Passing through the kitchen and up to the second floor of Lincoln Hall, Matthew Perryman Jones opens the door to the simplistic dressing room whose character is supplied by each artist’s belongings. With his guitar set in the back right corner of the room, he takes a seat on the side of the maroon couch closest to it. “I felt like they were really listening,” he said. “And that’s always really good.” Jones was the second artist to open for Sleeping at Last on a cold Thursday night, but his powerful vocals and in-depth lyrics easily captured the spotlight as people gathered around the stage.
The scene was set. A “living room” of around 300 people stood to hear the telling of a heart whose words lingered long past the performance, offering a sense of wisdom and intimacy. Picking the strings of his acoustic guitar, he opened with a soft melody. “I like a show to feel like it’s not a show. Especially the kind of music I do,” said Jones. “There’s certain music it’s a show… but I’m sort of more folk in the sense like I just want to connect with people. I know that sounds cliché, but it’s really the bottom line.”
Mixing in the distinct sounds of folk with the occasional edge of rock, his songs are structured in poetic prose mirroring a stream of consciousness. “Literally, I would just kind of sit there and start singing whatever came to mind … and through that find what the song was saying,” said Jones. From there, he uses the melody to guide him, which he says has “the feeling in it of an emotion, a place, a position you find yourself in.”
Jones’ style and voice have been compared to notable artists such as Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, Bono, and John Lennon. While he’s grateful for the associations and recognizes them as great influences to his music, he’s not sure if it’s a fair comparison. “I am very critical of myself; it’s just kind of like a disease. In some ways I have to use it for my advantage. It gives me something to fight a little bit, and I think in music there needs to be a fight. And that’s where mine is. There you had it, you just saw me fight with myself for 40 minutes,” he jokes. “Inside there are bruises.”
Jones played eight songs, ranging from soft chords sung with a powerful yet delicate voice enticing the audience into a melodic lullaby, to a fast paced beat that had the audience clapping along as he got “things feeling like camp, warm and fuzzy.” He offered clapping lessons for “the tricky part. I’ll do a little coaching, so I’ll just cue you,” he said to the audience.
“It was really heartfelt,” said Jessica Blanc, the stage manager of Lincoln Hall. “He had a unique style and presence on stage.” Jones paired his music with comic relief, remarking on a song about one searching for the heart of a lover that it was his “contribution to the lack of melodramatic love songs.” When encouraging the audience to check out his merchandise, he said it all went to a child in need-his daughter. “So unless you guys don’t like kids, it’s up to you,” he said jokingly. “He intertwined his sarcastic wit with the deep lyrics,” said Blanc.
Jones will be headlining at Schubas in Chicago on May 13th after the release of his EP due out in April. To him, it’s all about the “experience with people. I think that’s the whole point about concerts, it’s not just for the artists to do their thing but it’s mutual. You want everyone to feel involved.”
