If a person hangs around one scene for long enough, it’s bound to happen.
It’s hard to ignore. This one guy…he just seems to be everywhere!
Maybe he’s a nameless face at first, but after several years of sightings, it has become apparent that he’s important. He’s some kind of behind-the-scenes glue guy. He seems to be onstage every week in some prominent venue, playing a different instrument, in an altogether different band. His name keeps popping up on social posts, in the local ‘zines and college radio broadcasts. He’s seen in group shots with all the local household names. He’s always on a barstool or patio table on the Square.
This particular guy-like-that might be familiar to some from his days drumming for Llama Train. Some may know him from Tenderhooks. Others may have seen him sitting in on drums for R.B. Morris and Tim Lee 3. His face was featured more prominently in the promotional materials for his first solo album, under the pseudonym Paper Wires, and then he was seen up front in forays as a band leader supporting that material on stage as Chambers. He also daylights at top local design firm Designsensory.
But now, audiences around town are beginning to get to know this prolific sonic auteur by his second full-length solo release, “Take Me Home,” this time finally revealing himself to the general public playing under his real, actual name: Matt Honkonen.
“I would love to take this as far as it would take me,” Honkonen says, refreshingly open about his ambitions, but also tempering that with his mantra in recent years, “I don’t care what happens…I am fulfilled.”
Like many other serious musicians, Honkonen says he’d jump at the chance to make a living crafting his art, but that through touring forays in the past he’s “learned how difficult being self-sustained is… even what people call success is a hard way to make money, and have a family and a life.”
Honkonen has been that rare musician who has been able to be incredibly prolific in his output while maintaining not just a job, but a professional career, and a family- Honkonen is happily married and spends a lot of time these days hanging out with his wife Christina and 2-year-old son Gray.
He prefers to focus on the intrinsic reasons for why he creates, believing that ultimately creates not only a better experience, but also a better product. “It’s a timeless, storytelling, emotionally transcendent thing that we’re lucky to do,” he says, paraphrasing what he says RB Morris once told him: “If you don’t want to be doing it anyways, then you don’t have any right to bitch.”
To Honkonen, if music’s done for the wrong reasons, satisfaction wouldn’t even really be attained with commercial success, while if it’s done for the love of the art, then success would just be icing on the cake.
Over the years, Honkonen has slowly built skills on multiple instruments and accrued equipment, software and experience working in the studio. He put that to use in 2013, playing most of the drums, bass and guitar for his Paper Wires album, which he recorded with John T. Baker (Heiskell, Westside Daredevils) in his Baker’s Acres studio in South Knoxville. Baker now has a new and improved studio up the hill called The Arbor.
Honkonen took the DIY ethos a step further on his new full-length LP Take Me Home, playing… well, everything. The man played every instrument heard on the album (save for one track where he was accompanied by Ryan Boos of Nomadic Firs). He mixed it and mastered it as well in his new Tiny Treehouse studio, situated in an apartment above his detached garage in Sequoyah Hills. The album is already available on Spotify and iTunes, and he played the official album release show at Preservation Pub on February 20.
It’s somewhat en vogue for indie musicians to say they write nonsense lyrics that sound good or create abstract lyrical art. Meaning is not necessarily there, or if it is, it’s not very apparent, masked in obscurity or vague open-ended phrases meant for multiple interpretations. Vocal delivery in the indie world can sometimes be the same, striving to sound detached, aloof, or just absent-mindedly dreamy.
Honkonen definitely has some abstract poetry in his lyrics but they also often convey concrete narrative meaning- richly describing a concrete mood or emotion, romance, different ideals (see “Sunday Leaves”/”Lovers” from Take Me Home). His vocal delivery is more emotive, open, honest, and vulnerable. He has a strong range from deep, almost ‘90s alt-rock crooning to whispered high falsetto over a chord change (see “Colors” from the Paper Wires album, for example).
Honkonen is a writing/listening drummer: his drum and bass parts are solid but intentionally nondescript in that they don’t serve themselves, they serve the song: they are exactly what is appropriate for that point in the song. His guitar style is crisp and precise, but with an off-kilter edge in the riffs and progressions that take unexpected turns (see the hypnotic looping riff in “Sea of Clouds” on Take Me Home).
Quick word association of immediate adjectives that explode in the mind while driving down the road with Take Me Home on blast: Smoky. Meditative. Romantic. Ethereal. Contemplative. Existential. Spiritual. Relatable. Personal. Sexual. No, just kidding. Very sexual.
For the February 20 release show and a few shows since, Honkonen has surrounded himself with a crack squad of ace area musicians to breath life into his sonic textures.
“I have adopted this mentality of playing with lots of other people,” he says. “I like having an open door policy.”
Bob Deck, on lead guitar, eschews bluesy, notey runs for more chaotically hypnotic, angular, effects-laden Johnny Greenwood-style work. Deck has made the rounds, playing with Godspeed, Weird Miracle, RB Morris, Ambient Music and Jennifer Nicely.
On bass is Preston Davis, a symphony director at a local high school and low-end guy for David Clifton.
Rounding out the lineup is Cody Noll, who is also co-writing an EP with Honkonen and in another project called Nokatula with Honkonen and Joey English. Other sometime live collaborators include John Buchanan on drums, out on paternity leave, and Honkonen’s former producer John T. Baker, who rips some lead from time to time.
“It’s really humbling to have a member of your band who is infinitely better than you,” Honkonen says of his collaborators. “Someone who really raises the bar and pushes you to play better.”
So in recap: Matt Honkonen is a one-man creative wrecking crew. He drums. He guitars. He basses. He sings. He mixes. He masters. He slices. He dices. Is there anything under the musical sun that Matt Honkonen cannot do?
“My least favorite thing about being in a band is having to name it.”
Ironic for a man who has played under so many banners, but that quote may reflect the relief of finally openly playing under his name; no group identities, just Honkonen and his songs.
Readers can catch Honkonen playing tunes from Take Me Home at Rhythm and Blooms on Friday, April 8 and may be excited to hear that a Llama Train reunion EP or LP and accompanying shows are in the works for later in the year.
Honkonen is also accepting new acts to produce in his Tiny Treehouse studio. He can be reached at www.matthonkonen.org.
