Matt Maher

Matt Maher is perhaps one of the most unassuming artists on the market today. With an admittedly ‘uncool’ facade, the soft-spoken worship leader and songwriter from Canada, now residing in Arizona, is nonetheless one of the most talented artists on the circuit. Having written hits for artists like Phillips, Craig, and Dean, Bethany Dillon, and most notably, Chris Tomlin, the bespectacled wordsmith clearly possesses more than meets the eye, a truth readily evident on his major label debut, Empty and Beautiful.

Recently, Soul-Audio’s Matt Conner had a chance to sit down with Maher to discuss the surreal process that brought him from indie obscurity into the national spotlight.

SA: So let’s talk about the process that you went through to get here. A better part of your years have been spent writing songs that other artists end up recording before you’ve finally landed your own deal. And it seems like that’s been the process for a lot of artists, signed to a publishing deal, then groomed into recording. Was that kind of a nurturing thing or…?

Maher: It really wasn’t. I actually made a record independently in 2001 and in 2002 I met with Fervent Records. Susan and Rod Riley, who at the time were at Provident. Great people! I mean, I cannot say enough about them; they’re so nice, so wonderful. But, I just didn’t feel called. It just didn’t sit right. So I actually was published by a small, well, they’re not small, actually the largest liturgical Catholic publisher in the world, Oregon Catholic Press. I sold them the master and then I did a second record through them. On the second record was a song I’d written for a Wednesday, sort of the equivalent of a Wednesday night worship night in Phoenix, “Your Grace is Enough,” and Chris (Tomlin) heard it that fall, the fall of ’03.

SA: How did he come across it?

Maher: He heard it at a Youth Specialties convention. Because the guys at YS had been at my church the week before, heard that song, which was the first time that we’d played it at my church. They’re like, “You need to come play that!” So I was like, okay! So I came and played it.

At the end of a talk, Chris and his band were doing the music and so, Chris fell in love with the song. That was September. In January, I saw him again at another conference and he was like, “Hey, do you have a copy of that song?” So I gave it to him and he emailed me on Monday and was just like, “Dude, I think we’re going to record your song.”

SA: So how’d you feel at that point?

Maher: I freaked out! It wasn’t because Chris Tomlin was recording my song; I just knew instinctively in my heart that this was a turning point in the ministry that God had called me to. You know, it’s interesting, I learned about songwriting hanging out with really great people. One of my mentors is a guy named Tom Booth. He’s co-written with Kathy Troccoli, Israel Houghton, Rich Mullins, before Rich passed away, and Tom kind of mentored me. So I’d known Israel before Israel even signed with Integrity. He used to live in Phoenix and he’s always been incredibly talented. That guy’s like a musical genius. Kathy had recorded two of my songs in 2003. So it was never an intentional thing where I was like ‘I want to be a songwriter for other people.’ It was just that I’d write songs and other people would want to record them.

And then, what had happened was that I’d made my next independent record which was called Overflow in ’05. I made it here in Nashville and I got a good friend of mine who’s a great engineer/producer, and we worked together on the two so we worked together on that one, and on Empty and Beautiful as well. So we got done with the record and I felt like I wasn’t supposed to sell it to the publishing company that I was working with so I held on to it. And what had happened was, this is really how I got it, is that there was a “break.”

The Chronicles of Narnia was coming out and there was talk, the promotional company that was promoting it was trying to look for an avenue within the Catholic church to help promote the movie. So they contacted OCP. I got a call from, basically the director who oversaw the Catholic contemporary division of OCP, who said, “Do you want to write a song? You’re the only one who can crank out a demo this fast.” Because I was sort of notorious amongst my peers for writing and cranking out these little demos. So I said sure. So I sat down (and) it literally came out in fifteen minutes. I don’t even know where it came from. And I did a demo and we sent it to Peter York at EMI and Eddie DeGarmo. Eddie loved the song and he was like, “What are you pitching here? Are you pitching the artist or the song or both?”

And basically what had happened with OCP is that I think they felt like they made a huge leap of faith. They did something that companies don’t do. They said, ‘Okay, we’ve taken this artist as far as we can, as an artist, and really in terms of getting his music into the Church and we’d love to collaborate with something.’ So I signed a publishing deal with EMI Publishing and Spirit and Song gets a percentage of their earnings. And the company I was published under is Thank You Music, which is the same as Matt Redman, Tim Hughes, and a lot of the English writers. And so Kingsway now publishes my songs in Europe. So I’ve got these three publishing companies working for me. I’m sorry; this is really a long story. It’s like a saga but…

SA: No worries! So what happened then?

Maher: In the meantime, I’d helped out at the Passion conferences. Which, that floored me that they wanted a Catholic worship leader to come help out with a community group. Those were amazing times for me. I kept staying involved in a local church and I started to be gradually traveling more. It was mostly events in the Catholic church. And in the fall of ’05, Eddie gave a copy of my CD over to Blaine Vargas, who’s an A&R guy at Provident.

