We recently connected with Matt James and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Matt, thanks for joining us today. What’s the kindest thing anyone has ever done for you?

When I was about 17 years old, I had just started teaching myself how to play guitar. One summer we were at a lady named Mrs. La Retta’s house for a church youth group thing. Some of the members of the church took turns hosting and feeding the youth group a few weeks out of the summer, and that particular evening we were doing a campfire/BBQ at their house. When we first got there, she was giving us a tour of the house, and in one of the rooms we walked through, there was an old, beat up guitar sitting in the corner. Being young, and not able to walk past a guitar without touching it, I walked over and picked it up and began to play the few little licks that I knew (Smoke On The Water, Iron man, your typical novice songs). After a while, I guess Mrs. La Retta realized I was with the rest of the kids and came and found me picking. She said, “Why don’t you bring that outside?”

For the rest of the night I sat by the campfire silently plucking around trying to make pleasant noises and probably annoying the kids sitting closest to me. When it was time to go home, I walked up to Mrs. La Retta to hand the guitar back to her and she said, “You know what? That’s the most anyone has played that thing in probably 20 years. Why don’t you hang onto it?”

Elated I took it home and spent the rest of the summer teaching myself chords and eventually trying to write my own music.

If she wouldn’t have let me take that guitar home, I might not be making my living writing and playing music today.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My drummer and I formed our band, Blacktop Mojo in the fall of 2012 and played our first official show in December of that year. We went around taking every show we could get our hands on and cut our teeth in bars and dancehall type places around East Texas. Eventually in 2014, we recorded our first record and began to venture out taking shows in the bigger cities (Dallas, Houston, Austin, etc) When we had built up enough steam, we attracted the eye of our first manager and in 2016, decided to quit our day jobs and move into a house together. When we put together our second record, which released in 2017, he helped us book our first national tour, and release our songs to radio for the first time. During that tour we spent 60 days in a van, basically playing for free in exchange for radio play in whatever market we were going to. From all that grinding, we got our first single hit #27 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Chart.

Since then, we have toured relentlessly and put out 3 more records with another full-length album on the way in 2024. We’ve all “grown up” and moved out of that first band house. Some of us have gotten married, had kids and whatnot. Our biggest accomplishment, to date, I would say, is being successful enough to build a life where we never had to go back to our day jobs.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Though we don’t have the biggest social media audience, we’ve managed to build up a big enough group of supporters that help keep a roof over our heads. The few videos and posts we’ve had go viral, we weren’t really even trying to “build and audience”. We were simply having fun doing songs that we wanted to do, or doing what felt good in the moment. People can sniff out stuff that isn’t real, and if you aren’t being yourself, they’re definitely going to know.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The most rewarding thing about being a musician is getting to meet the people that listen to your stuff and hearing a story about how it helped them through a hard time, or how it helped them bond with someone, or how it gives them just a few minutes of escape from a crappy day. The stories and connections you make with people from all over the place is definitely the thing that makes it all worth while.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.blacktopmojo.com & www.mattjamesofficial.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattjimmyjames/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattjimmyjamesofficial
• Twitter: @mattjimmyjames
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/blacktopmojo
• Other: TikTok: @blacktopmojo and @mattjimmyjames

Image Credits
Kelsey Anderson, Kurt Fowles