Mathew Paul Butler finds beauty in darkness
By Matt Ashare
Who: Matthew Paul Butler and Thee Vandal Choir
When: Friday, January 27
Where: Rivermont Pizza, 2496 Rivermont Avenue, Lynchburg
It’s Saturday afternoon and I’m headed to meet up with locally based singer/songwriter Matthew Paul Butler at the Cavalier when it hits me that, unless he’s the burly Viking guy pictured on the cover of his new EP Hard Headed, I may have trouble picking him out of the lunchtime crowd. “Don’t worry,” he reassures me over the phone, “I’m the little guy with the big beard.” Problem solved.
Butler, who’ll be playing Rivermont Pizza with his band Thee Vandal Choir on January 27, is immediately recognizable as, well, the little guy with the big beard, a look that’s part mountain man, part Middle Earth. Indeed, if there were an elven dwarf hybrid in Tolkien’s writings, Butler would be a perfect fit. Instead, he’s found a kind of solace and inner satisfaction playing a very different role — that of the uncannily charismatic, accessibly eccentric fingerpicking indie-folk troubadour.
It’s not exactly the part he was born to play. As the son of Christian missionaries, he spent his formative years in Africa — specifically Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). By the age of 15, he was Stateside, in Baltimore, attending high school and worship leading in his father’s church. He seemed destined to follow in mom and dad’s footsteps when he enrolled in their alma mater, a Pentecostal/Charismatic seminary in upstate New York called Elim Bible School back in 2000. But he only lasted one semester there before, guitar in hand, he embarked on an itinerant life that took him to New Jersey, North Carolina, and Kansas City, with a few stops back in Baltimore before landing in Lynchburg, home of Vandal Choir singer Kaitlyn Rose, who’s also now Butler’s fiancée.
“We got engaged on New Year's Day,” the soft-spoken Butler recounts. “It’s been amazing, to find someone I could gel with so well and who I can also sing together with so well. It's difficult sometimes. With the dudes in my band, if I don't like what they're playing I can tell them it sucks. But you can’t really do that with your fiancée.”
Over the past year, Thee Vandal Choir has grown to include drummer Drew Fontaine, bassist Benjamin Leon Henry, and lap steel specialist Matt Gulletti. But “Hard Headed” is a spare affair, recorded by Butler and Rose at the Charlotte home of producer Daniel Hodges, who also played bass and “some guitar.” (Hodges brought in Tim Cossor to lay down the drum tracks, a feat Bulter says was accomplished in a matter of hours.)
Wasted notes and excess verbiage aren’t part of Butler’s lexicon. And, while turbulent emotions surface throughout the six songs on “Hard Headed” — a disc that ends with the ambient sound of a rainstorm framing the melancholy of the last two tracks — Butler doesn’t quite fit the mold of the confessional songwriter. It wasn’t until he revealed that Rose’s younger brother committed suicide a year ago, that the true power of “Older Brother,” a song sung from the point of view of the deceased that concludes somewhat optimistically “I had no regrets,” really sank in.
Over a couple of afternoon beers, Butler opened up about his approach to writing and recording, the genesis of “Hard Headed” (which is available as a free download on Butler’s bandcamp page through January 27), and, of course, the beard. Here’s some of what he had to say. . .
Q: To what degree have your experiences leading church services carried over to what you do now?
It’s what taught me performing. My parents would probably be horrified to hear this, but one of the things you learn as a worship leader is a kind of manipulation of people. I'm up there and other people might claim that it's the holy ghost, but really it's just like putting chords together in a proper form and building dynamics in a song in a way that everyone gets really excited and starts raising their hands and crying and god knows what else.
Q: You do put a lot of yourself into your songs, but they really not autobiographical, are they?
They're not. I've seen a lot. So there are minor references to my life in damn near every song. In "Too Old," there's the "Who knows/maybe we'll get married" line. And that came out of me thinking, "oh shit, do I really want to be with this person for the rest of my life." It was definitely a thought in my mind, even if I wasn't aware of it at the time. It just came out. Generally, I write and then, for the bulk of it, I don't really realize what I was writing about until afterwards.
Q: That sermon in the background of “Oh Dear, Your Bad Luck” — is that you or is that something you found?
Actually, I didn't put that in there. My friend Daniel Hodges, who produced the album, got it in his head when he was mixing the song, that he should put some radio noise in there. He has this old AM radio and he found randomly this Christian religious broadcast. I think it might be Pat Robertson. I'm not really sure. I thought it was great. I don't know what it is, but it just works in that song.
Q: There’s a bare-bones, homespun quality to the recordings. Was that a happy accident or was that your intention?
It's weird for me because I'm very much a fan of digital media and the opportunities that it's provided me. At the same time, I'm a huge fan of old recordings. Like, you look at photographs of old Dylan sessions and they're all in a room together recording at the same time. I feel like that's part of the reason why those recordings, at least to me, sound so much better than damn near anything.
Q: Other than Dylan, are there other artists who have inspired you?
It may not make sense when you listen to this record, but years ago, when I was living in Jersey, I picked up Jeff Buckley's "Grace" and I listened to it for six months straight. I just really honed in on Jeff's voice, and I was like damn. . . I don't really play that style of music, but that album had a big impact on me. And then, as much as I hate to say it right now, the early Kings of Leon albums just kicked up something inside of me. I couldn't get enough of it. When I heard them and read about what they had to say, I liked that they came from the same vein of Christianity that I was raised in — you know, falling on the ground, speaking in tongues, and all that crazy stuff.
Q: Hard Headed obviously comes from a dark place. Is that your preferred mode of writing?
I feel like a lot of what I do, without being overly dramatic, is exorcizing a lot of stuff from growing up. It's not like my parents beat me or were terrible or anything. A lot of it is that I missed out on releasing a lot of stuff when I was growing up, so I'm doing it now in my songs. I've had discussions with my father about my songs, and he thinks some them seem heretical. But if I reference god in a song, I don't necessarily mean the god of the bible. That's the only language I have to talk about anything. I was brought up that for 20 years. That's just the language I have.
Q: Okay, the beard?
I dunno. I get a lot of weird frat boys who come up and want to touch the beard. It's kind of funny. If I shaved my beard off right now, I would look like I was 18. So one reason I have it is that it helps me not get carded at bars. I also hate shaving. And, if you want some deeper reason, it's just that I don't really care and I like it. I'm the guy who's short and has a big beard. I grow it and I cut it back, but lately I decided that I'm just going to let it grow. . .
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