Matthew Johnson - Natural Bridges Interview
Where in California are you originally from? When did you first begin to fall in love with music? Was this something that was relevant around your household growing up? Do you have any siblings?
I am Coast Miwok on my Dad’s side so my ancestors have been in California forever. Specifically Marin and Sonoma Counties. I now live in Petaluma where my Great-Grandmother, Grandpa and Dad were born! But, I came of age in Concord, California, deeply embedded in the suburban sprawl of Contra Costa County in what I like to call the “outer East Bay” region of the San Francisco Bay Area. Saving grace? Being on the BART line and traveling to San Francisco and Berkeley with my friends when I was old enough and connecting to the energy of those special places. I was a teenage Deadhead in the early-mid 90s which was born out of growing up in the Bay Area and feeling like a weirdo but being too gentle to be a punk I gravitated towards the Grateful Dead universe. Hmmm… I think I always loved music! My Mom and Dad listened to a lot of music and my Mom was always singing along to the radio in the car. I remember hearing her sing along to Paul Simon and Bill Withers. I loved all the songs from Sesame Street and had a couple of those records. My Grandfather played the piano and the flute and a little guitar and I remember sitting on his lap at the piano while he played and him teaching me little simple lines so I could join in. I grew up with music all around me. My grandfather taught me piano in the 4th and 5th grade and gave me my first guitar! I have one brother. He wasn’t into much music when we were younger except Weird Al.
Who were some of your earliest influences in your more formative years? When and where did you see your first show and what ultimately inspired you to pursue a life in music? Did you participate in any groups, or projects prior to forming NB?
A couple of memories stand out in my mind, one being fairly young, maybe 8, or 9 and playing with toy cars on the floor in the living room while my Dad blasted Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere”. I’ll never forget that feeling of the warm waves of sound those guys created together washing over me. I recognized the power at the time, but didn’t quite understand the magnitude of the magic that was happening. Something I’d come to know well later on. The second memory is my Dad bringing home a copy of The Beatles white album on CD (a fairly new technology) when I was in about the 4th, or 5th grade and making me sit in my room alone and listen to the whole thing. Kids at school giving me funny looks for singing “Bungalow Bill” on the playground haha! My first show was Harry Belafonte at the Concord Pavilion! I’m pretty sure that didn’t inspire me to pursue a musical life, though haha. There was a little Grateful Dead inspired band called California Asparagus from a city called Walnut Creek near where I grew up that motivated me to try to put a band together in high school in hopes of opening for them. That didn’t happen, but I did end up playing music with two people from that band a few years later. Throughout high school and a little bit after that I wrote and four tracked songs all by my lonesome. I moved to Athens, GA in the fall of 2001 and formed a band called The Clouds which then changed to Natural Bridges once I discovered there was another band called The Clouds. I lived in Santa Cruz briefly in 1997-98 and Natural Bridges was my favorite beach there. Those two words also seemed to perfectly encapsulate the feeling I wanted for the band at that time, which was to have kind of an open door policy and change the lineup around to constantly feel inspired by the energy and what new people could bring to the music. Anyway, it stuck!
How did you initially meet your bandmates and what led to you guys starting the band together? The band is nearing almost two decades of existence with their debut EP “Sisters” back in ‘05. Tell me about writing and recording this release as well as some of the tunes featuredon the album like “Sunbeams”, “Sisters” and “Last Light of the Day”.
Natural Bridges has always kinda had a revolving cast of characters! After leaving Athens, I ended up in Portland, OR in 2003. Randomly played a show with Jason Cirimele (Dust Collector) in Seattle and we kept in touch and he joined Natural Bridges upon moving to Portland. I remember him having to use his brother’s ID to play shows in bars! That’s how long we’ve played music together! He introduced me to his friend Brian “Boom Boom” Bethel when we both moved back to the Bay Area in 2008 and those two have been constants in the band ever since. Well, as I mentioned before Natural Bridges has been around as a “band” since probably 2002. There is actually another self-released CD-R called “Variations On Birdsong” that I put out around 2004. Good luck finding that one! I recorded “Sisters” with the help of my dear old friend Johnny Zeigler (check out his band, Phone Call from Portland!) Jack Saturn (who now runs a business repairing old cassette multitracks called “Recursive Delete” in Alabama) and Jacob Anderson who is a legendary figure in the world of tape labels. We recorded the basics for most of it at Jacob’s house and then I did overdubs at home. Done on an Akai DPS12 machine. “Sunbeams” was inspired by the way the light hit the side of a house I lived in. “Sisters” was a story I made up about two sisters living in a hollow tree. Somewhat loosely inspired by a friend I had heard lived in a hollow tree with her boyfriend. “Last Light of the Day” came to me after riding my bike past the Laurelhurst Theater in Portland just as a movie had finished and the sidewalk teemed with movie-goers.
