Out There: Rich Mattson and the Northstars
”OUT THERE" is the 6th album from Rich Mattson and the Northstars. Their 5th, "SKYLIGHTS" was released in February of 2021, so if you follow the timeline, this is their true "pandemic" album. From top to bottom these songs go through the whole experience with grace, humor and a skewed perspective only Rich Mattson can conjure. And it rocks. Living
”OUT THERE" is the 6th album from Rich Mattson and the Northstars. Their 5th, "SKYLIGHTS" was released in February of 2021, so if you follow the timeline, this is their true "pandemic" album. From top to bottom these songs go through the whole experience with grace, humor and a skewed perspective only Rich Mattson can conjure. And it rocks. Living in the northwoods of Minnesota in a converted church/recording studio has its benefits and charm, but being “out there” with no visitors and nowhere to go for 2 years proved to be a challenge. Mattson came up with some crackpot schemes; YouTube videos, 3 per day for 60 days. Sparta Sound hoodies and t-shirts. Recording new songs to a click track and emailing them to bandmates Keely Lane and Kyle Westrick to add drums and bass, respectively. As things started to open up and more folks started coming back to Sparta to record music, Rich met and became friends with a tasteful piano player from Duluth by the name of Dan Anderson. Dan offered to play on anything, join up with the band, whatever, and after a few sessions adding to these tunes, he went ahead and did in fact “join up with the band.” Mattson’s partner through thick and thin, Germaine Gemberling, added her exquisite harmonies as the epidemic wore on and the songs piled up. Suddenly noticing there were over 16 songs to deal with, they whittled it down to a succinct 10 for this LP record. Rich finished the mixing in May of 2022 (it takes a full 6 months to get vinyl product) and assigned the cover art duties to the amazing and prolific Duluth artist supreme Jay Whitcomb. Mastering was handled by former Prince protege and Sparta Sound go-to mastering wizard, Tom Garneau. This is what you call rock and roll, I suppose, with indie rock/alternative rock influences as well as some americana and folk rock information..it’s a wide umbella..see, Rich Mattson kicked off his musical education with John Denver and went from that straight to KISS. Neil Young taught him how to play guitar and he came to age in the 1980’s playing U2 and REM tunes in various new wave bands before diving headfirst into the storied Minneapolis music scene just as Husker Du and the Replacements were selling out. He survived grunge and watched the anglophile and swing fads come and go, staying true to his blend of guitar driven American rock and roll. A good friend told him this new stuff reminded him of the Glenrustles..of course, this is funny because Rich was not only IN the Glenrustles, he wrote all the songs. So it goes..so it goes..after all these albums he keeps on keeping on, never running low on ideas..high beams on, following the muse
