TV soundtracks, albums cast spotlight on Mat Kearney
Mat Kearney has been in some of the most popular and talked-about television shows of recent years, including "NCIS," "The Closer," "Without A Trace," "Scrubs," "The Hills" and "Grey's Anatomy." But you're forgiven if you don't recognize his face; it never appeared on screen.
James Minchin
"I see songs as little stories or little movies," says theme composer Mat Kearney. Music supervisors share his view.
More Music News 
Share and Enjoy 
A poster-boy for alternative music marketing, Kearney has become a go-to artist for television soundtracks. From "Breathe In, Breathe Out" on "Grey's Anatomy" to "Nothing To Lose," producers on more than 18 series have found the 30-year-old Nashville transplant's moody but catchy tunes give the perfect dramatic lift to their programs. In all, millions of people have heard his songs that have never caught him live or bought one of his CDs.
"I don't know how that happened," says Kearney of his popularity among music supervisors. "You just write them and hope someone likes them. Next thing you know, Patrick Dempsey shows up at your door with flowers."
Kearney, who performs Wednesday at Minglewood Hall with Nashville soundtrack diva Erin McCarley, is joking about the flowers, but film and television have shown the relative unknown a lot of love since his album Nothing To Lose came out in 2006 on Aware Records, a label noted for finding and nurturing young unsigned talent. Kearney, a literature major at California State University before he dropped out to pursue a career as a singer-songwriter, says he understands why filmmakers respond to his music.
"I don't write picturing doctors making out or anything, but I think my music comes from a visual place," he says from a recent tour stop in Green Bay, Wisc. "I think that's how I first see music. I see songs as little stories or little movies."
His unusually high media profile aside, Kearney is unique as a pop singer-songwriter working and living in that bastion of country music, Nashville. Originally from Oregon, Kearney transplanted down South after his junior of college when he helped a buddy move to Music City.
"We drove across country in his black Chevy S-10 truck, and being from the Northwest we didn't know you needed air conditioning in your car, so we sweated across the country," he recalls. "We were just supposed to go for a month, but we started working on music and I never left. That was 8 years ago."
Despite the city's reputation as a cowboy boots and pedal steel kind of town, Kearney points to the presence of such artists as Jack White, Sheryl Crowe and the Kings of Leon as proof that there is a thriving rock scene in Nashville. In particular, he has fallen in with a group up-and-coming Nashville-area pop performers -- including Griffin House, Matthew Perryman Jones, and Katie Herzig -- who have recorded and toured as the collective Ten Out Of Tenn.
"The people I rub shoulders with have nothing to do with country. They're just singer-songwriter or in bands or folk artists," says Kearney.
The influence of that alternative Nashville scene is subtle on City of Black & White, Kearney's follow-up to Nothing To Lose that was released in May on Aware. Lyrically, the record bounces around from Lake Michigan to Istanbul, reflecting the artist's busy touring schedule of late; Kearney estimates he's played around 500 shows in the past three years.
And sonically, the music seems primed to produce more soundtrack favorites, with a sweeping sound that draws inspiration from '80s-era Springsteen and U2.
But the experiences at the core of the album are pure Nashville, Kearney says.
"My first record was about me jumping in my truck and driving across the country and leaving. City of Black & White is the next journey: Me landing in a community. The pain of love and falling in love and having your heart broken. There're a lot of songs about endurance, about sticking around when relationships get tough."
Mat Kearney with Erin McCarley
Wednesday at Minglewood Hall, 1555 Madison Ave. Doors open at 7 p.m. Tickets: $16; available at the Minglewood box office and online at minglewoodhall.com. For more information, call 866-609-1744.
Comments
Share your thoughts
Comments are the sole responsibility of the person posting them. You agree not to post comments that are off topic, defamatory, obscene, abusive, threatening or an invasion of privacy. Violators may be banned. Click here for our full user agreement.