Mat Kearney

“I'm really influenced by '90s hip hop. A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul were my heroes growing up.”

“Being from Oregon, it's part of who I am.”

“I started as a writer. I didn't play music until late in life.”

“I thought my second record was good, but it didn't have that smash hit we did on the first one that somehow found its way onto tons of formats of radio stations.”

“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.”

“Minneapolis has always been a very special place for me.”

“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.”

“I was an English major in college, so I really liked spoken word and poetry; it was what I did before I wrote music.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Golf was big in my family.”

“I love Bruce Springsteen's writing, but I grew up on '90s hip hop, like Tribe Called Quest.”

“Hopefully, reading and being around great literature inspires me to write songs, but I'm not sure about that.”

“I am a micromanager, and I love being involved in every detail of my life, but in the big picture, you realize how little control you have. 'Air I Breathe' is about those moments of surrender where you get to something that is bigger than you, and you don't have answers for it.”

“I enjoy changing; I think it's more fun to try something different than to just do what you did last time. As an artist, you just want to keep creating, keep finding a place that really inspires you that feels fresh and new, and keep it exciting.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”