ordered and manufactured the vinyl myself, doing the whole DIY thing. Then, [the label] Dine Alone from Canada came along and has been really supporting me, which has been great, to be able to hire radio and PR. Last year, I hired radio PR but it was such a small microcosm compared to what I’m able to do now. It’s nice to have that backing and have real distribution. Been to Europe four times in the calendar year. Spent nine months on the road.
JPG: Besides the difference of having a machine behind you on this record, musically, Solicitor Return …
MLV: “Solicitor Returns” is a reaction.
JPG: It’s a dark lo-fi kind of record.
MLV: (laughs) It is. Well, part of it is that side of my songwriting that’s always existed and very rarely showcased in Delta Spirit. It just got to a point where, “Man, I need to make a record like this or people are going to think it’s not true.” I know it’s contrary to commerce, sometimes, to complicate the scenario with a bunch of stuff but I grew up listening to Nirvana and Neil Young and Marilyn Manson, even. I just wanted a shoot-from-your-hip record. I recorded it directly off the back of doing [Delta Spirit’s 2014 album] Into the Wide and pretty much played everything myself.
Then, this new one, I recorded out in my mom’s boyfriend’s trailer that he had on some property in Dripping Springs [Texas], out in the hill country. It couldn’t be more different than Brooklyn, New York (Vasquez’s previous place of residence before moving to Austin) and a rat-infested basement. A single wide and a quarter with the same gear; I brought in Jud Johnson, my drummer. I brought in Chris Boosahda who plays drums with Shakey Graves and Kam Franklin from the Sufferers who sings on “Same,” the single.
I just about finished the record and went out to the Newport Folk Festival and asked the Parkington Sisters amongst a bunch of other people to come sit in on my solo set there. They came out and we ran through a bunch of the music for the Newport Folk Festival show and the whole time my jaw dropped. I decided right then and there that I was gonna finish the record with them. I sent them all the tracks that were about mixed and had them hop in on the record. So, it’s nice to be a little bit more inclusive with people.
It was still very shoot from the hip but it does sound a lot more hi-fi and sunnier.
JPG: That’s a good way of putting it. It’s kind of like a Smiths tune. If you just listen to what Johnny Marr is doing, you’re just enjoying this melody but then you pay attention to the lyrics… So, Solicitor Returns sounds heavy like someone getting things out of his system late at night whereas Does What He Wants in comparison, is commercial-sounding, open, sunnier record.
MLV: Yeah, and these songs, some of them were sitting on the shelf towards the next Delta Spirit record and some of them were freshly-written off of that. “Fires Down in Mexico” was definitely a turning point when I was making it because I recorded that and it was such a stream of consciousness kind of thing. I thought I was going to make a more woodsy kind of record with a flannel shirt and ax, like Neil Young’s Harvest or Jason Isbell. I can do that. Obviously, I’ve written a bunch of songs like that, and I was thinking that was the direction I was going to go to and then just be a little more mellow. It would be nice to do it that way. I’m just not nice, John! (laughs) I like tequila and I like playing really loud. (laughs)
JPG: It’s okay. Look at a mirror and tell yourself that it’s okay. Anyway, Solicitor Returns has more of a Neil Young feel to it.
MLV: Yeah. That one has more of a Neil feel than this one does. This one borders on Britpop at moments and there are things that are just music types of, I don’t know how to define indie but I’m not wearing pink…
JPG: …and your pants aren’t tight-fitting.
MLV: No, they’re not.
JPG: It’s interesting that you mention “Fires Down in Mexico” because I love the line “Too proud for SPF/Chicano blood on my father’s side.” You’ve probably sung many more serious, intense things but for some reason that stands out.
MLV: That’s my favorite lyric of that song. I think it’s a good image. That’s another thing I don’t get to talk about a lot. It’s funny because I’m the whitest Chicano anywhere. I don’t speak Spanish. If I went to high school and take Spanish, I’d get a B. I’m that person, one of millions. My grandparents didn’t speak Spanish. My great grandma didn’t speak Spanish. She didn’t speak English either. She grew up picking.
My grandma was one of the first employees of Fender guitars and lived in Fullerton [California], met my grandpa in Long Beach.
JPG: Do you play a Fender?
MLV: I have a couple guitars at this point. I have more than a Fender.
JPG: I thought maybe there’d be a loyalty to the brand due to family.
MLV: No, I don’t feel that connection anymore. Those companies are without a doubt not connected to the past like they should be. In the ‘80s there was a time when Fender was bought back by its employees. Now, the corporate top aren’t bad dudes, and they’re true craftsmen in the custom shop just like a Gibson at the custom shop, true craftsmen luthiers, but, as a general thing Fender is not Fender. The price point and cost, I forget what the price point was to produce an amplifier. And then they charge so much money.
