In the early 90s after a few albums and a lot of hard work Matthew Sweet broke into the mainstream with the hit song and record, Girlfriend. Since then hes been able to flit from project to project gaining talented new friends and collaborators. Now hes teamed up with The Bangles vocalist Susanna Hoffs for the album Under the Covers, Vol. 1. The new release has Sweet and Hoffs covering their favorite 60s pop hits.
Buy Under the Covers, Vol. 1
Daniel Robert Epstein: Is Under the Cover an official Ming Tea release?
Matthew Sweet: No, not at all. Although its funny, weve done a lot of interviews today and it comes up a lot. I do think there is a sort of a spiritual connection because in both Sue and my minds we were drawing from this era of music in the idea of the Ming Tea thing. Mike [Myers] for that matter probably knows some of that stuff. I think there is a connection but this really happened out of the realm of Ming Tea.
DRE: Did you guys do anything as Ming Tea besides the Austin Powers movies?
MS: When we created Ming Tea we actually had eight songs. We did a gig at The Viper Room before the first movie was made with Mike was dressed as Austin. It was like he was still working out the character. That was about as real as it ever got. In the second movie I think they might have used some of my scene break stuff, but there wasnt any Ming Tea in it. Then for the third movie they brought back Ming Tea. But in that case we didnt do any actual hanging out. Mike and I wrote the song and then we did it in the studio and then sang it for the movie. I guess what Im saying is that the greatest era of Ming Tea was long ago.
DRE: [laughs] Did you and Susanna do stuff before that?
MS: We met long before that. I think around the time I was making Girlfriend we met because Fred Maher was producing something of hers for a soundtrack or something like that. I remember talking to her on the phone during that time. We may have talked about writing something and then I ran into her again once I lived in LA. By the mid-90s we were both living out here. At the time I met Mike Myers, Sue brought him to a show of mine at The Cave, this acoustic club out here. Sue was sitting in with me singing background vocals. Then I wrote some songs with her and Charlotte Caffey of the Go-Gos.
DRE: Thats cool.
MS: I never had written songs with anybody so I was so nervous about it. They got me to go out to lunch with them and then they confronted me, like Write songs with us [laughs]. That opened me up to writing more with other people, which I think has been a good experience for me. Not so much because I used that stuff for my own records or anything but it opened me up musically a little bit.
DRE: Did you and Susannah connect immediately over this style of music?
MS: Yeah I think so. Sue was talking to our label Shout Factory about doing some solo thing and she mentioned me producing her. Id said many times that I wanted to because I liked her voice. They suggested we try to do something collaborative that and then the idea of doing a cover record came up and we just ran with that because it was something that was easy for us to do. We could just do it at my house and it was really fun because we have such similar taste in music. The most surprising thing is that all we both like so many of the same songs from that era.
DRE: Why did this album have to be produced in your house?
MS: That just how theyre doing it now. Theres been this big shift and its been terrible for big studios. My very favorite studio in LA, which most recently was called Cello used to be the western side of United Western Studios. Thats where they made all these classic recordings like Beach Boys and Sinatra records. One of my favorite, if not my favorite engineer in the whole world, Jim Scott, worked only in those rooms and that studio is gone. They couldnt keep it alive because of the advent of home recordings. The quality of which has gone up to where you can do a really good recording at home. For us it meant not having the pressure of a big budget.
DRE: I thought the quality was as good as any studio album Ive heard.
MS: Thats great to hear. Ive made a lot of demos over the years and really starting with the new millennium, Ive made a couple records in my house. This is the first record Ive done where it was like something other than me. It was a little bit scary in terms of that but I just tried to make it sound as cool as possible.
DRE: What computer system do you use for it?
MS: I use a Macintosh based Pro-Tools system. Its not a super complex one. In fact, the thing that I do thats sort of unorthodox is that I still mix completely within the computer so I dont go back out of digital once Im in there. Maybe if I make a ton of money Ill get some more outboard gear.
DRE: I read that you and Sue each had a list of songs you wanted to do and both of you had the same song at the top. Thats bizarre.
MS: That was really bizarre. It was He May Call You Up by the Left Bank. Its only a really well known song to people who already know the Left Bank really well. It was an uncanny thing that set us off on a really good tone.
DRE: How did you pick the rest of the songs?
MS: We sat down with CDs, lists and other lists our friends had given us. We picked things sort of randomly and after a while we would just not know what we were doing next and I would go, What if we did a track for this song? and Sue would be like, Great. It was pretty easy going.