I’m not entirely aware of the band’s activities between “Sisters” and 2013’s follow up “Good Medicine” (which was later reissued on Royal Oakie Records). I would love to know about this period as well as writing “Good Medicine”. What was the overall vision and approach for this album?
I have a very bad habit of taking a super long time between albums! I started “Good Medicine” before I left Portland in 2008 at my friend Greg Olin’s apartment on his Tascam 388. Speaking of Greg: his band Graves was and is a huge inspiration to me! Greg is one of those people who you meet and feel like you’ve known them for 20 years. His latest album “Gary Owens: I Have Some Thoughts” is incredible and well worth a listen! At the time we were doing “Good Medicine” some of us also played on Greg’s “Solid Home Life” album which I always considered kind of a sonic sibling. Another one worth seeking out! Anywho, I bought my own 388 and continued on in California until it broke. We just kept overdubbing and tinkering and asking folks like Moot Booxle and Melissa Underwood to send in parts until it was finally finished in 2013! I always said that “Good Medicine” sounded like Curtis Mayfield and Neil Young playing and singing together in the fog somewhere on the West Coast. Greg’s friend Sam sweetly offered to release the album on his tape label, Curly Cassettes and I excitedly accepted! We played shows here and there but kept a low profile haha! I’ve always felt like the songs come at their own pace and grow out of my life experiences. I know they will show up when I need them and I don’t force it. Give ‘em room to grow!
Jumping ahead to the group’s third record entitled “Residual Daydreams” that was released back in 2019 on ROR. A splendid release and a perfect background of sound for the last summer prior to Covid. Tell me about writing this record. How did you meet the folks over at ROR and what was your experience of bringing this record to life that summer?
Well, a lot of these songs were around for a good long while before being recorded! We played a show with a band called Shaggy Sample and I bonded with one of their members, Daisy Jaberi over a mutual infatuation with Brian Wilson! I asked Daisy to produce “Residual Daydreams” and we started recording in Jason’s garage in SF. Again, lots and lots of tinkering and years of overdubbing later we were done! Jason is really the only one of us who does music full-time, so there are a lot of scheduling puzzles to be solved as the rest of us have jobs and families and stuff. I think I first met David from Royal Oakie in Santa Cruz when we played at The Crepe Place? He set us up a show opening for GospelBeach which is Brent from Beachwood Sparks’ current band and then he most generously offered to not only release the album I was working on currently, but re-release “Good Medicine”... how could I say no?
What do you guys have in store for the year 2024? Is there anything else you would like to further share with the readers?
In November of 2023 we went and recorded at Sun Machine Recording in Marin County and got the bones of 4 songs completed! We got off to a bit of a rocky start due to a tainted cantaloupe related illness, but recovered and had a beautiful time at Sun Machine! It felt so good to be in a studio located in the homelands of my Coast Miwok ancestors and I felt them all around me, keeping watch as we created. Right now, I’m trying to find time to finish up the rest of the songs in a little shed in my backyard and plan to make a return trip down to Marin County to finish everything up. I’m hoping to break my streak of taking multiple years to make albums! Lots of pedal steel on this new one, sorta branching off from where we left listeners with the title track from “Residual Daydreams”. Of course, this new one will be coming out on Royal Oakie, so stay tuned! I’m also slowly coming around to the idea of playing shows again, I’ve always kinda liked maintaining the mysterious air of not playing out that much and hoping its a special treat when we do so that people will come out! Honored to do my first somewhat in depth interview, looking forward to seeing that go to “print” in 2024! Music is such a healing force for me, I’ll never stop doing it. Happy to be here for the songs when they come into the world. Lotsa love to everyone who has listened!
