Wow. You chose the Gentle Rant. OK.

Brock Mumford doesn’t play many standards. I love ‘em, I learn ‘em, I play them on many other gigs, but they don’t really represent my experience. Being true to your experience is a tough one. I’ve written some thoughts on songs and the musical life, and should you care to wade through them, dear reader, they are contained in The Gentle Rant. It’s not necessarily very linear, but linear progression – such as the March of Progress – is a lie after all. My hope is that it will impart an underlying mood.

I’m Matt, and I’m a guitar player. I’ve played music since I was a kid, but I’ve had other jobs too. For a while I worked in kitchens, at a recording studio, at a male infertility lab, for a moving company, at a copy shop. I called myself a copy boy- that’s how I made my living. Now I’m a guitar player. How ‘bout that? I also write songs.

I’m happy to make my rent playing in nightclubs and saloons, wedding halls, hotels, concert stages, amusement parks, casinos, churches, beaches and boats and basements. It’s nice when folks don’t feel they have to pay attention. It’s nice not to know what’s going to happen on any given job, who is going to be on the gig, or whether anyone among the audience is going to suddenly discover a real need for the sweet, dispensable, antiquated service you provide.

I was fortunate enough to have been exposed to a lot of great music early and often. There was much I didn’t understand, some I loved, some I hated, and some that frightened me. It’s important to learn what you like. And remember what you hate, but to get over fears. I wanted to play the banjo ever since I heard “Dueling Banjos” in fourth grade, and then I heard Earl Scruggs and Ralph Stanley and Tony Trischka, and then pretty soon that was all I did. I was pretty bad about working hard at anything I didn’t feel a strong connection to. But I was lucky that there was plenty I did connect with. Then I started really liking the guitar.

I love the guitar. I like technique and I like control, and I need these things to be able to get at a sound and a tune. Unashamedly I confess I love chops, and a player who doesn’t let his get in the way of servicing the song. Clarence White. Eddie Lang.

I’ve always loved songs. The great ones leave me flabbergasted and at a loss as to their possible origins. I used to have a phobia as a kid that someone would one day, out of the blue, realize he’d written the last song. Or more likely the next guy would realize it. Wouldn’t that be awful?

One great thing about a song is that it doesn’t have to be fair or definitive. It doesn’t have to be researched or objective. Usually its only job is to take its subject - perhaps even one examined many times before - and hold it up at that particular angle where only one side, in a particular light, can be seen, and then purport that one side as the only one that matters or contains even a shred of truth. Then, for a couple of minutes, it is definitive. If we’re lucky a song’s bridge (release) will tip its hand, and then we’re really in delicious territory. Sometimes its subject is love.

I love harmony, details, craft, context, honesty, coyness, finesse. I hate cynicism and no context. Willful ignorance of one’s craft, in the name of some “genuineness”, seems unnecessary and, well frankly, quaint and a little outdated.

NEXT >>