Matthew Logan Vasquez has a thing for extremes. One foot in the Texas dust, the other trudging through Norwegian snowdrifts — all while pushing out solo records that swing between sweaty bar-band stomp and existential dread. Or, as he puts it, “I’m an avid optimist, but I’m a believer in putting a name to pain just so you can step on it.”
That’s the guiding principle behind Lighten Up, Vasquez’s latest solo record. It’s heavy in all the ways life gets heavy when you’re a touring musician with a young kid, a father-in-law with early-onset Alzheimer’s, and a career that’s made him “Texas famous” but never quite let him off the road. “I wanted to be there for my wife. She did seven years in America with me — I owed her,” he says, referring to the family’s move back to her native Oslo. “It makes me sound like such a hero. But it was tough. It took all our savings and just — up, gone. Here we go again.”
There’s that Vasquez grin in the darkness — the same smirk that fueled a decade of Delta Spirit, a band that never officially broke up but feels like your old college roommate who still swears they’ll make it big when they finally find a drummer. “We never broke up! We always said hiatus,” he insists. “Our last show was 2015 at Outpost Fest — which we made, by the way — and since then, we’ve just been scattered across Oslo, Montreal, New York, LA. It’s a logistical nightmare. But there’s, like, three decks of Uno cards. Somewhere in there’s a wild card to make a new record.”
Until that jackpot, he’s on his solo grind — carving out rock songs that balance anxiety and tenderness in the same breath. “It’s darker, yeah,” Vasquez says about Lighten Up. “But I’m always trying to find the lesson in the hurricane. The hardest periods — you hit rewind and you learn from that. Love wins. Family wins.”
He’s got plenty to compare it to — after all, this is a guy who’s juggled both American capitalist chaos and Nordic social democracy. “In Norway, you’ve got free health care for all — prescription drugs are reasonable, you’re not at risk of going bankrupt if someone gets sick. And if you have a baby, dads have to take three months off, or you lose it. In Texas? You’re basically screwed,” he deadpans. “But hey, no state tax! Personal responsibility, right? Sure.”
Then there’s the economic seesaw of his childhood. “Poor Kids” and “Trailer Park” find Vasquez pulling up old roots — the working-class jumble of Lockheed Martin paychecks, overnight bankruptcies, and latchkey kid trauma. “When you grow up like that, you grow up quick. You lose the shield,” he says. “Your friend group becomes your security, and when you’re a walking hormone and nobody’s watching you — yeah. That’s gonna go great.”
So where does that leave a dude whose catalog toggles from fuzzed-out guitar jams to 18-minute epics about dropping acid and trying to find God? Right back where he started: on the road. “I love traveling. I love feeling like Louisville’s my backyard. Chicago’s my backyard. I’ll play 150 shows a year because that’s the only way to make it work,” he shrugs. “I’m one of the rare lucky bastards who gets to do what they love for a living. Congratulations to me for staying alive.”
Somewhere out there, the Delta Spirit reunion lurks like an old flame. “If there’s a means to make a living for everybody, I’d do it in a heartbeat. I love those guys. But we needed to stop to remember how to have fun again. Not to get lost in the industry sandbox, which is so gross, man.”
So for now, the plan is simple: keep moving. Keep singing about the trailer parks, the family breakups, the Norwegian winters, the American mind games. “Lighten up,” Vasquez says with a grin. “It’s all gonna break you or make you. Might as well sing about it.”
Listen to the interview above and then check out the tracks below.
