If Matt Andersen didn’t have a strong work ethic in his teens, his blue-collar parents made sure he developed one before he reached his 20s.
The shaggy-haired New Brunswickian, known for performing upwards of 200 shows a year, is the son of two self-employed easterners: One a bed-and-breakfast operator, the other a lifelong logger. Hard work is in Andersen’s blood and pulsing rapidly through his veins.
“I remember a time when I didn’t have a job and my mom still got me up at eight o’clock in the morning ‘cause she wasn’t going to let me just sit around and do nothing all day,” he said with a laugh. “We were raised to work.”
Andersen took that no-days-off attitude with him into music, taking after his musically inclined grandfather – perhaps his biggest influence on a six-string.
“He was always the last guy to leave the jams,” said Andersen. “He always just played for fun, he never took a dime for it, and his philosophy was, ‘There should always be somebody playing if somebody wants to hear music.’”
A self-proclaimed musical sponge, Andersen took his grandfather’s traditional Scottish and English fiddle music and paired it his acoustic inspirations – such as unplugged Eric Clapton tunes and the southern swamp sound of Creedence Clearwater Revival – to develop his own narrative-driven folksy style. Much of his catalog is written about personal experiences growing up in the province, filled with down-to-earth storytelling that shines through with ease.
“There’s something I can tie myself to in all the songs I write,” he said. “There kind of has to be something you can connect with, otherwise you’re kind of faking it and I think it would get pretty boring after a while.”
He started hitting the stage at pubs throughout his hometown of Perth-Andover – population 1,778 – performing nightly through whatever free time he might have had after toiling at his day job.
“I was working seven days a week and playing four nights a week – I had to quit one of them, and it ended up being the day job,” he said.
Things obviously panned out for Andersen, as he’s one of the top-billed musicians at the Burnaby Blues & Roots Festival on Aug. 9, touring on his eighth studio album, Weightless, a live-off-the-floor record featuring a dozen tracks of soulful Canadian blues-rock.
“This time we tried recording live to tape, so that was a new experience – we really had to sharpen up our skills because you couldn’t rely on the computer to fix things up after,” he said. “We mostly just got in the studio, worked on the tunes, played them a few times through then hit the record button.”
In Burnaby, Andersen will be performing a number of songs from that album with the help of Halifax funk-soul nontet The Mellotones – though rest assured, his folksy style will be intact when he takes the main stage at 6:45 p.m.
“They don’t sound like a funk band when they play with me,” he said with a chuckle. “I’ve got a couple of covers that I wanted to do for a long time but they didn’t really work out solo, so I’m pretty happy to throw this in with the band.
“It’s a high-energy show – it feels pretty good onstage and I think people are going to dig it.”
