Musical Artifacts

Whether Matt Biersmith is producing ‘art for art’s sake’ or for its intrinsic value, the music is for him first. It’s a passion and form of expression where the “gut wrenching” elements of his life have been meticulously sculpted into song.

article by VANELIS RIVERA and photography by MARTIN G MEYERS

Around the age of eight, Matt Biersmith walked out of a piano lesson while his teacher was taking a bathroom break. From the house, off of North 18th in Monroe, he walked to Zeagler Music to play the drums. “I just split,” he casually recalls, “because sitting down was torture.” This unapologetic bravado has spearheaded Biersmith’s music and become a staple of his albums since his first in 1999. He has since become a resident of Austin, Texas, but that Louisiana boy that chose percussion over keys, is still making the calls when it comes to music.
It’s 72 degrees in south Austin. The sun has finally come out, and Matt answers the phone as he feeds his chickens mealworms. He lives in Austin with his wife, Candace Biersmith, also from Monroe, and their 5-year-old Kaspar “Kas” Biersmith. “We are full-blooded, hillbilly, Waffle House people, I guess,” Biersmith wittingly adds. A full-time pharmacist and part-time time musician, Biersmith is a self-proclaimed “jack of all trades.” He dabbles in drums, piano, guitar, mandolin, bass, harmonica and the Appalachian dulcimer. As a kid, he was always “banging pots and pans.” He grew up listening to his father, Dr. Edward Louis Biersmith, play the guitar and his mother, Barbara Crow Biersmith, play the piano. Both of his grandmothers, Bertha Crow and Helen Kramer Biersmith, were also piano enthusiasts. He still has his grandmothers’ pianos, one of which is a rare Mason & Hamlin grand piano that is over a hundred years old. Both instruments will show up in his new album.
Matt was the first Biersmith to be born in Louisiana, when his father moved to work as a chemistry professor at, then, North Louisiana University (NLU). It was at NLU that 12-year-old Matt honed his drumming skills, taking class from a drum instructor. His music style, however, finessed during junior high school. “Badass” drum legends such as Neil Peart of Rush, John Bonham of Led Zepplin, and Stephen Perkins of Jane’s Addiction were initial influences. “I’m all over the place,” says Matt. “There’s not a style of music that I dislike.” Admittedly a “sucker for melody,” he vibes to a plethora of sounds and artists. Notable sways include The King of Latin Music, Ernesto “Tito” Puente, “all the jazz greats,” and heavy metal favorite, Pantera. “Any percussion stuff,” is enough to peak his interest, like his current go-to, American rapper NF. “I swear to you I can write a hip hop song,” Matt chuckles.

Matt’s contribution to music has predominantly been through one word– Hardlucy, the name of his band. Birthed from a need to escape the mundane, Hardlucy was a group effort. When Matt lived in Dallas, Texas, his buddy Albert Elias pitched him the idea of starting a band. Elias, interested in managing, encouraged Matt to invite some of his music consorts to Dallas in order to write and record some music. Matt got one friend to join, and it only took them seven days to record a full album, which was when Matt realized, “Oh shit, we might need a band.” Acknowledging that, “basically we started a business and a band without a band,” they held drum auditions and Matt called Vince Chao, music friend and current collaborator, and “forced him to be a bass player.” Touring began with Elias ingeniously booking gigs in the locations of LSU football away-games, allowing the band a built-in audience while expanding their fan-base. But working as a pharmacist and driving back and forth between gigs took a toll after a while. The band stopped touring around their second album, but that did not mean the music stopped.

Since their “eponymous” first album, Hardlucy Hardlucy debuted in 1999, Matt has released two other albums. It’s One Word (a reaction to venues writing the band’s name as two words) was released in 2003. After an 11-year hiatus, Matt, just wanting to see if he could, released Misanthropy in 2014. The album became a tribute to Albert Elias, who passed in 2012 and whom Matt considers a co-founder of the band. Currently, Matt is working on his fourth album, untitled for now. “It always seems like I’m writing an album,” Matt says. When he has five to six tracks “in the tank” that are pretty good, it’s hard to stop there. He started recording songs for the new venture a year ago and has managed to bang out 14 songs and 3 other tracks that need lyrics. Matt’s new album promises to continue his penchant for musical pastiche and personal, socially-conscious songs. Fans should expect a song about Syrian refugees, a song about a white boy raised as a Comanche and a WWII-inspired song, all of which he has conducted immersion research on, a process he has delved in for other records.

“It’s tough to say what our music is always about. I like that it’s tough to classify us,” says Matt. The singer-songwriter style of Hardlucy can be classified as Americana, an amalgam of varied traditions of acoustic roots music. When he started to become a better guitar player, Matt got into “tearing your heart out with words” country music, what he claims is “real country.” His stylistic and lyrical influences depend on the instrument he’s playing. His guitar heroes, Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt, have molded his folksy poetics. When on the piano, he celebrates his most influential songwriter, Randy Newman, for his brave lyrics. “I could never play piano like him,” Matt says. The melodies that stream from Matt’s varied sound-bank “are all over the place,” but most prominently he is a “sucker for a heartbreaking melody.” He’s a hopeless misanthrope that claims to get the “gene” from his father. The “sturm und drang and peaks and troughs of life” have made their way into his songs particularly his last album, which is akin to an open journal, ridden with dark and introspective topics.
Now that he’s away from the “concrete jungle” that was Dallas, he frequents the hill country, particularly the Pedernales River, “out where Comanche Indians roam,” or fly fishing in the Guadalupe River. As a Louisiana-raised boy, he’s “rural at heart.” Nature’s ability to open his headspace and be “one with the universe” allows him to write better music. Most of Matt’s lyrical content gets written in the car while traveling. “I’ll record my melodies and then play them in the car.” On his drives out in the hill country, he “spits out words” trying to “harmonize out loud.” Some of his traveling for songs is done through books, in order to get into the mind of his content. Going through a place like Mississippi, he claims he can hear the bottle-neck slide on a guitar.

Thanks to his Austin move, he’s made impressive connections like linking up with Grammy-nominated Steve Chadie, chief music engineer to Willie Nelson at Pedernales Studios. “He’s got platinum records. I’m lucky to get time with him,” says Matt. The last two Hardlucy albums were recorded in Steve’s house, because “these days you don’t really need a studio,” recalls Matt. The music recording process for Matt usually begins at his home, where he’ll record “scratch parts” that he’ll take to Steve, where they’ll then “start decorating [the music] like a Christmas tree.”

While Matt has the discography to constantly play live, he’s found it “painful to do and a hassle.” For him, creating music is not a “money-making venture.” Selling his music has never been more important than the creative process. In fact, he’s toyed with not selling his songs, and giving them away instead. “I just want to create art. Whatever happens to it, I’m not really interested. I don’t even have a band,” claims Matt. He envisions himself as more of a painter, putting everything he can into his songs and constructing albums from a concept, so that the piece speaks as a whole. He finds the process of creating his art cathartic. “Art is inherently selfish. I feel guilty about it. I struggle with that. But it’s something that if I don’t do, I’m unhappy with my life,” he says.

Regardless of whether Matt is producing art for art’s sake’ or for its intrinsic value, he affirms that the music is for him first. At some level, the “gut wrenching” elements of his life have been meticulously sculpted into song. He recognizes that with songwriting there is nowhere to hide. But one thing is for sure, Matt’s songs are cultural artifacts that he hopes “will live in history… in eternity.”

Download Hardlucy on iTunes or on Amazon Music. Look for the new album on Hardlucy’s Facebook page.