Mat Kearney

Golf was big in my family.

— Mat Kearney

I love Michigan.

— Mat Kearney

Paul Simon is the king!

— Mat Kearney

Songs really tend to connect.

— Mat Kearney

I'm a '90s music kid.

— Mat Kearney

New Yorkers are historically tough crowds.

— Mat Kearney

I think you can hear all my hip hop influences in 'Just Kids.'

— Mat Kearney

I was an English major, and I always wrote poems.

— Mat Kearney

My goal is to try to avoid a genre.

— Mat Kearney

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

— Mat Kearney

Trying to find a heart that's not walking away.

— Mat Kearney

To be young and dumb and in love with you.

— Mat Kearney

My songs have a layer of melancholy.

— Mat Kearney

We're just fumbling through the grey, Trying find a heart that's not walking away.

— Mat Kearney

I do know great books help shape who I am and how I look at life.

— Mat Kearney

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

— Mat Kearney

The songs that you start to write that you are a little scared of can be the ones that you have to…

— Mat Kearney

I don't think, to be a traveler, you have to reject setting roots up.

— Mat Kearney

Turn the lights down low. Walk these halls alone. We can feel so far from so close.

— Mat Kearney

The stories that are too personally vulnerable to write are the ones that must be told.

— Mat Kearney

The world is too big to never ask why the answers don't fall straight out of the sky.

— Mat Kearney

I read about two reviews early on when my first record came out, and it just freaked me out, good and bad,…

— Mat Kearney

I never play all new stuff, because you got to "dance with the girl that brought you" what is that saying? You…

— Mat Kearney

When I started forming my own taste, there was a period in high school when I listened to only rap and hip-hop,…

— Mat Kearney

It's silly to throw things out or label things. You know, is U2 a Christian band, or was Johnny Cash a Christian…

— Mat Kearney

I started writing music in a season of my life where people were telling me I wasn't defined by mistakes, and God…

— Mat Kearney

With 'City of Black & White,' I wanted a record that would make you feel good, that would sort of take you…

— Mat Kearney

For my father, he didn't know what 'Grey's Anatomy' was. He didn't know who John Mayer was. But when I showed up…

— Mat Kearney

The criticism people could have of my music maybe is that it's somewhat schizophrenic at times. And if you don't like that,…

— Mat Kearney

I've always sought to get after something that's foundational in people. That comes through my faith, through my belief in life, through…

— Mat Kearney

You go to a Springsteen show, and half of the people are there to party and forget about their cares, and they're…

— Mat Kearney

I think coming from the Northwest is something that's born in your blood. On my mom's side, I'm, like, a sixth-generation Oregonian.…

— Mat Kearney

I've never been one to learn scales and do exercises. Maybe I'm lazy, but I just don't take to that kind of…

— Mat Kearney

I think one of the things that I carry, and just my goals in life, is just encourage people and make them…

— Mat Kearney

The first year I moved to Nashville, I started playing these songwriter nights with people like Nickel Creek, Duncan Sheik, and even…

— Mat Kearney

Well, I never made a record to be in the Christian market. So when I made my record it was to exist…

— Mat Kearney

Just because you've written a song doesn't mean that you have pulled through. There are definitely songs where I embodied someone else's…

— Mat Kearney

Minneapolis has always been a very special place for me.

— Mat Kearney

I never wanted to be on an exclusively Christian label.

— Mat Kearney

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

— Mat Kearney