I have fake Chinese Gibsons and their headstocks are better quality than the $6,000 I would spend on a real Gibson.
JPG: Hearing you talk about how un-Spanish you are reminded me of comedian Al Madrigal and his life.
MLV: The Chicano/Latino is the most integrated into society through the generations than any other, I think. It’s pretty crazy how quickly we lose our culture. I married a full-bloodied Norwegian woman. My son’s name’s Thor and we’re teaching him English and Norwegian at the same time. So, my wife is only speaking Norwegian to him and trying to maintain that culture. I never had that. When I grew up in Texas, I had no connection. Then, when I moved to California my grandma and grandpa and family on that side, we would go to weddings and we’d have Chicanos from Oregon and Arizona and Hawaii. My uncles and my dad grew up in Hawaii too, like Navy brats. They grew up all around the country. So, their sense of culture is more about the military. It’s its own culture.
JPG: I know what you mean. My dad was in the Air Force and you see the reality of stuff behind the scenes.
MLV: Yeah, they’re there to work a job. My dad was a Lieutenant First Class Airborne 101st in Vietnam. Then, he worked for Lockheed Martin when I was a kid. I might as well have been an Army Brat because…I was born in California, moved to Texas then I moved back to California. Could have moved to Michigan. Every three years we moved during my childhood.
JPG: Do you think that because you grew up going from place to place that there’s something within you to do that as an adult that leads you to move from from Austin to Brooklyn to Austin…am I missing a place?
MLV: Long Beach [California], that’s where Delta Spirit started. We were all living in Orange County and then moved to Long Beach. Some of the guys are from San Diego. I had already lived in Hollywood for a little bit before that. Then, the band started doing stuff. So, we lived in Long Beach for a few years. I met my wife. We got married. The whole band ended up moving to New York, and lived there for almost three years.
I’ve been in Austin now for almost three years. Now, I lived in Austin for about a year, then Dripping Springs [Texas], which is west, closer to where this musician Israel Nash lives and Ben Kweller. We all live out in the hill country now. I live in a place called Wimberly, where Ray Wylie Hubbard lives. It’s beautiful.
I think it’s just in my gut, in my blood, to move. I was listening to something on NPR about American mobility and that it’s in our strength as Americans, what in the past has made America so great, people leaving where the work is. For me I’m moving where the inspiration is. I woke up here in Central Texas, in the hill country in Wimberly. I used to come down to this little part of Texas…every birthday I would ask because it has the best swimming holes. I have a house in a trailer park. It’s like trailers, a few houses and some log cabins. Our sub-division owns a little part of the Blanco River and we can go down there and fish or swim. It’s really nice. It’s really pretty; kind of like that Ry Cooder song “Poor Man’s Shangri La” You don’t need a lot to be happy.
JPG: The voice message before the song “The Fighter.” Is that your dad?
MLV: No, that song is actually about my first manager, Stephen Stewart Short. He was a partner with Malcolm Toft and helped buy Trident Studios. I think he was in his 20s when he did that. He worked on “Last Dance” (by Donna Summer) then he also produced DC Talk’s “Jesus Freak.” That song by Ben Folds Five, “Steven’s Last Night in Town” is about him. One of the most charming people I ever met and he was my first manager; him and Michael Rosenblatt who discovered Madonna, and they signed me to Interscope when I was 19 years old. I was in the major music industry machine and I got an insane education from him. I’m so glad it didn’t work out because the music I was writing was terrible (laughs) and there’s no record of it, which is great. It was an amazing education and I spent $90,000 of Universal’s money. That’s what started Delta Spirit.
I listened to what everyone said and that’s where I landed myself. Now, I don’t listen to anybody and somehow I’ve maintained to have a career ever since. Doesn’t mean that I’m right every time, of course, but I think I am. Maybe I’m making crazy decisions in my life doing what I’m doing but I just believe in the songs that I’m writing and the way I’m presenting them is the right way. If I can figure out how to do it without pretension and have enough people like it enough where I can make a living out of it, I’m very satisfied.
JPG: That kind of segues into this and the album’s theme of father to son to son. Transcending emotion in the path of creating art, is it easy or difficult or cathartic or…?
MLV: It’s cathartic, and that’s the only thing music has ever been for me. It’s always been there for me for that catharsis. Punk and playing really loud in people’s garages and being a brat kid was kind of how it all started but it’s been my way.
