The Story of How It All Began
Mat Kearney was born and raised in Eugene, Oregon, along with his two brothers. His parents first met at a Hawaiian harbor where his father was a deckhand and his mother was a mermaid on a glass-bottom boat. The couple fell into instantaneous love and were engaged in a record time of two weeks and married just some 6 weeks after that. His mother came from a long line of Oregon pioneers, and soon the couple moved to her home state where they started their family. In high school Mat had a strong love for poetry, soccer, and listening to music. Although his favorite artists were De la Sol and A Tribe Called Quest, for their sense of "urgency" found in their spoken verses, Mat states that as a teen he could frequently be found hanging out at the House of Records where he would sift through older vinyl records by Miles Davis and Billie Holiday.
When it was time for college he decided to leave his home state and venture over to California to attend Chico State University, where he played soccer through his Junior year. Chico State was once named the nation’s number one party school, and when asked in an interview by christianmusictoday.com about his time spent there, Kearney had an interesting response. He admitted that in high school he had, from time to time, been known to sell weed and upon first entering the college scene he fit into the wild scene fairly well, but then eventually hit rock bottom. In his own words, Kearney says, "I guess I lived it up and did what everyone said you should do in college. I discovered the depth of depravity, the bleakness of that lifestyle. It just wasn’t working. I finally started understanding there must be more to life." It was this point that Kearney had a life-changing experience with Christ. "God found me when I was at my lowest point. That was the first time in my life when I really felt like I understood who Jesus was- it was more than knowing about Him, I felt like He met me in that time and place."
Leaving the partying crowd behind, he picked up his guitar and began fusing his love of poetry and music into lyrics of his own songs, denoting his own passions and outlooks on life. Mat says that his parents were always deeply spiritual. He goes on to say that, " My parent’s faith was a big part of their lives and their story. I valued that. My music is committed to the idea of redemption." Kearney also began to journal his thoughts on life and really took notice of the lives occurring around him. He soon realized that writing music and lyrics came pretty natural to him and once he really put an effort into singing he found that he must have been born to do that too. He began hanging out with other local musicians on the college scene (mostly hippees) and eventually started performing live shows at bars and campuses for groups ranging from 5 persons to 200. But it was during the summer of his junior year in college that the gears really kicked into full force for Mat and his new found love of performing. He had met and become friends with record producer Rob Marvin (known for his work with artists such as Toby Mac and Stacy Oricco.) and Rob was very interested in helping Mat form his passion into something great.
That summer, Rob invited Mat to help him move to Nashville and Mat eagerly went along for the adventure. "I helped him pack up his trailer and we put a mattress on the back of his truck. We basically drove cross-country and slept in the back. When we pulled into Nashville we slept in a school parking lot for three days until we finally rented this apartment where the roof was caving in and mice were crawling all over." And this was the spot where Marvin and Kearney recorded the demos of some of the very same songs we love so much today and that landed him a recording deal. Mat loved Nashville and the music scene and it only took a few months before he was hooked on the dream of having a career as a musician. "By the end of the summer, we had three or four songs and I realized this is what I wanted to do. It just clicked. So I called home to my parents in Oregon and said, ‘I’m not coming back’ and I never left Nashville."
Early on, record labels began making offers, but Mat held off in an effort to better form his own craft and style and to write more of his own material. "I knew my songs weren’t quite there yet, so instead, I worked every kind of odd job you can think of. I worked at a coffee shop, was a banquet server, worked as a youth mentor with kids. But I kept working on my music.", he says. During this time, Mat released his debut EP, "West In November" on a shoe-string budget, which he financed himself. His fanbase grew quickly, and they were eagerly anticipating more from this rising local star. Some four years of this, and Mat finally felt like he was there, his music was what he desired it to be. Not long after, InPop Records offered him the kind of deal he was waiting for and Mat signed on. InPop Records helped Mat to release his debut CD, "Bullet". The CD was an instant success, and soon after, he signed on with Aware/Columbia Records who eventually began filtering his signature sound through your home in the form of shows like Grey’s Anatomy. AOL ‘s search engines began to spin and the radio stations started to be swarmed by your requests, and the rest is just history!!!