DRE: Whats interesting about that is that you brought in a bunch of old school guys to work on with you. What did they say when they saw this setup you have?
MS: I think everybodys pretty used to how it is now. Everybodys had these setups at home for several years but its just that now people are making the real record off them. From what I hear, a lot of the producers now and especially guys who mix records, have to have their own studio because record companies wont pay both for an expensive studio and an expensive mixing guy. It is changing a little bit, in terms of whats expected. For Shout Factory Sue and I couldnt have really afforded to do it in an expensive studio because we were doing it for a low amount of money.
DRE: Howd you decide who was going to come in and help you guys out with this?
MS: A lot of its my guys and that was decided from the beginning. I wanted to get my drummer Ric Menck and Greg Liesz to play on it. In fact, Ivan Julian and Richard Lloyd ended up on it because they were out recording a bunch of stuff for my next album and I just had them play on some of the stuff for this one. Susannah knows thats those guys too so it wasnt like I jammed all my guys on her or anything.
DRE: [laughs] What did having Van Dyke there do for you?
MS: Van Dyke is an amazing guy. I did a lot of work with him on a record of mine called Living Things that came out a couple years ago. On this record he just did a couple of songs so he came over on one day and recorded. Ive known him a long time and he isnt just a musical genius. Hes beyond that, hes just a genius in general. We didnt want to have it slip by without having him work on the record. Im sure well be using him around more because Im producing a solo album for Sue and Ill get him to do some stuff on that as well.
DRE: Were you a big fan of The Bangles?
MS: I was always a huge fan of Sues voice and I really loved the Bangles as well. Theyre awesome because they actually have a group sound. When the three main members get together they have this classic sound. I first fell in love with Sues voice on a thing called Rainy Day that was a compilation which was a David Roback based thing. It had a couple songs with Sue singing the Bob Dylan song, Ill Keep It with Mine.
DRE: I read that youre afraid of flying.
MS: No, thats not true. Well, I dont love flying or anything.
DRE: I hate flying so much.
MS: I went for about eight years not flying at all. From about 1994 to 2000 or somewhere around there, so its true I had terrible fear of flying. Then I dealt with it and got over it. Ive done a ton of flying since the turn of the century. I went all over the world with the Thorns three years ago. We opened for the Dixie Chicks in Europe and Australia. I went to Japan and Spain and toured on my own last year.
DRE: You opened for the Dixie Chicks?
MS: The Thorns opened for the Dixie Chicks in Europe. The Thorns is me and Pete Droge and Shawn Mullins. Its sort of country rock. We sold almost 200,000 records.
DRE: Wow.
Are you producing a lot now?
MS: Not really. Only by virtue of Sue and I doing this thing together did I end up producing it. Im still focused on doing my own stuff as much as Ive been doing all these side things. I have a new album that Im working on finishing right now. I would produce if it was with the right person and if they didnt care about doing it my way [laughs]. I dont know if I have really enough patience to produce something unless I really am a fan.
DRE: When is your next album coming out?
MS: Im not sure, either later this year or early next year.
Sony got my catalog because BMG and Sony merged. So theyre releasing a reissue of it, I think, this summer. Im going to try to get it out sort of in the wake of that. We may still be touring some of Sues stuff in the fall so I dont know if it makes sense for me to put it out until next year.
DRE: How long have you been working on the new album?
MS: I did most of the groundwork for it last year while we were working on this record. Now Im more into doing more singing and finishing that stuff. A lot of its done, but just not totally done. I have to get a sense of what it is and I have the luxury, because Im at home. The funny thing is, the record itself is extremely raw, crazy and off the cuff.
DRE: I know theres a second disc being included with the reissue of Girlfriend. Did you have anything to do with that?
MS: Thats not new. It is called Good Friend and it is a disc that existed back then. During the prime of Girlfriend, one of the grassroots promotions that was really helpful was store play. There were still a lot more Mom and Pop record stores back then and even record chains had a little more about of that mentality than they have now. I was out touring at the time and the label wanted to put together some that would be a thank you to the in-store play people. Thats what that CD was.
Also were hoping to do a five point one surround sound mix with for Girlfriend but that just hasnt worked out yet.
DRE: I know you are an anime fan from the style that was used in the Girlfriend video. Theres been a huge rise in anime in the past few years.
MS: I know. Its so much that I cant even really count myself as being in any way current about it. My real craze was before it was ever in the mainstream culture here. I still love the style and all of that but I dont keep up with it in the way I used to. We still see Miyazaki movies though.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Buy Under the Covers, Vol. 1
Daniel Robert Epstein: Is Under the Cover an official Ming Tea release?
