In the late afternoon of Monday, December 7th, my friend and renowned concert taper Z-man and I met up at historic St. Andrew’s Hall in downtown Detroit to interview musician and recording artist Matisyahu before his concert performance later that evening.
After playing a bit of phone tag with Matisyahu’s tour manager, we were told that the interview would be taking place on the tour bus. Although we were happy to oblige the wishes of our interviewee, a tour bus is rarely a great place for a recorded interview. As a result the audio recording has a background hum of the bus generator, which Z-man was able to minimize as much as possible. Also, despite being a rather dynamic, and captivating performer on stage, in person Matisyahu was rather soft spoken making Z-man’s task of capturing the interview and making it listenable an even greater challenge.
Both before and during the interview, Matisyahu appeared slightly distracted at times as he fidgeted with his iPhone, and as members of his road crew came on and off the bus. As a result, we’ve cut the interview into individual questions or groups of questions which can be listened to separately, or on one single recording. The recording has been edited to minimize noise and maximize the vocals, although you may want to listen to this with headphones, or with your speakers turned up as Matisyahu’s more pensive responses were sometimes almost inaudible.
Check out the interview below, or download it from Archive.org (links below the player)
The audio is hosted at the Live Music Archive - click here to go to their page to download or stream the interview, question by question or in its entirety.WERD!!!
-drew