On Wednesday, November 24, 2021, Muskrat Flats will make their debut performance at the Ardmore Music Hall where they will open for Ardmore-native and East Coast famous Grateful Dead cover band, Splintered Sunlight. Muskrat Flats is a blossoming facet within the Philadelphia jam scene, pulling influence from bands like the Grateful Dead, The Allman Brothers, the Disco Biscuits and more in order to create an expressive, interpretive listening experience and an energetic live performance. And though this will be their first time playing the Ardmore, brothers Matty and Paddy McCann of Muskrat Flats consider the venue their second home.
The Ardmore Music Hall is located minutes from downtown Philadelphia and is home to a tight-knit community of fans, including the McCann brothers, who simply devour live music and who wholeheartedly seek to support its continuation at their favorite venue. With that being said, I was thrilled to hear about the Muskrats making it to the Ardmore and figured it was well past time to catch up with the band.
AF: Last time we spoke, you guys were working on your new album and you mentioned playing around with new aesthetics. What kind of aesthetics stuck for this new album and how will it differ from Field of Rays?
MM: Well, first of all not all of the songs on the new album were written by me. The first album was mostly written by me and fleshed out with the band and in-studio. And there we’ve had six or seven songs that Paddy wrote that have been fleshed out by the band on the East Coast and that’s been super cool. I was out here writing my own tunes and I’d send them back East and work on them. It just has a whole different feel in that respect. Isaac and JP have been with the band for over 2 years now, so those guys have kind of lived and breathed that first album and I think they’ve kinda taken that in and, at this point, put their own vibe and their own style into it as well so I think they’ve kind of become ‘Muskratized’. And I think the Muskrats have become a little more whole and we’ve just been growing. And since we introduced these new tunes, Paddy’s been playing some of them back East for over a year and people are starting to know some of the tunes like “Whiskey Doo” and “Funk Machine.” The last time I was in town people were hootin’ and hollerin’ for them and that was a really welcome change to the first album because it’s a lot more fun when more people are involved and it’s not just coming from one place. It’s got a denser vibe to it I would say.
PM: I’ve been writing more songs on the guitar recently and writing vocals and lyrics as well. That’s definitely a big complexion change from the first album like Matt was saying. I played a lot of drums for the band and that was kind of a necessity thing for a couple years just to kind of keep us afloat, but now I’m taking over the acoustic guitar and more of those backing rhythms for JP and Matty so that those guys can trade off licks and do all those textural kinds of things. That’s been a rewarding thing for me and it kind of makes sense to me to play guitar, write the songs, and to not be on drums necessarily so that I can be at my full potential.
AF: It’s got to be one of the best feelings in the world to have a crowd of people calling out for the songs you created.
PM: And I think that was another one of the cognizant choices we made for the new album: to write some tight songs with quick themes that people could latch onto. The first album is very conceptual, it’s got a lot of ups and downs. Like every song has a rhapsody kind of thing to it, how it starts with one type of a tone and then it goes up to a peak and comes back down. Some of these newer songs are kind of like those get in and get out, short but sweet sort of songs and hopefully people can latch onto them and enjoy them as much as we’ve been rocking out with them.
AF: We also spoke previously about whether or not the new album would differ lyrically from Field of Rays. Do you think the new album conveys different messages from the first?
MM: Yes, in that there are less messages. I don’t know if Paddy would agree with this, and I can only speak on my writing style, which is not to write about nothing but to kind of write about something that’s pretty deep to me but also hits people on a different level. It can mean something completely different to them. I think a lot of music relies on the musician saying, ‘hey this is the message we’re trying to put across’ but I don’t think we have any messages I think it’s just stories that need to be told. Even going back to what we were talking about before this interview started about Peter Rowan. I think that the first album was very much about what was happening in that moment and over the years leading up to the album’s release. But I think the new album is more kind of going back to a more ancient tradition and is more in line with our musical ancestors and what they were doing. Robert Hunter, Jerry Garcia, and John Barlow were kind of telling this story of yesteryear. The stories that might not make it once our elders are gone. So, I think that some of the themes are about going West and trying to find new opportunities, trying to find that pot of gold and what comes along with that.
PM: I’ve always been fascinated by The Grateful Dead who wrote lyrics that felt like they were from the 1850’s but also simultaneously happening in like the 1950’s, and you know, not being able to tell whether you’re listening to something that sounds like a shootout saloon type of thing or if it’s happening in modern day society. It’s like the past being juxtaposed with the present, like the lawlessness of the past with modern day rules and traditions. So, I think it’s got this sort of ‘anything goes’ thing, where at any point in the song you can have this whole new character or motif going on. That was sort of what I was going for with some of the lyrical writing.
