Matisyahu: Misfit With Mass Appeal

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

By Sam Petri

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-Matisyahu is the Hebrew name for Hasidic Jewish reggae artist Matthew Miller. He began turning heads in 2005 with his second record, “Live at Stubb’s,” which eventually was ranked second on the Billboard reggae music charts. In March 2006, he released “Youth,” which spent two weeks at the #4 spot on the Billboard Top 200 albums in the U.S. and in late 2006 was ranked the #3 reggae album in the U.S. – right behind “Live at Stubb’s.” After that, Matisyahu was named Top Reggae Artist of 2006 by Billboard.

This Sunday, he performs outside at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort’s Mountain Festival. Matisyahu shares the long Labor Day weekend bill with such disparate acts as Soulive, Los Lonely Boys and local bands Boondocks and Chanman Roots Band. (See page 32 for additional details about the festival, as well as ticket info.)

Matisyahu – his religion, his race, his music, his popularity – caused a media frenzy last year. Initially, the sight of a Hasidic reggae artist is eye catching. It’s different, mysterious. Many critics have questioned whether his shtick is anything more than a gimmick.

But Judaism and reggae have been intertwined for some time. The first international reggae hit was by Desmond Dekker in 1969. Although not a Jew, he scores with a song titled “The Israelites,” which paralleled the workingman’s life with that of the ancient Hebrew slaves. And Matisyahu is far from the only Jewish reggae performer out there: The equally popular Jamaican reggae artist Sean Paul is a Sephardic Jew.

When I caught up with Matisyahu last week, he was in the middle of the desert in Utah, on tour with the band 311. Although he’s toured extensively through out the United States, he has never been to Wyoming, and is excited to ride a Harley through Grand Teton National Park with his dad while here.

Matisyahu has always been Jewish, has always loved reggae, has always ridden Harleys and also likes to snowboard. Despite his appearance, his story is similar to many restless youths who grew up on the East Coast in the ’90s, which is the subject of many of the songs on “Youth.”

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Planet Jackson Hole: Have you put out any other records since “Youth”?

Matisyahu: We put out a live DVD with a CD attached to it that had a track called “No Place to Be,” and that was kind of like a holiday thing that we put out, but, um, “Youth” was the last – that was our big record that we put out.

PJH: You grew up in White Plains, NY?

M: Yeah that’s right.

PJH: And you left home when you were 17?

M: Yeah that’s right.

PJH: And you went to Burlington, Vt. What attracted you to Burlington?

M: I had been there before when I was maybe 14 years old or so. I was attracted to the hippie scene there. And then, when I was 17, I went to the first day of high school, and I just couldn’t stand another year. I met a guy who lived in Burlington and he invited us to come to his place. So I left with a friend who had a VW bus and who wanted to get out of White Plains also. So the two of us took off with, I don’t know, maybe I had like 20 bucks or something like that.

When we took off to go up there my intention was to go on Phish tour when the tour started – just to spend the month or so up there before the tour started. And this kid who had invited us to come up, it turned out, he didn’t actually have a house, he just kind of bummed a room with some college kids that had a house up there.

When we got up there I basically was sleeping in the bus for a month, in their parking lot, which they let me do because I had met a glass blower who blew glass pipes in the area and needed a place to do it and they had a free garage. So I made the connection and they appreciated that so they let us park our bus in the driveway.

PJH: Ha ha. That’s classic.

M: Yeah, the classic story of the American hippie of the ’90s.

PJH: What year was that?

M: That was probably 1996.

PJH: How long were you on Phish tour?

M: Not long. I was probably on it for maybe three weeks or a month.

PJH: What attracted you to Phish tour? I mean, I know there was a hippie scene and in the ’90s that was a thing for kids to do. But did you get anything out of it?

M: It was a mixture. I mean, I definitely got something out of it, both good and bad. It’s etched into my memory, that experience of those few months that I was traveling. The most memorable moments of my life probably were during those months.

When I was 16, I went to Israel and opened up to spirituality. Then I came home and went to high school and felt really trapped – didn’t feel the vibe anymore. Then I met a friend from Israel in Worcester, Mass., at a Phish concert – this was a year before I left home. I took LSD for the first time and went to that concert.

I think while I was there, besides the experience I had, I noticed that there were all these kids there that were my age that were just making up their own rules and living life as they wanted. I had this ecstatic experience. So it always stayed in the back of my mind for the next year that if things got bad enough, that’s what I was going to do. And that’s what happened.

When I was on Phish tour, I realized you can never have that first experience again. It’s hard to redo, especially when you’re trying to do it every night at a concert. Eventually it takes its toll and leaves you empty.

PJH: What did you do after Phish tour?

M: I tried to go back to high school but I had a hard time fitting back in. Then I went out to Bend [Oregon] on a wilderness rehab type of thing to try to figure out how to get my life back together. That actually wasn’t in Bend – it was in eastern Oregon.

After that I found out about a program in Bend called North Star, because I didn’t want to go back to New York. I was in the program for one year, but I stayed in Bend and worked at Mount Bachelor and got into snowboarding. I put a band together and started performing and playing at open mics and playing around the Northwest. We’d play shows between Humbolt and Bozeman. Seattle and Portland. We called ourselves Soul For I.

PJH: With the number 4?

M: No, with just for, but it would have been cooler with the number 4.

PJH: What was your skill at that point?

M: I never played an instrument. I always played the front man. So I was singing, rapping, freestyling and beatboxing a little bit.

After two years out there I came back to New York, and I went to Eugene Lange College, a liberal arts college at the New School. That’s where I went and that’s where I met the guitar player I play with now – he was at the jazz school there. So I was in school there for about three years, and the last year I was there I started becoming religious. I started going through this transition.

