Face it, Matthew Sweet goes to better birthday parties than you.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was at Sue\u2019s birthday party\u201d \u2014 that would be Susanna Hoffs, Bangles\u2019 lead singer \u2014 \u201cand Lindsey was there\u201d \u2014 that would be Lindsey Buckingham, of Fleetwood Mac \u2014 \u201cand we got to play Fleetwood Mac songs with him. We did \u201cGo Your Own Way\u201d and he did this amazing solo version of \u201cNever Going Back Again\u201d.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Pause).<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Amazing, yes, but for Sweet it was also work. At the time, Sweet and Hoffs were joining forces on Under The Covers Vol. 2<\/em>, a collection of the duo\u2019s favorite songs from the 1970s. Three years after the release of their highly-touted 1960s compilation, the pair wanted to ensure their second Covers effort had an added edge. Looking to record Fleetwood Mac\u2019s \u201cSecond Hand News,\u201d Sweet thought who better to play lead than the guy who wrote it.<\/p>\n \u201cDuring the party I asked him if he would consider doing a lead part on our second Under the Covers<\/em>,\u201d Sweet said. \u201cAnd he said sure. He just recorded it one morning on a little tube amp and just rocked it.\u201d<\/p>\n Cake, good friends, California sunshine and jamming with musical legends. Pretty good work if you can get it.<\/p>\n Boasting more than 25 years as a working musician with 10 solo albums to his credit, Sweet still must work to \u201cpay that mortgage\u201d but can pick projects that please him the most. Producing a new album for the Bangles, he\u2019s also talking up Covers, 16 songs comprised of classics (Yes\u2019 \u201cI\u2019ve Seen All Good People: Your Move\/All Good People\u201d), deep tracks (Big Star\u2019s \u201cBack Of A Car\u201d) and songs everyone knows by heart (Carly Simon\u2019s \u201cYou\u2019re So Vain\u201d). Aside from Buckingham, he also enlisted Yes\u2019 Steve Howe (\u201cYes were a huge formative influence for me, I learned to learn the bass on Yes songs,\u201d Sweet said) for a project close to his heart.<\/p>\n \u201cBoth of us wanted to capture what was really cool about those original records because that\u2019s what makes us excited,\u201d Sweet said. \u201cOther people do covers and feel like they need to reinvent the thing, and I understand that, but I have my own original music and so does Sue. We\u2019re not so much about having a stake in it, we\u2019re trying to glorify the music we love.\u201d<\/p>\n Sweet\u2019s been seeking those musical loves since the early 1980s, when as a high school student in Lincoln, Nebraska he wrote postcards to R.E.M. and pen palled with Let\u2019s Active founder Mitch Easter. A chance encounter with a touring Athens band steered the Cornhusker toward the Classic City.<\/p>\n \u201cOh OK came to Lincoln and played a place called The Drumstick, there was like 100 people there, I had their 45 and I talked to them,\u201d Sweet recalls. \u201cThat was a big deal to me, so I hooked up with those guys and eventually went to Athens.\u201d<\/p>\n Sweet joined Oh OK, playing power-pop dance music, then went on to form Buzz of Delight before signing a development deal with Columbia Records in 1985. It was not the typical path of an Athens musician, and it soured Sweet with some around town.<\/p>\n \u201cAbout the time I got the deal people said \u201cYou shouldn\u2019t do that, you should go on tour and build an audience\u2019,\u201d Sweet said. \u201cBut I couldn\u2019t deal with that. So much when you\u2019re young is about the people you know and what\u2019s cool and not cool. But I learned that goes away, and all that doesn\u2019t matter. What matters is the music you made and what you learned.\u201d<\/p>\n He learned plenty. His 1991 album Girlfriend<\/em>, with its infectious guitars and top 10 title track, drew raves and a slew of fans. At the same time, he developed bonds with musicians \u2014 such as Richard Lloyd of Television and Ivan Julian of Richard Hell & the Voidoids \u2014 who became collaborators in the coming decades.<\/p>\n Last year Sweet released Sunshine Lies<\/em>, playing with many of those same band mates, and he plans another solo album out this year. One aspect he relishes most is the technology which allows him to keep his musical ideas and projects in a small little box.<\/p>\n \u201cI swear I gave interviews to people in the \u201980s where I said \u2018What I dream of is a box that\u2019s small and makes perfect recordings and can do everything\u2019 and that\u2019s really what the computer became,\u201d Sweet said. \u201cI have a better outlook now than ever, I\u2019m more confident and it\u2019s clear to me that I can do music and I\u2019ll keep being able to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Face it, Matthew Sweet goes to better birthday parties than you. \u201cI was at Sue\u2019s birthday party\u201d \u2014 that would be Susanna Hoffs, Bangles\u2019 lead singer \u2014 \u201cand Lindsey was there\u201d \u2014 that would be Lindsey Buckingham, of Fleetwood Mac \u2014 \u201cand we got to play Fleetwood Mac songs with him. We did \u201cGo Your Own […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":153,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,3],"tags":[82],"class_list":["post-146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature","category-music","tag-matthew-sweet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":147,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions\/147"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}