Name: Mt. Joy
Members: Matt Quinn, Sam Cooper, Michael Byrnes, Sotiris Eliopoulos, Jackie Miclau
Interviewee: Matt Quinn
Recent release: Mt. Joy's Hope We Have Fun is out via Bloomfield. Listen to it and stream it here. Order it on vinyl here.
Global Recommendation: Come to Philadelphia and eat some of our delicious food. Eat the chicken at “Vernick food and drink!!”

If you enjoyed this Mt. Joy interview and would like to stay up to date with the band and their music, visit their official homepage. They are also on Instagram, and Facebook. 



For you to get started, do there need to be concrete ideas – or what some have called a 'visualisation' of the finished work? What does the balance between planning and chance look like for you?

This is a great question. We’ve only made 4 albums, but the more albums we make, the more I feel like a great album is one that strikes this balance correctly:

I think you do want a certain number of songs that seem to arise from a moment of jamming. Then, I think you do also want a certain number of songs that are really mapped out and maybe therefore tell a more concrete story. It’s obviously a trade off, but there are special things about both types of creativity and I think it’s important within a body of work to have both.

On this album, “Pink Lady” and “In the Middle” really represent sort of spur of the moment jamming.



Whereas a song like “God Loves Weirdos” and “Hope we have fun” take more time to put together lyrically.



Is there a preparation phase for your process? Do you require your tools to be laid out in a particular way, for example, do you need to do 'research' or create 'early versions'?

I often sit and record voice memos with my phone turned upside down or under a pillow and just play and sing and try to forget recording. I will sit and play sometimes for hours, and then weed through ideas that way.

So, in that way there are a lot of early versions of songs.

Do you have certain rituals to get you into the right mindset for creating?

Sometimes smoking weed helps to get out of my head and just create for the joy of it.

On certain songs like “Pink Lady,” when being goofy is the goal, it can be good to get into that headspace.



What makes lyrics good in your opinion? What are your own ambitions and challenges in this regard? What are areas/themes/topics that you keep returning to in your lyrics?

I think writing good lyrics is about free association. I think when lyrics feel very sort of written and intentional, they often tend to feel forced or unmusical.

For me, as a lyricist I just sort of see myself as always searching for lines. Sometimes something will pop into my head on the train or something and I will squirrel it away in my phone and use it years later in a song. Sometimes you’re just playing guitar and a whole verse and chorus pops out of the chords you are playing.

But I think its really hard to sit down and write truly amazing lyrics just using rhyme schemes. I think they come from somewhere outside of that process.

Many writers have claimed that as soon as they enter into the process,certain aspects of the narrative are out of their hands. Do you like to keep strict control or is there a sense of following things where they lead you?

For me, I feel like the narrative, unless very broad, is mostly out of my hands. It becomes more clear as the song comes together.

But this is why I find writing about politics to be difficult. People often ask if I’m going to write a political song to meet the current moment, and of course, I would love to write a song that stands up for everything I believe in. I just know that wouldn't be a good piece of art from me. I am always hoping that a song like that will find me. And I try!  

But if you make something like that, I really believe you owe it to the world to make something you feel is transcendent, and for me that  has to come from a more pure and patient place.

There are many descriptions of the creative state. How would you describe it for you personally? Is there an element of spirituality to what you do?

I do think there is a spiritual element to songwriting. For me, I suffer from fairly crippling anxiety and in many ways sitting down and playing music really has saved me. When I am not in the state that I get in while I am writing a song I have no idea how I make songs.

It really is a meditative state that comes from somewhere I don’t fully understand, but I am forever grateful to be able to go to that place. Regardless of what happens with Mt. Joy it’s something I will do for the rest of my life.

After finishing a piece or album and releasing something into the world, there can be a sense of emptiness. Can you relate to this – and how do you return to the state of creativity after experiencing it?

I heard Connor Oburst say once that every time he finishes an album he feels like he will never be able to do it again. I really relate to that. It takes a lot out of me mentally and physically to get that many songs over the line.

There’s some relief when I finish an album, but at the same time I always find myself hoping that I’m visited by more good songs again someday.

For me, though, music is such an important piece of my mental health that I always find myself within days back just playing music for the sake of it and then eventually from their the ideas start flowing again … I hope!

I would love to know a little about the feedback you've received from listeners or critics about what they thought some of your songs are about or the impact it had on them – have there been “misunderstandings” or did you perhaps even gain new “insights?”

It’s always one of my favorite parts of the process to hear from our fans about our songs. There have been profound impacts that make everything we do feel validated, when someone describes what it meant to a fallen loved one, or how it brought them and their spouse together.

But then, there have been lighthearted ones. Like when a fan told us that they used “dirty love” for their wedding song … “Dirty love” as far as I know is a song  about a fictional affair! I guess you never know what kind of meaning people will find in songs.

Which is beautiful … and sometimes hilarious.