And then I graduated and moved to a religious neighborhood in Brooklyn called Crown Heights. And I went to Yeshiva, a religious school there. I was there for about two years. After about a year of being there I bumped into Aaron Dugan, my guitarist. At the time, I had lost track of all my old friends and my life in a lot of ways before that. At the same time I was getting offers from rabbis in the community to perform some music. I asked Aaron to do it with me, and he helped me form a band and we started playing shows. 

PJH: What was the style? Similar to what you play today?

M: It was pretty much the same stuff. I had written three or four songs, that was it, and we would just ramp on those three or four songs for a half hour, 45 minutes, whatever it was. Then we got into a studio with the bass player, Josh Werner, and started writing songs in the studio. That must have been summer of 2003 that we started writing that record “Shake Off the Dust.”

That was my first record that I put out. And then “Live at Stubb’s” was basically those songs done live, which gave them a much different feel than the way they were actually written, because live we started playing everything much faster with more of a Hip Hop and rock kind of feel to it – with a reggae backbone. But the first record was more of a purist sound, roots reggae – our sound developed from that into a more crossover sound.

PJH: You put out “Shake Off the Dust” independently?

M: Yeah, It came out on a label called JDubb Records, which was a couple of Jewish guys that weren’t really religious but they got some funding to start a nonprofit label to help encourage Jewish music. They were my management and record company for those first couple of years. They really helped me get things going.

PJH: Cool. And “Live at Stubb’s,” what record label was that put out on?

M: Well, it was Epic. It got picked up by this guy Michael Caplin. He worked for Sony, and he started this label with this guy Larry Miller called Or Records, and they were the record company that signed Los Lonely Boys. And they had this deal with Epic, that Epic could upstream whatever they wanted from them. And after we sold around 50,000 records or so of “Live at Stubb’s” over the course of a few months, Epic upstreamed us right away.

PJH: During the “Shake Off the Dust” period I imagine you weren’t getting paid that much to perform. What were you doing when music wasn’t paying the bills?

M: For example, when I lived in Oregon, I slept in a garage and ate at my friend’s house all the time. When I was religious and I was recording, I didn’t have any expenses, because at Yeshiva, if you didn’t have any money you didn’t have to pay, it was that kind of place. Anyone could come and learn and be a part of it whether or not they had money. So I wasn’t paying for anything.

I was starting to record a record and I was making a few hundred bucks here and there for a gig. By the time I got married, the touring was enough to support me and my wife in a small apartment in Brooklyn.

PJH: Was there a moment when you knew this was it, that you had become successful?

M: The first gig I played after I became religious was in Union Square Park in
Manhattan. It’s right in the middle of everything. It was a menorah lighting, like a Hanukah menorah lighting. They had a big menorah and were lighting the menorah, and then we had a PA system set up and it was me, a guitar player and a drummer and we started and I closed my eyes and I just got really into it and opened my eyes and the next thing I knew there were reporters and TV cameras and there was what seemed like thousands of people.

It probably wasn’t thousands, but maybe it was a thousand people, or hundreds of people just huddled around. And from that point on I felt like this thing was not really in my control, that this seems to be what’s supposed to happen now.

So when we started playing shows – unlike when I was 18 and doing it in Oregon and I’d be out there with posters, flyering everything up, working my hardest to get 20 people in the club – when this happened all of a sudden we’d play a show at the Mercury Lounge and there’d be a line around the corner. It just felt to me like, “OK, now this is meant to happen.” It never really caught me by surprise like, “Oh, wow, I might be able to make a living out of this.” Once it started it was like, “OK, this is what’s going to happen now.”

PJH: How are you received by reggae artists now? Have you played with anyone that you previously looked up to?

M: We’ve recorded a few songs with Sly and Robbie, and right now Scientist is mixing our shows – he’s our sound engineer. I got to meet Sizzla and opened for him once. I was one of the three opening acts for this huge reggae festival in Randall’s Island in the Bronx. That was with Capleton and Luciano and myself as the headliner. That was pretty far out. I’ve been on tour with Luciano. I’ve hung out with the Marleys, Damian. Every reggae artist has been really cool.

PJH: What albums have influenced your music?

M: I guess the first album that turned me on to Hip Hop music was Nas, “It Was Written.” And another Hip Hop album that blew me away was Outkast’s “Aquemini.” And then I guess one of the reggae records that influenced me was “Black Woman and Child” by Sizzla.

PJH: Don’t you perform with a Muslim drummer sometimes?

M: My drummer’s not Muslim, but I have performed with a Muslim beatboxer. His name’s Kenny Mohammed.

PJH: Can you comment on the conflict between Israel and Palestine?  Is there any resolution to that?

M: It’s hard, you know, it’s a really difficult situation. I don’t really know what the answer is for that one. Somehow the Jewish people in Israel have to be strong, in terms of not letting terrorisst walk all over them, and at the same time have to be open to communication and to figuring out how we can get along, it’s a really hard balance, especially with our history.

I think throughout time Jewish people have always run away whenever there was terror. Whenever there was another group of people that was trying to wipe them out, the Jews have always just picked up and left, for thousands of years, since the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. With that being said, I think the whole state of Israel after the Holocaust was like, well, we have to have a strong army, we have to defend ourselves, especially the fact that they’re a country the size of Rhode Island in the midst of all these Arab nations and countries. So they have to be strong in defending themselves, but it’s a tricky situation.

The most I can do is the music. Music is one of the tools for communication that is stronger than, I think, anything else in the world – any conversation or anything like that.

Photo by Andrew Wyatt
Matisyahu performs at Bonnaroo 2006.

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