The Natural Lines, with special guests The Lighthouse and The Whaler, perform at Rumba Cafe on Thursday, May 11. Tickets are $15. Doors at 7pm, show at 8pm.
Matt Pond is no stranger to touring and no stranger to playing in Columbus. Between 1998 and 2020, Pond released fifteen albums under the Matt Pond PA name and did the requisite touring before retiring the band name. Earlier this year, Pond’s new outfit, The Natural Lines, released it’s debut self-titled album and while the music isn’t drastically different than what Pond was doing before, he does feel like he’s able to look at songwriting through a different lens.
We talked in 2017 and you mentioned a story about being robbed at gunpoint while buying Dorito’s from a vending machine.
I wasn’t the one that got robbed, my bandmates were and it did stop us from breaking up, which is pretty funny. We were at each other’s throats after a show at The Basement and, for some reason, when tragedy strikes, people stick together, which is good. It was good to finish a tour.
Does it feel like a new beginning being able to play in a band that isn’t named after you?
You’d think that’s why I did it, because I thought, “Oh, now it’s not all my responsibility.” It’s cool to have people that are in it because they want to be in it but I don’t know. The way the internet is and the way the world is now, it’s almost twice as much work. It doesn’t matter whose name it is, that’s a symbolic thing. It is strange at how the more artist friendly, or artist open, the world is with the internet and social media, the more it comes down onto the person making it. But, yeah, it’s a relief. We’re going to come out of this tour and record an album all together because it just seems like you play a bunch of shows and what better way to be connected than to try something like that.
Do you feel like you’re writing differently in The Natural Lines than you were when you were playing under your own name?
Part of this whole thing is that it definitely feels different, it feels more focused. I am writing about specific things in a tighter lens. When I sent it to Simon Raymonde, from Bella Union, he loved it and was like, “This is different.” I’d always sent him stuff because I’m a huge fan. He’d be like, “No thanks.” I would never want to goad anyone to do anything in the music world or anything. “Hey, do you want to do this? No? Okay, fine.” I’ve never been a good salesman.
There’s just something more direct and immediate about it. We wanted that to translate to the next recording, to get that immediacy of really just playing music live together in a studio and see how that feels and what comes of that. There’s a directness that I want to cultivate, even in times like right now.
Has The Natural Lines done any touring or is this upcoming tour your first run?
We’ve played shows with Nikki Glaser. We went to SXSW. This will be the first trip. I don’t know how it’s going to be. It’s not an endless tour, I think that we’ll mentally survive no matter what happens. Touring is hard for me. I love it but you’re spending all day setting up for this hour, this one hour, and you want it to be great but you don’t want to put too much pressure on yourself. I think some people may be more comfortable with it but for me, I’m so focused on making sure that everything is set up to be right that I feel like I make it more exhausting on myself than it needs to be.
Are you considering this a trial run or do you think the short tours will be what you do from now on?
I don’t know. It’s tough out there. It’s tough to reconfigure what it is we’re doing and how we’re doing it. I wish we could bust out an endless tour with great guarantees and know that we’re not going to lose money and things like that. It’s already a precarious thing, even before the pandemic. There are a bunch of clubs that closed down because of Covid. It’s such a sad thing because when you invest in a tour, you’re putting forward a lot of money and booking things like hotel rooms or renting vans or things like that. When it goes wrong, it’s not good. But, it’s always been like that. If your van breaks down, and you don’t make the show, you’re out the money. We do this for the good part of the dream but I think a lot of the bad part of the dream can come true too. I don’t know if people realize what it is to really go on tour. A lot of people used to say to me, “You must be having so much fun.” “Well, yeah, you know.” You want to sleep a little bit more. We used to have vans that I can remember driving for hours and being like, “Please don’t let the steering fail or someone crash in to me.” You’re driving with six people or so. I do a lot of the driving. Driving can be nuts, that’s why I sing about it so much. And I can be nuts.
We toured with the band Nickel Creek. They are really nice people. It wasn’t the perfect match but it was fun. Chris Thile would play Strokes’ songs to sing along to on their bus, which was so nice and so beautiful. They would put on a two-hour show and then after their show, they would put on an hour show in the parking lot for people that were sticking around. Those are people that you can turn on and you can’t turn them off which is amazing. I’m not like that. My main thing is writing songs. I love writing songs. That’s fun. It’s like a puzzle. I wanted to write a song for every one of the cities that we’re playing in because I know all the cities so well. There’s so many stories about Columbus. Wasn’t there a venue where there was a tree growing in the middle?
Yep. Andyman’s Treehouse which became The Tree Bar after that.
And The Basement. We’ve had so many shows there. There’s all these places where I can remember the arguments or the fun times or the crazy things. Rumba Cafe is fun, it’s the right size, it makes sense. Still, I don’t know what will happen. I hope you have 50 friends that you’re bringing to the show.
