Shane Kislack
Audio By Carbonatix
When members of 1100 Springs went their separate ways two summers ago after 23 years of making music together, Matt Hillyer found himself with a kind of time and freedom he hadn’t had in a long while.
“When you’re writing for a band, you’re writing for the band’s sound,” the singer says. “You don’t want to color outside the lines too much because if you’ve got fans and a fanbase, you want to continue to grow and try new things but you don’t want to alienate the audience.”
Hillyer says he wanted to take advantage of this chance to try something new. So he joined a songwriting group with a strict “one new song a week” rule.
“It sounds like a lot of pressure, but in some ways it took the pressure off,” Hillyer says. “You can do what you want to do. You don’t have to write some magnum opus. You can try something new and get out of your comfort zone.”
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The work paid off, resulting in a new solo album for State Fair Records, Glorietta, that includes tracks like a “jazzy, spooky sort of song” called “Diablo Motel” and a tail-spinning, slightly trippy tune called “Ordinary Man” that “leans more towards The Beatles and Harry Nilsson who were huge influences for me,” Hillyer says.
At The Kessler on Saturday, Hillyer will perform a mix of his new tracks and some old favorites with some of his friends from 1100 Springs.
The title track “Glorietta” comes from the name for his mom’s place in New Mexico, where he holed up with his family during the pandemic. His young daughter was excited to go on the trip, even while the world seemed like it was constantly on fire.
“One thing we could do is get in the car and drive to New Mexico and be somewhere pretty and quiet and peaceful and go hiking and just spend time with a change of scenery,” Hillyer says. “The song’s not about her but it’s definitely inspired and written about that trip we took to get out of Dallas and get to some place prettier and give ourselves a mental break from just being shut in our house.”
Hillyer drew inspiration from all sorts of personal moments and musical styles, and he worked with new people to find new ways to produce and present his lyrics.
“I think I needed to turn a page at the time,” Hillyer says. “There wasn’t any personal reason for it other than just wanting to try something different and work with some different voices. It would be all too easy to make a different record and read the liner notes and go, ‘Aww, they’re just using the same guys.’ You gotta wipe the slate clean, and there will be time to work with the guys from 1100 Springs again.”
Glorietta fired him up to start working already on writing and recording his next album
“I’m sure I’ll be going into the studio soon, hopefully within the next month to start the basic tricks for the next record,” Hillyer says. “You gotta stay ahead of this time, especially on vinyl records. The turnaround on that stuff is ridiculous. It just takes forever.”
Hillyer says keeping his songs on vinyl records is very important to him and not just because it’s starting to finally outpace sales of CDs.
“I still have every single record I bought since I was a kid and I’ve never not had a record player but this resurgence is just a head scratcher to me,” Hillyer says. “It makes sense in that they’re cool, they look better and sound better and it just feels more real to me but now with streaming being the way is it, it’s very confusing me to because I still believe when people sit down to listen to music or they’re cruising in their car, they’re streaming and it’s not vinyl.”
Hillyer also says he’s excited to record with State Fair Records because of the freedom the label affords him and the help it provides to keep growing Dallas’ music scene.
“There’s lots of great music in Texas but man, I’ve been in this scene for a long, long time and I’ve seen so much and there’s a lot of really good and successful music out of the Dallas area,” Hillyer says. “People like to talk about how Austin is the live music capital of the world, but, man, there’s been so much good stuff that’s happened in Dallas-Fort Worth and a lot of people don’t know that history. Any group of folks trying to lift that up and shout it from the rafters is OK in my book.”