AF: I think I’ve heard the term ‘surreal America’ used to describe Grateful Dead music, meaning that it’s always been this surrealistic take on American culture or Americana which is very much left up to interpretation. And during our very first interview together, you guys talked about these same themes as being a huge part of your musical roots.
PM: Absolutely. The last album was just a lot of experimenting with writing songs in general and writing in the studio and using the studio as an instrument. This new album has more pre-production. There’s a lot of writing and hashing it out with the band members, and so there were more voices involved. I feel like we sort of boiled some things down as far as themes go, instead of it being kind of just ‘out there in the ethos’, it’s like okay, now we have a theme, let’s try to narrow that down but also try to keep it like you said, interpretive.
AF: Do you guys have any ideas about a release date?
MM: That’s a big no. We’re not in a hurry to force it out the door. I think you know the first album we tried to get everything done in a couple months. It was like, okay maybe four months, okay maybe 5 months, okay maybe six months, and then you’re like okay, it’s gonna be done when it’s done and even then, and I think Paddy might agree that even at that point we could have probably sat on it a little bit longer. But maybe it was time for it to be put out there and that’s what happened. But I don’t think we’re in a hurry to do that. We have some fun little things coming out like a “Funk Machine” in-studio that we’re hoping to put out in the next couple of weeks. Last time I was in town we were down at the Boom Room in Philadelphia, at Gary Dann’s (Digable Planets) studio and had a little “Funk Machine” session. So, we had originally recorded tracks from “Funk Machine” out West here in April, and you know I don’t think that the song itself fits in with the overall vibe of where the album is and I think Patrick would agree with me, but I would even say it’s a little bit closer to the first album in some ways and it was kind of like, let’s take another stab at this. We also have Drew Gerace joining us on drums recently and we recorded it at the Boom Room and got some great results we’re really excited to put that out as an in-studio hopefully in the next week or two and yeah that’s one that we’re really excited about right now.
AF: Matty, are you still working on your solo album?
MM: Yeah, but not so much. We definitely have a lot of things in the fire right now. I’m still writing tunes and if that comes around soon that’s great. If not, I have other things to focus on like finishing the new album.
PM: And I feel like we also kind of debated about whether your new batch of songs were going to be solo albums or if they were going to make it onto the band album and I think you were kind of taken aback when I said, ‘oh no those two or three songs definitely have to be on the album, it’s got to happen’ and you’re like ‘I didn’t think that was part of the aesthetic’. So, it was just one of those things where you were leaving all possibilities out there. You have songs that could be just solo songs and you have some that are appropriate for the band. But I’m kind of selfish cause I want those two or three really juicy songs on there.
MM: That’s true, I mean again I’ve had them around for a couple years now and you know maybe to me they’re a little bit more introspective, or sweeter, or songs that maybe I thought would be better for a solo album. But it seems like they’ve been well-received by the guys in the band, so we played a couple of these tunes in June and it was also well-received. So yeah, I think a good point is that you never know where these things are going to end up. Are they going to make the album? Are they going to make the cut? I was also super happy to hear Paddy say, ‘oh, we’ve actually been rehearsing that one, we’re ready to go on that one.’ It was like, ‘okay, cool let’s go with this one!’
PM: I also felt that way about a couple of my songs. I was like, ‘no way, these are not gonna be Muskrat songs. These guys are not going to play these chill, more reserved, laid back, beautiful, happy songs.’ But then the more we played them the rest of the guys were like, ‘oh no, that’s a Muskrat song.’ And I needed to hear that cause like my self-doubt and self-consciousness can creep in and I’m like, ‘oh that’s not a rocker, that’s not a party song.’
AF: It definitely makes sense to me that they would say that considering we talked about how you guys were trying to figure out how you can balance between like the party dance songs and the chill songs. I think they were hearing you on that and they were just like, ‘yeah you know maybe we should have this chill song here, we should break it up.’ I can really tell that you’re listening to each other a lot and that you respect each other as musicians and have a lot to contribute individually and as a group.
PM: Yeah, we’ve had a couple of newer songs that will probably be on the next album where our guitar player JP has just thrown out these rhapsody or opus-like, massive songs that remind you of “You Enjoy Myself”, or just one of those songs that takes you from happy to sad, to an intense chase scene, and all of the above. We’ve got so much more than a one-track mind; we’ve got all the potential for a two-set show that takes you on a journey and it’s not just like a hundred miles an hour the whole time or stuck in first gear.
