An Interview with Matthew Logan Vasquez (Glorietta): Ebb and Flow

There were so many great sets at Newport last summer. So many. So it’s stupid and inadvisable to say that there was a “best” set. All that being said, if I could travel back in time to a moment that made me feel the way music is supposed to make you feel, it was Glorietta. It was loose and joyful and vulnerable and sexy and full of new songs you wanted to hear again and again. This Wednesday, Glorietta brings their songs they recorded over a few days between friends in New Mexico to Brighton Music Hall. Glorietta is: Matthew Logan Vasquez, Noah Gundersen, Kelsey Wilson, David Ramirez, Adrian Quesada, and Jason Robert Blum. It’s their one tour. You best be there. We got to talk with Matthew Logan Vasquez just after his breakfast at Keys Café, in Minneapolis. We started by talking food and Matt had some considered opinions about that, so we’ve included those tips for you. Read on, friends.

RLR: So you’ve just been to Keys. What’s the go-to greasy spoon breakfast choice?

MLV: Well, it depends on where you are, regionally. If you’re in the Midwest, it’s normally a pretty good decision to stick with eggs over medium, hash browns, bacon or sausage. That’s what I got [at Keys]. I also got a flapjack, cause I wanted one. But if you’re in Texas, I usually go for migas chilaquiles.

And if I’m in Portland, I get eggs benedict because the brunch rolls in the Pacific Northwest are psycho. People take brunch really seriously. I love a good eggs benedict; get it with salmon and capers sometimes. Mmm.

RLR: Well, now I’m hungry. OK, jumping in here about Glorietta, I was at Newport and that set was just so special.

MLV: Thank you.

RLR: There was part of me that wondered if debuting at Newport was an intentional piece from the get-go.

MLV: Yeah. When we were recording the album, I was texting Jay Sweet—just like, “You’re so cooked, you’re going to freak out when you hear this.” Because it’s exactly what he’s always trying to put together. He’s always putting bugs in ears, like, “You should have this person sit in with you. You should have this person sit it with you!”

In 2016 when I was playing there, I had my lost voice, because there were so many after parties, and so many sets. By the time the Middle Brother set came around, I had to get Kam Franklin to come up to help me get through the vocal. I took steroids to get through the set. Thankfully, my voice held up, but it was a good nudge, to have Kam come up and sing with me. And then she ended up, just a couple weeks later, dropping vocals on my single, “Same,” which was on my last record. So it was one of those happy things, collaborative stuff, and Newport has always been tied into that.

But when I sent Jay the record, it took him forever to listen to it. Brit, in the office, is the one who listened to it. And Jay just kept going, “Who is that?” And Brit was like, “It’s Matt’s buddy project, with Noah and David. Listen to it.” And he was like, “Yeahyeahyeah.” He did that three times, and on the third time, she was like, “Stop it! Just listen to the freaking record!” And at that point, Jay was like, “Hey, Matt! Want to play Newport?”

RLR: So when you think back to the germ of the idea, how similar is it to what you thought of? Any surprises along the way?

MLV: I think when you have so many people staying all together, having too harsh of a parameter is not good. Every songwriter in their own right is a leader and a very creative person and can give things direction. So the idea is that when somebody puts a song on the table, we’re all very supportive behind the idea. So it kind of naturally all came together in its way. Having a room full of leaders, it’s a lot easier to put it together. And, you know, we’re all happy to play the back seat too.

RLR: At Newport, you introduced the song, “Lincoln Creek,” and you just said, “This song fucking kills me.” Can you talk about the first time you heard that song?

MLV: Yeah.. The first time I heard it was when we were waking up the second day of the whole thing. He started playing it, and of course I’m like, “Oooh, I want to play with you Noah, because I love you.” I sit next to him, and I hit record. And he’s singing so quietly and beautifully and I’m singing this really light harmony; by the second take, I realized I do not belong playing guitar or singing right now–he’s making a beautiful moment and I can’t get in the way of it. So instead, I got behind the console and just relaxed and just let him just make me cry.

And everybody’s kind of stumbling up and getting breakfast and sort of listening to this song. You could hear the door open and close and there was just the smell of bacon and eggs while Noah’s pouring his guts out. Once the take was done, it was really obvious where to put the harmonies, and Kelsey had it ready and I was humming one, and once we got the harmonies down, it just didn’t seem like it needed another thing. It was raw and real. But when we were sitting in overdubs, one of us suggested putting in maybe a little melodic moment in the musical break, and Noah was like, “Hell no, I like it like this.” He’s right.

RLR: Can you talk through that songwriting process a bit for this record?

MLV: Everybody has ownership on the thing they’re singing on. Or, a little more ownership than everybody else. Everybody was pretty open to somebody else’s idea, and nobody was making giant left turns for the music. That’s kind of the way that has to go. You can’t have somebody be like, “I have this amazing bridge idea!” We have a certain amount of time and because of that, you kind of have to focus on the heart of the song as fast and as real as possible to capture the moment. A lot of that comes in, especially with like, Jason’s song, “Easy Come, Easy Go.” Or, the song that Nathaniel Rateliff sang on. Adrian Quesada wrote the groove and while we were working out the groove, eight of us in the room jamming, Nathaniel and Kelsey were like, “Sweet, let’s go write lyrics.” And by the time we got the arrangement figured out, they were like, “We got words.” So we made the track, and I added a guitar melody, a kind of George Harrison-y thing. Luke Mossman, from the Nightsweats, adds a harmony to that, and then Noah adds a twist halfway through it. You know, it was one of the funnest, hardest records to mix ever, because it was so many people in a living room playing in amps. But it was fun to find that alchemy to make it work.

RLR: One of the things I really appreciate about the album is the breadth. It’s really dynamic. I’m wondering how you came to those ten songs.

MLV: Yeah, out of the eighteen! But it all seemed pretty natural. You know, it was like, “Hey let’s pick our favorites.” In terms of arrangement, I made a track list, and nobody threw their arms up. I wanted it to have the ebb and flow of the trip. We’re all there, and we’re all hanging out, feeling each other out, and “Loser’s Lament,” the first song, kinda has that energy. It’s just like, “Here we go motherfuckers, we’re gonna do this.” And we have this crazy night together and there’s a jacuzzi, and Jason’s cooking. And we wake up in the morning and not everybody’s up, so let’s do these acoustic songs. It’s kind of the hangover from last night and everybody’s coming to. The whole week had that feel, so it was important, even subtly, to try to imbue that in the album.

RLR: Last question: how serious is it that this is the one and only tour?

MLV: It’s pretty dead serious. There’s too many people! We all have our own careers. I think everybody is so brilliant in our clique, but to make this happen logistically…it was one of those things where all the folks I hit up for this all had records in the works. And I knew there would be this pocket of time where things would be settling into the record cycles where there’d be this period of time before they started writing songs again for their next record. So I knew we’d be able to release it, and I knew there might be a chance to tour it this one time. It was a lot of shifting for everybody, so to make that work again seems very unlikely. But, we got a bunch of songs that we know how to play together now, so if some of us are playing the same music festival, we’ll have those moments.

Those moments. Yes. One of those moments will happen Wednesday at Brighton Music Hall and you probably know this by now, but I strongly urge you to be there. Tickets are here.