Mat Kearney Quotes

Here, we’ve compiled a list of the best Mat Kearney Quotes. The wide variety of quotes available makes it possible to find a quote to suit your needs. You’ve likely heard some of the Mat Kearney Quotes before, but that’s because they truly are great.

I can’t help but do things my own way.

Mat Kearney

I’m actually named Matthew William Kearney: my middle name is named after my grandfather.

Mat Kearney

When I first started writing music, it was to express that. I was trying to find God and trying to find meaning in my life. That’s what my music was about. It wasn’t to entertain.

Mat Kearney

The criticism people could have of my music maybe is that it’s somewhat schizophrenic at times. And if you don’t like that, it could bother you.

Mat Kearney

Ultimately, when you write from a vantage point of faith, humility, and openness to the world around you, people have to respond because those same truths are instilled in them.

Mat Kearney

I love Bruce Springsteen‘s writing, but I grew up on ’90s hip hop, like Tribe Called Quest.

Mat Kearney

When we tour, there’s always this unique quality to every town you visit… Touring, you get a sense of a collective identity for different cities. That’s one of the things I love about my job.

Mat Kearney

I read about two reviews early on when my first record came out, and it just freaked me out, good and bad, so I’ve never really kept up with that side of it.

Mat Kearney

I love to play the songs that got me to where I am. I like to take a little bit from all of my records and mix it up.

Mat Kearney

I’m painfully a realist but ruthlessly an optimist. I think maybe it’s because of my faith – I’ve always got the hope that there is something out there to make it all worthwhile.

Mat Kearney

Being from Oregon, it’s part of who I am.

Mat Kearney

I started writing music in a season of my life where people were telling me I wasn’t defined by mistakes, and God really loved me and was fighting for me, and there was a journey to be had with that. And I don’t know of a more important message.

Mat Kearney

My goal is to try to avoid a genre.

Mat Kearney

‘City Of Black And White‘ was me trying to do something more mature, more adult contemporary.

Mat Kearney

My first album was hip-hop influenced, and my second was more of a singer-songwriter album.

Mat Kearney

Even on tour, where I perform songs from ‘City Of Black And White,’ I still do songs from ‘Nothing Left To Lose.’ I never turned my back on that material. On some albums, you change – that’s all. The trick is to follow your heart and do what feels right.

Mat Kearney

The first album was literally the first 12 songs I’ve ever written.

Mat Kearney

I never wanted to be on an exclusively Christian label.

Mat Kearney

Songs like ‘Learn To Love Again‘ and ‘Rochester’ and some of the more gut-wrenching ones deal with the pain of the younger times of your life… trying to make sense of some the stuff we probably all went through.

Mat Kearney

I didn’t start writing music until I was a sophomore in college. I would steal my roommate’s guitar and sit on the front porch and kind of blend this weird spoken word and these little melodies over simple chords; that really started my whole journey as a musician.

Mat Kearney

Choosing an acoustic guitar for a live setting can be different from picking out one for recording. One doesn’t always work for the other. The sonic properties can be vastly different.

Mat Kearney

Owl City is exactly as you’d imagine him. It’s hard to have much on him. He’s like a frightened bunny. I feel like if you yelled at him, he’d just dart to a corner of the room.

Mat Kearney

There are a lot of great recording artists, like Jack White and Jack Johnson, who stay confined inside a very small box, but I’m more like Bon Iver, who recorded an album with programmed drums, and the next record was totally organic. I get that.

Mat Kearney

It’s silly to throw things out or label things. You know, is U2 a Christian band, or was Johnny Cash a Christian country singer? I don’t know, but they’re pretty open about their faith.

Mat Kearney

I had the lyric ‘Chip Don’t Go’ and a few words, and my wife came in and said that it sounded like a good song. I thought I’d finish writing it up and posting it to YouTube. I didn’t realize it was going to take off like it did.

Mat Kearney

New Yorkers are historically tough crowds.

Mat Kearney

You go to a Springsteen show, and half of the people are there to party and forget about their cares, and they’re being drawn to this visceral experience. And then the other half, you know, has lived and died with his ‘Nebraska‘ album and considers him one of the greatest poets.

Mat Kearney

The first year I moved to Nashville, I started playing these songwriter nights with people like Nickel Creek, Duncan Sheik, and even Ryan Adams… That was the first place I really started playing music, and I had to really step up my game. Really quick. Or get kicked off the stage.

Mat Kearney

I never got too specialized but did like the Southern Gothic writers like William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor.

Mat Kearney

All of my acoustic playing came from my songwriting. All of the chords I’ve learned and all of the voicings I play them in are a direct result of composing.

Mat Kearney

I would sit in my dorm room and write songs. I loved it. I was learning to sing and play guitar. I was becoming a musician. I was the beginner who somehow could write a song.

Mat Kearney

I’ve never shaped or crafted my music for any specific group of people. Whoever connects with it is fine with me. I don’t care where they come from.

Mat Kearney

‘Nothing Left to Lose’ was an album that I wrote in my bedroom, and you don’t know who is listening or who cares.

Mat Kearney

I don’t spend afternoons practicing my guitar to get better. I do read, though, to get inspiration for my lyrics.

Mat Kearney

From my experience, I’ve been honest about who I am and what I believe and the motivation behind my music. But I’ve played it in arenas that are for all people. I’ve pretty much stuck to that model my whole career.

Mat Kearney

I think I have always made really beat-driven pop-rock records.

Mat Kearney

I grew up in Oregon, so there was always a lot of that folksy, Bob Marley stuff. There was a mural of Bob Marley on a wall at my high school.

Mat Kearney

More than any other instrument, the relationship between an acoustic guitar and a microphone is super-important. The kind of mics that you use and your placement of the mics to the guitar can radically alter your sound.

Mat Kearney

I think, in a lot of ways, hip-hop is interesting to me because it’s like the modern-day folk music.

Mat Kearney

I don’t know how much I’m connected to the hip-hop scene, but I definitely lend from that urgency.

Mat Kearney

The first record blew up and sold really well. ‘City of Black & White’ didn’t sell as well, and that’s when you wonder, ‘Did I peak already?’

Mat Kearney

There’s something incredibly vulnerable about middle school for me. We’re really impressionable during that period. The cement’s still wet, so to speak, and a lot of things later in life are born during that season.

Mat Kearney

I think you can hear all my hip hop influences in ‘Just Kids.’

Mat Kearney

I think my faith is a huge part of my music. But for me, it didn’t make sense to be in any specific market. I write songs for a lot of different kinds of people.

Mat Kearney

I’m a ’90s music kid.

Mat Kearney

When I was in college, I wanted to study film. My first passion was to be a cinematographer. So maybe there’s something innate in my music where it partners well with images.

Mat Kearney

It’s been awesome going indie. I don’t need to be on a major label. I love not having to walk into a specific radio person‘s office to try to convince someone to play my songs. At the end of the day, it’s more work, but I’ve discovered that I like to get my hands dirty.

Mat Kearney

I played soccer. I was really known as an athlete. It was a shock to people that I was doing music. They thought it was really odd.

Mat Kearney

Growing up in Eugene, Oregon, there was everything from The Notorious B.I.G. to Weezer playing in my car.

Mat Kearney

Minneapolis has always been a very special place for me.

Mat Kearney