MM: I think it’s also an interesting thing being in the genre that we’re in, with the first album we were in the kitchen chopping things up, sauteing, throwing stuff in the oven and then we said, ‘here you go.’ Then it was about waiting to see what people thought: they liked this, they didn’t like this. The first two originals we played were “Terrapin Terrace” and “Strawberry Sky” and one of our biggest fans to this day came up to me afterward and was like, “Hey man, that was great, and the originals were really good.” The way he said it, I feel like he was really saying, “The covers were fine, but the originals are where it’s at!” And we don’t wanna be a cover band anyway, but just this idea of an open exchange with the audience has allowed us to put our song-writing cap on in a different way. Now I’m not viewing this just as my own self, but I’m viewing this as all of these people that I know. I think we can extrapolate our fanbase to a larger fanbase, whether it’s the Grateful Dead, or Phish, or the Disco Biscuits, and because there’s so much overlap, we can take in all of this sensory information from the audience and now we’re writing again and not to say we’re writing please anyone but it’s important to say, ‘hey, here’s all these colors that we never used before, let’s tap into this palette.’ I think that’s pretty much where we’re at with this second album. It’s a little simpler, a little more taking in what’s happened the past couple of years in our musical journeys and sending it back out to people. I think people are gonna love it.
AF: Now, I know you guys really don’t want to answer this one, but how does it feel to be playing the Ardmore next week?
PM: Thrilled. Absolutely thrilled. I’ve probably seen within the range of 60 to 70 shows at The Ardmore over the years. I’ve gone to every Electron Christmas show that there was over the six years it was running. Ardmore is my home. It’s home to a lot of our people, you know we know people who are trying to go out to Ardmore 4 nights a week. So, we are very thrilled to be playing at our hometown venue!
MM: I guess I was about 21 when I first went to Brownies 23 East which is the former name of the Ardmore and my buddy invited me out and I was like, “What’s this? The Grateful Dead is playing here tonight?” and he’s like, “No, these guys are called Splintered Sunlight.” And their thing was like, on Thursday nights they would play at Brownies 23 East and I just thought that was so incredible to be a child of someone who loved the Grateful Dead and loved the Allman Brothers and to be walking into Brownies and seeing basically the Grateful Dead playing right in front of me because I never even knew that was a thing. And so, The Ardmore has been a mainstay and even though it’s not in Philadelphia, it may be the best venue in Philadelphia. It has absolutely the best sound and all of the best fans, so in that way it’s different from other venues because it’s like a family. Especially during the pandemic, you could see what your family is made of. Every step of the way, people were asking what they could do to help, how they could keep the music alive there, and Chris and all those guys were really able to do the impossible. We are just beyond thrilled to be part of it, it’s such an honor.
PM: I was also gonna mention another cool family moment. The Fare Thee Well shows back in 2015 were streamed at Ardmore on the projector screen and Splintered Sunlight played the set break.
MM: Oh yeah!
PM: So, me, my brother, and my Dad were all like, ‘well if we can’t be at the shows, we might as well be in that kind of environment around all the Heads.’ And I just remember that being a really special moment because our Dad, who has countless tapes of shows, and even just the other day was playing me the 2009 “The Dead at The Spectrum” with Warren Haynes, was with us at the Ardmore and it just felt very surreal. Our Dad who showed Matt, who showed me, and we were just all together. It was just a really special moment and there have been a lot of those special kinds of moments. Also, the last three shows before the pandemic were all Ardmore shows for me. I went to The New Deal, Electron, and then Circles Around the Sun. It was like, ‘wow, we’re on a historic run of shows right now.’
MM: Nothing can stop us now…thanks for jinxing us Paddy! I’ll even add that my last show before coming out to California was John K. and the West Philly Fade Away which featured him, Reed Mathis, Jay Lane, I think Aaron Magner. But I was late to the show and I caught the last three or four songs and for the last song, Reed Mathis came up and played a Woodie Guthrie song called “California Stars,” and it was like, they’re sending me off to California and Reed lives right here in the city. It was just a really special thing to have this last moment with all of my Ardmore friends. Ardmore to us is the coolest.
PM: Yeah, we don’t wanna talk about Ardmore at all…
The Ardmore Music Hall is located at 23 East Lancaster Avenue Ardmore, Pennsylvania.
GA Doors: 7:15 PM, Show: 8:00 PM
Tickets are available for purchase here.
Check out the Facebook Event here.
Follow Muskrat Flats on YouTube here.
