The Hippodrome

One Time More Around Download

When he’s not surfing in the California sun, playing with Karl Blau or Phil Elverum (the Microphones, Mount Eerie), or “seeking medicine for [his] allergy to self promotion,” Dave Matthies is recording his bleary-eyed solo project, The Gift Machine.

“All of my rock star fantasies were healthily abandoned years ago,” Matthies explains. “The only goals I ever set for myself were to do a tour of the entire US and put out an LP of my music.” Mission nearly accomplished then, for The Gift Machine has played in 40 of the 50 states, released five full lengths, 4 EPs, and a handful of compilation tracks. The moniker is really just a delightful sheath for Matthies to avoid the pressures of the industry and do what so many musicians erroneously say they’re in it for – to make music for the sake of music.

Though a Californian for the last year and a half, Matthies’ heart is still tied to the Anacortes, Washington scene, where he lived for many years, co-founding the What The Heck Fest, helping Bret Lunsford run KNW-YR-OWN records, and even running his own recording studio.

“I find Olympia, WA, in general, is a little strange and gloomy, more so then the rest of the Northwest,” offers Matthies as a possible environmental excuse for the pretension surrounding the K Records scene, the label which once picked up his only “properly released” album, Don’t Turn Me Off.

Still, Matthies concedes that “[he’s] always found it strange that underground labels are supposedly so against corporate music and rock stardom. They fall into the same trappings and have that projected aloofness, are based around fashion, and in general all have to have some sort of schtick.”

I can vouch for Matthies and say that he’s pretty far removed from any type of schtick. We talked about how hard it is to let the music do the talking instead of your publicist — Matthies told me how he fantasizes about “being an old fashioned tin pan alley song writer . . . just write a song and then have to move on to the next one, not necessarily having to be so attached to them as the artist or feeling like I am presenting them to the world as me.”

While Matthies has been around the scene, he admits he’s also “lived on couches and in cars for up to a year at a time in the name of musical addiction.” And no folks, that’s not because he’s so indie rock. “I always thought that ‘indie’ was guys like Pavement who would show up to shows in the clothes they put on that morning and just play. Now I think ‘indie’ officially means some sort of hairstyle.” Take that, American Apparel.

This entry was posted by Ben Bernstein on Monday, October 1st, 2007 at 1:00 pm and is filed under Blurbs, Written By Ben Bernstein. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.