It was Thanksgiving weekend of ’05. Blaine was painting his house and he only had two CD’s; there was one other CD and there was mine. And he kept listening to it and he said there was just something about it that he really liked. So then he called me, he flew up to Phoenix, saw what I did. In the meantime, Eddie was like ‘Are you interested in talking to management?’ He really kind of took me under his wing too, you know? In the meantime, they just started getting my songs out, because as soon as I signed the publishing deal they’re like ‘okay,’ and they just started sending songs out.

And I kept writing. I’ve always loved writing songs. So I met up with Mark Byrd in the spring of ’06 and we wrote, “On the Third Day.” I’d had most of it and he helped me finish the chorus and Michael Olson recorded it. They’d taken a song called “Unwavering” that I’d wrote and put it on Sing Over Me, Bethany Dillon sang it. They’d taken a song, “For Your Glory,” and Phillips, Craig, and Dean recorded it. So I just quickly became a writer in their system.

SA: So what pushed things along?

At the same time I started talking to Provident and got introduced to a different management company but none of them really seemed to fit. Then in the spring of ’06 I met Kat Davis, who’s my manager and who works for Red Light, and it was a total fit. Kat was raised Catholic, so she has an understanding of the church and a respect for it. And she worked incredibly hard to basically build the relationship between all these publishing companies, particularly with Spirit and Song in the Catholic church. Because it’s never been done before.

So in the meantime I just kept traveling full time and along the way, I had a band that was traveling with me so I put them on salary in July of ’06. And in July of ’06 was literally seven years to the day that I had started working full time at my church. And it was funny because the first day I worked at my church, I walked into a chapel, and I was praying, and I felt like God said, “Seven years.”

SA: Seven years toward what?

Maher: I don’t know! I heard ‘seven years.’ But I look back now and I go, ‘I was supposed to work there full time for seven years.’ And this next season, I’m still involved in the church when I’m home. But more and more I just…You know, I’m not interested in being an artist to develop my own fame and notoriety. I mean, it really is about building unity in the Catholic church and building unity between different denominations.

So I walked away from the Provident deal in ’06 because I just wasn’t ready for it. I didn’t have a sense of who I was. I was like, ‘I’m not traveling enough yet. I don’t know who I am.’ I still had a lot of insecurities, I think, as a young man that I needed to work out. So I did and then, basically, in the fall of ’06 I just basically spent another year, the rest of that year, and then in the December of ’06 we talked to Provident again and thank God, they were willing to talk to us still. (Laughs) Because you don’t normally get a second chance like that. And actually, it’s really a third chance when you think about it. So I guess third times a charm, they say?

So we started talking and then in March of ’07 I started making this record. And Blaine loved the production on Overflow so he let Jeff and I co-produce it, which is unique. Not many artists get to co-produce their first record. So I think for me it’s been a growing experience but it’s more so…the whole thing’s been so gradual (that) it’s been more about me growing as a man of God and less about me growing as a performer or as an artist. And it’s like, the thing I think I’ve realized is that if you grow in your faith and you grow in your intimacy with God, He gives you everything you need for the rest. I don’t need to worry about stage coaching! It’s like, I’m a thirty-three year old guy with gray hair! (Laughs) There’s people that are going to look cooler than me at this point. So I just need to be who I am. So that’s kind of how I got to this point.

SA: Do you feel that that will be increasingly hard to do, to remain in that place as your name gets more and more out there?

Maher: Yeah, I think it’s about your interior life, you know? The more and more I read about the lives of saints and the lives of men and women that I admire, it’s just about the interior life. And I think if you can’t carve out space in your life to maintain that intimate relationship with God, then, yeah, there’s a lot of trouble. And I also think community’s just…every single one of these artists should, and I’m sure they are, but you need to be part of a community.

And not just church that you say is your “home,” but, y’know, I got the youth pastor texting me today, ‘Hey, pray for my wife, she’s not sleeping well because she’s pregnant.’ And if I don’t make an effort to do that, I don’t get rooted in reality. And we both know this, this is not reality. Something like GMA, it’s good, I think it helps connect artists with the people who are servicing the church through print and media and the radio and that’s really important. But it’s not reality.

SA: So you find that you’re able to maintain that community?

Maher: Yeah, it’s difficult, it’s really difficult though. I mean, I’m not married but my drummer and guitar player are married. It’s a tough life and we’re learning and growing together as a family to figure out how to support their vocations and lift them up and make time for them.

SA: So what’s happening now around the album?

Maher: Yeah, it’s had a great first week of sales, the single’s hovering right below the top 10. We just confirmed a tour with The Afters this fall and Matthew Paul Turner, who’s a speaker. It’s a Third Coast University Tour so I’m super excited to get on campuses. I think one of the big things I want to do with that this fall is reengage college students in saying like, worship is not something that you stop doing because you leave high school. It’s a way of life but it’s a prayer expression that deepens and expands but you don’t just abandon one for another. You bring everything with you.

• www.mattmahermusic.com
• www.myspace.com/mattmahermusic

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#1 MattConner.net » Blog Archive » S-A Interview: Matt Maher on August 9th, 2008 at 1:25 pm

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