Matthew Sweet: No, not at all. Although its funny, weve done a lot of interviews today and it comes up a lot. I do think there is a sort of a spiritual connection because in both Sue and my minds we were drawing from this era of music in the idea of the Ming Tea thing. Mike [Myers] for that matter probably knows some of that stuff. I think there is a connection but this really happened out of the realm of Ming Tea.
DRE: Did you guys do anything as Ming Tea besides the Austin Powers movies?
MS: When we created Ming Tea we actually had eight songs. We did a gig at The Viper Room before the first movie was made with Mike was dressed as Austin. It was like he was still working out the character. That was about as real as it ever got. In the second movie I think they might have used some of my scene break stuff, but there wasnt any Ming Tea in it. Then for the third movie they brought back Ming Tea. But in that case we didnt do any actual hanging out. Mike and I wrote the song and then we did it in the studio and then sang it for the movie. I guess what Im saying is that the greatest era of Ming Tea was long ago.
DRE: [laughs] Did you and Susanna do stuff before that?
MS: We met long before that. I think around the time I was making Girlfriend we met because Fred Maher was producing something of hers for a soundtrack or something like that. I remember talking to her on the phone during that time. We may have talked about writing something and then I ran into her again once I lived in LA. By the mid-90s we were both living out here. At the time I met Mike Myers, Sue brought him to a show of mine at The Cave, this acoustic club out here. Sue was sitting in with me singing background vocals. Then I wrote some songs with her and Charlotte Caffey of the Go-Gos.
DRE: Thats cool.
MS: I never had written songs with anybody so I was so nervous about it. They got me to go out to lunch with them and then they confronted me, like Write songs with us [laughs]. That opened me up to writing more with other people, which I think has been a good experience for me. Not so much because I used that stuff for my own records or anything but it opened me up musically a little bit.
DRE: Did you and Susannah connect immediately over this style of music?
MS: Yeah I think so. Sue was talking to our label Shout Factory about doing some solo thing and she mentioned me producing her. Id said many times that I wanted to because I liked her voice. They suggested we try to do something collaborative that and then the idea of doing a cover record came up and we just ran with that because it was something that was easy for us to do. We could just do it at my house and it was really fun because we have such similar taste in music. The most surprising thing is that all we both like so many of the same songs from that era.
DRE: Why did this album have to be produced in your house?
MS: That just how theyre doing it now. Theres been this big shift and its been terrible for big studios. My very favorite studio in LA, which most recently was called Cello used to be the western side of United Western Studios. Thats where they made all these classic recordings like Beach Boys and Sinatra records. One of my favorite, if not my favorite engineer in the whole world, Jim Scott, worked only in those rooms and that studio is gone. They couldnt keep it alive because of the advent of home recordings. The quality of which has gone up to where you can do a really good recording at home. For us it meant not having the pressure of a big budget.
DRE: I thought the quality was as good as any studio album Ive heard.
MS: Thats great to hear. Ive made a lot of demos over the years and really starting with the new millennium, Ive made a couple records in my house. This is the first record Ive done where it was like something other than me. It was a little bit scary in terms of that but I just tried to make it sound as cool as possible.
DRE: What computer system do you use for it?
MS: I use a Macintosh based Pro-Tools system. Its not a super complex one. In fact, the thing that I do thats sort of unorthodox is that I still mix completely within the computer so I dont go back out of digital once Im in there. Maybe if I make a ton of money Ill get some more outboard gear.
DRE: I read that you and Sue each had a list of songs you wanted to do and both of you had the same song at the top. Thats bizarre.
MS: That was really bizarre. It was He May Call You Up by the Left Bank. Its only a really well known song to people who already know the Left Bank really well. It was an uncanny thing that set us off on a really good tone.
DRE: How did you pick the rest of the songs?
MS: We sat down with CDs, lists and other lists our friends had given us. We picked things sort of randomly and after a while we would just not know what we were doing next and I would go, What if we did a track for this song? and Sue would be like, Great. It was pretty easy going.
DRE: Whats interesting about that is that you brought in a bunch of old school guys to work on with you. What did they say when they saw this setup you have?
MS: I think everybodys pretty used to how it is now. Everybodys had these setups at home for several years but its just that now people are making the real record off them. From what I hear, a lot of the producers now and especially guys who mix records, have to have their own studio because record companies wont pay both for an expensive studio and an expensive mixing guy. It is changing a little bit, in terms of whats expected. For Shout Factory Sue and I couldnt have really afforded to do it in an expensive studio because we were doing it for a low amount of money.
