With Matt Andersen’s latest album, “The Hammer & The Rose,” producer Josh Van Tassel convinced the veteran Canadian singer-songwriter to try a different approach from his previous effort.
“He’d seen me live a bunch, and the moments when we’d chill out on stage a lot, those parts in the show really grabbed him, so he wanted to chase that for a whole album,” Andersen said in a recent call. “That was the approach of this one, and the last one was a nine-piece band, backup singers, two organs, all that kind of stuff. It was a massive sound.
“This one’s a lot more stripped down. It’s just all acoustic. We did it all in the room, right off the floor, no headphones. It was really just pretty chill. There’s still some up-tempo stuff, but the whole approach was much more, I don’t want to say restrained, but controlled.”
Andersen considers “The Hammer & The Rose” to be a good representation of his solo live show, which will include a stop on May 13 at City Winery Pittsburgh in the Strip District.
“Even though it’s with a band, it’s still much more just focused around me and my voice and the guitar,” said Andersen, who has won multiple Maple Blues Awards. “So I think it felt really natural to me to go in and record like that.”
The latest album is a soulful blend of Andersen’s influences, from the bluesy “Wayaheadaya” to the funky “The Cobbler (Good for My Sole)” to the gentle ballad of “Stay Home With You.”
“I always describe myself as roots and soul, because I grew up on a lot of country and a lot of folk stuff,” he said. “Usually all the genres blended together quite a bit, blues and folk and country all took from each other, so I feel like that’s where I’m at with this one.”
In a call from his Nova Scotia home, Andersen discussed
With this album, what were the most important ideas for you to express as a songwriter?
A lot of my music comes around to just don’t be jerks to each other. I try to keep it as positive as I can and, like any album, the songs are kind of personal experiences or stuff you’re starting to observe, but a lot of it comes from just being as good as you can, make an effort to be good instead of a (jerk), really.
For the song, “The Hammer & the Rose,” what’s that song saying to you?
That song, for me, the personal side of it is, any time I make a decision, it’s always – I think a lot of people are like that – between your head and your heart, really. The head is your hammer, the rose is your heart, it’s always that. If you lean too far to one side, it usually ends up not being the best, so it’s trying to find that balance between what feels good and what makes sense.
In that battle of the head and the heart, where are you usually leaning? Is the head winning more? Is the heart winning more?
Usually the heart wins, but you gotta listen to both sides, I guess, in those instances. You try to find that happy ground, but I’m definitely more of a leaning on a follow-my-heart kind of guy.
For a song like “Wayaheadaya,” how do you block out those negative voices you talked about?
As I’ve gotten older, you really just stop caring what people think so much, I think is what it is. (laughs) I tell people my give-a-(crap) factor has gone way up. I just don’t worry about that stuff so much anymore. It used to bug me you post a video online you’d get a hundred nice things said, and one bad thing would just ruin my day. I learned to not care about people who don’t care about what I say or care about me, so I just keep that in my head and then carry on and focus on the good stuff.
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It seems like the bond between a father and son might not always be the easiest to express, but it looks like you took a crack at that with “Always Be Your Son.”
Yeah, I’ve got a bunch of songs that are about my mom, and I figured it was time to have one about Dad … as Dad’s gotten older, it’s a different relationship than it was when we were kids. I’ve always had a good relationship with Dad. We definitely had tension at points and I realized now that I’m older it was because we’re pretty much the same person. But it felt nice to have a song that personal on the album.
What made you realize you were maybe closer personality-wise than you thought earlier in life?
When I looked back when I was younger, I always thought he was the stubborn one, but I realized I was being just as stubborn, so it’s just a lot of the traits I have, I have from him. (laughs) When you have two positives at the same time, they kind of push each other away.
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There’s a cover of J.J. Cale’s “Magnolia,” so how did that one fit into this album?
I’ve always loved that song. I did it on an album 15 years ago, just a covers album I did a few copies of, and when we were in the studio, we were just looking for songs to play, just to make sure the gear was working and get ourselves warmed up. We played that one, and then left it alone, and at the end of the session, we just felt like we’d give it a go for real, and it fit right in with the whole vibe of the album. I love that J.J. Cale stuff. He was king of the chill vibes.