Daily Discovery: Matthew Francis Andersen, "Honeyhole"

Videos by American Songwriter

SONG: “Honeyhole”

HOMETOWN: Oak Park, Illinois

CURRENT LOCATION: Public Library

AMBITIONS: Just wanna be happy earning my living.

TURN-OFFS: Reality television, most things heard on the radio, poor parenting, polarizing politics , and booming blues singers.

TURN-ONS: Poetry, my wife, distant outboard motors, faint wood smoke, bourbon, vintage acoustic guitars, Jack Gilbert, James Wright, John Prine , steak ‘n’ asparagus, and Bo Ramsey’s cowboy hat.

DREAM GIG: That Telluride thing looks kinda cool .

FAVORITE LYRIC: Today? “The snow lay up against the curb…Finally beaten by the sun…Across the street the noon whistle blows…Calling back everyone…” – Bill Morrissey, “Ice Fishing”

SONG I WISH I WROTE: “Rexroth’s Daughter” by Greg Brown

5 PEOPLE I’D MOST LIKE TO HAVE DINNER WITH: Jim Harrison, Bob Dylan, my father, Jesus, and Abraham Lincoln. This group would most certainly run out of wine. But luckily, we’d have one guy that could quickly take care of that problem.

MY FAVORITE CONCERT EXPERIENCE: It’s hard to beat Springsteen, but also hard to top Joe Ely (with Jesse Taylor on guitar) at Fitzgerald’s in Berwyn, Illinois somewhere around the year 2000.

I WROTE THIS SONG BECAUSE… Twenty years ago, I lived in northern Wisconsin where I was a musky and walleye fishing guide. I was 26 years old and living as a bartender by night and a freshwater cowboy by day. As a guide, your truck and your boat ‘n trailer were your rig. You roamed the northern lakes and rivers learning to catch fish…alone…and hoping you could produce when someone finally hired you. Outside of tourist season, if you didn’t have a bartending shift or a guiding job, you might go a few days without speaking to anyone. So, it can be a lonely existence living in a roadside motel room, especially if you’re accustomed to a very social Irish-Catholic city life. These lyrics, however, are less self-indulgently introspective than I usually write. It’s basically a journal entry written by a character similar to that 26 year old Wisconsin fishing guide.