DRE: Howd you decide who was going to come in and help you guys out with this?
MS: A lot of its my guys and that was decided from the beginning. I wanted to get my drummer Ric Menck and Greg Liesz to play on it. In fact, Ivan Julian and Richard Lloyd ended up on it because they were out recording a bunch of stuff for my next album and I just had them play on some of the stuff for this one. Susannah knows thats those guys too so it wasnt like I jammed all my guys on her or anything.
DRE: [laughs] What did having Van Dyke there do for you?
MS: Van Dyke is an amazing guy. I did a lot of work with him on a record of mine called Living Things that came out a couple years ago. On this record he just did a couple of songs so he came over on one day and recorded. Ive known him a long time and he isnt just a musical genius. Hes beyond that, hes just a genius in general. We didnt want to have it slip by without having him work on the record. Im sure well be using him around more because Im producing a solo album for Sue and Ill get him to do some stuff on that as well.
DRE: Were you a big fan of The Bangles?
MS: I was always a huge fan of Sues voice and I really loved the Bangles as well. Theyre awesome because they actually have a group sound. When the three main members get together they have this classic sound. I first fell in love with Sues voice on a thing called Rainy Day that was a compilation which was a David Roback based thing. It had a couple songs with Sue singing the Bob Dylan song, Ill Keep It with Mine.
DRE: I read that youre afraid of flying.
MS: No, thats not true. Well, I dont love flying or anything.
DRE: I hate flying so much.
MS: I went for about eight years not flying at all. From about 1994 to 2000 or somewhere around there, so its true I had terrible fear of flying. Then I dealt with it and got over it. Ive done a ton of flying since the turn of the century. I went all over the world with the Thorns three years ago. We opened for the Dixie Chicks in Europe and Australia. I went to Japan and Spain and toured on my own last year.
DRE: You opened for the Dixie Chicks?
MS: The Thorns opened for the Dixie Chicks in Europe. The Thorns is me and Pete Droge and Shawn Mullins. Its sort of country rock. We sold almost 200,000 records.
DRE: Wow.
Are you producing a lot now?
MS: Not really. Only by virtue of Sue and I doing this thing together did I end up producing it. Im still focused on doing my own stuff as much as Ive been doing all these side things. I have a new album that Im working on finishing right now. I would produce if it was with the right person and if they didnt care about doing it my way [laughs]. I dont know if I have really enough patience to produce something unless I really am a fan.
DRE: When is your next album coming out?
MS: Im not sure, either later this year or early next year.
Sony got my catalog because BMG and Sony merged. So theyre releasing a reissue of it, I think, this summer. Im going to try to get it out sort of in the wake of that. We may still be touring some of Sues stuff in the fall so I dont know if it makes sense for me to put it out until next year.
DRE: How long have you been working on the new album?
MS: I did most of the groundwork for it last year while we were working on this record. Now Im more into doing more singing and finishing that stuff. A lot of its done, but just not totally done. I have to get a sense of what it is and I have the luxury, because Im at home. The funny thing is, the record itself is extremely raw, crazy and off the cuff.
DRE: I know theres a second disc being included with the reissue of Girlfriend. Did you have anything to do with that?
MS: Thats not new. It is called Good Friend and it is a disc that existed back then. During the prime of Girlfriend, one of the grassroots promotions that was really helpful was store play. There were still a lot more Mom and Pop record stores back then and even record chains had a little more about of that mentality than they have now. I was out touring at the time and the label wanted to put together some that would be a thank you to the in-store play people. Thats what that CD was.
Also were hoping to do a five point one surround sound mix with for Girlfriend but that just hasnt worked out yet.
DRE: I know you are an anime fan from the style that was used in the Girlfriend video. Theres been a huge rise in anime in the past few years.
MS: I know. Its so much that I cant even really count myself as being in any way current about it. My real craze was before it was ever in the mainstream culture here. I still love the style and all of that but I dont keep up with it in the way I used to. We still see Miyazaki movies though.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 7 of 7 COMMENTS
Kris7 said:
I recently got his album Girlfriend and I imagine I'll be getting the rest of his discography pretty soon. Nobody writes songs like his anymore.
Girlfriend is probably my favorite album ever. I think every song on it was my favorite song at one point or another, and I still count 3 or 4 tracks from it among my all-time faves. His next several albums had some really good stuff on them too.
I'll need to pick up his new stuff. I haven't really checked out any of his work in a few years.