I hope this isn’t offensive but I feel like your music feels right for me at this time in my life as a middle-aged man. I’m not sure that a 22-year-old me would have appreciated your music.
I hope that it transcends age. It’s not not meant for you or for me. This may be the problem with my career because I’ve never wanted to define what I’m doing. I don’t want to sound like someone else too much and I don’t think about the audience in a general sense. I like interacting with people, specifically, I love having conversations. But, I’m not really a social media champion. I’m doing it and I find ways where it’s satisfying or just feels fine, it doesn’t feel like I’m losing organs. I don’t want it to feel that way.
You’ve made some pretty cool videos for the new album. The “Monotony” video features you and Nikki Glaser. I feel like that video would have been super awkward to make with having somebody sitting right across from you and mouthing the lyrics that you wrote back to you. I think I would have had a hard time keeping a straight face.
I tour manage Nikki and we’ve become good friends. I’ve probably seen her show more than anybody. I also shoot pictures for her too, which I love doing because it kind of connects me and then I’m always in the show and making sure that everything’s cool and she’s cool. I can talk to her if she wants to talk about her show. So it’s kind of fun. She is fearless. With her, I don’t really feel awkward.
It’s funny when I’m bossy to her and I don’t even realize it. She had 2 hours to shoot that video between a huge press thing for a promotion she was doing in New York. So we timed it quickly. Instead of having lunch, she came and did this thing with us which was really cool.
I worry more about what the people shooting it are getting and if they’re getting the right information. I work with a lot with this guy Jesse Dufault and he’s amazing. We’ve done so many videos together, we just throw ourselves into situations.
Now, we had planned every second of that, but still even planning it, 2 hours is no time. We had an hour to set up and 2 hours to shoot it. People will take 3 hours to set up a shot. It’s the same thing with recording, people will take days to get a drum sound.
Nikki’s show is both therapy for herself and the audience. She’s labeled as a dirty comic by some people and she can be pretty dirty but she’s actually talking about real things. She talks a lot about pedophilia and suicide, things that don’t seem so funny. What I love about it is that, if you don’t take it personally or don’t see yourself in it, but you see society in it, it’s brilliant. I hope I’m not brainwashed but, if I am, then I’m happy about it.
So, that video was fun. It was like we really planned it. The only part about it that I didn’t like was recreating the Titanic thing where we spin around and hold each other’s hands. There are things where I can’t get past the humiliation of it. And, I tried my hardest, but that video was hard for me to watch. I don’t watch my own videos but you have to watch them to approve them just as you would listen to a mix or anything else.
“The Problem Is Me” video looks like it was pretty easy to make. Just walk around with a camera and film you singing the song in the streets of New York.
Several days, but we had it planned. The crazy thing about that is we shot in Times Square and while we’re setting it up, since there’s so many crazies around, just can do your own thing, and we were just singing around people and people were kind of paying attention and then bored by us. But the way that we had coordinated the gear, the car and everything to meet up at Coney Island, we stepped out of the subway and Chris stepped out of the car within 15 feet of each other at the same spot where we were shooting this long tracking shot. The funny thing about all this stuff, which is why it works that I work for Nikki, is that you just get a sense of logistics in making albums, touring and making videos in a way that you’re not spending tons of money and you’re enjoying yourself too.
Did you have to throw the Naked Cowboy a couple of bucks or did he willingly?
I gave him $20 after we did it. Unfortunately. I think he’s a pretty right wing guy, but I didn’t know that going into it. He seemed nice. I mean, it made sense. I just walked by him. I was like, “Hey, would you sing this?” It wasn’t a plan. That’s where it gets fun. We were just going to sing to people and hand out our brochures that we had made up like we were supposed to be a cult, a mini cult. So that was fun.
What can you tell me about the “Artificial Moonlight” video?
For “Artificial Moonlight” we had a generator attached to the top of a car with huge stage lights. I didn’t want LED lights. I wanted Lekos. We shot this for a while, and then a few police cars pulled up, and they’re like, “You guys, we could see you from miles away.” I’m completely blind, driving behind this car, just hoping for the best. And then we shot at a gas station, and again, cameras walking through. Nobody cares. Buy a Big Gulp or whatever, as long as you just act innocent. We’ll just stop and do something else if someone says “no”.
On this tour, are you only playing The Natural Lines stuff or will you play Matt Pond PA material?
We’re playing both, we playing 50/50. I don’t love playing full albums. It kind of feels like it’s too heavy. We did two full album tours and it was emotionally exhausting because to play an album front to back live is like, “I had to break up with four people again and go through it in sequence.” I really love being fast and loose with sets and try to make them feel exciting, if it’s possible.
