Q&A: Crys Matthews on Reclaiming Country Music, Intersectionality and Social Justice
2024 HAS BEEN A PHENOMENAL AND GROUNDBREAKING YEAR FOR BLACK COUNTRY ARTISTS who have reclaimed their rightful place in the Country genre. Shaboozey’s chart-topping single “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” and Beyoncé’s COWBOY CARTER have shattered glass ceilings in country music, spotlighting the industry's historical marginalization and exclusion of Black artists while redefining the parameters of success in the genre. Yet, African American artists have been boldly challenging norms for years. With every lyric and performance, visionaries like Crys Matthews have inspired a new era of diversity, authenticity, and soul.
On September 6, Crys Matthews unveiled her powerful single “The Difference Between” a poignant declaration of reclaiming space for Black artists in Country and Americana music. This latest addition to her catalog solidifies her stance as a tireless social justice advocate and multifaceted artist whose identity and position in society shape her music in a monumental and earnest way. The track features three Nashville LGBTQ+ artists who are all bringing their perspectives and experiences to not only take up space but also speak up against the intentional ignorance and hostility created by songs like “Try That In A Small Town” by Jason Aldean.
Crys Matthews, the self-described 'poster child of intersectionality,' weaves her multifaceted identity as a Black, Southern, Lesbian woman into the fabric of her music. This award-winning singer-songwriter masterfully blends Country, Americana, Folk, Blues, and Bluegrass styles, infused with raw, substantive storytelling. Driven by the converging crises affecting her communities – including the overturning of Roe v. Wade, systemic racism in the American South, and the exclusion of LGBTQ+ individuals in Christianity, a matter close to the heart as she was raised by a preacher. Matthews crafted an album Reclamation that embodies the layers of her experiences and identity that also shapes her perspective on everything and everyone she loves and further their place in her music.
Matthew’s upcoming album Reclamation, recorded at Nashville's Emporium Studios and produced by Levi Lowry (co-writer of Zac Brown's "Colder Weather"), brings together a talented collective of artists. Featuring Heather Mae, Kyshona, Melody Walker, Chris Housman, Megan Coleman, Megan Elizabeth McCormick, Ellen Angelico, Ryan Madora, Jen Gunderman, and Michael Majett, this collaborative effort showcases Matthews' storytelling and musical expertise. Currently touring festivals and venues nationwide, from New York to North Carolina, Matthews will also join Julian Taylor in November and embark on the Make the Yuletide Gay Tour in December alongside Flamy Grant, Jennifer Knapp, Spencer LaJoye, and Heather Mae,
Luna sat down with Crys Matthews to discuss Black artists contribution to Country, intersectionality in her music and the storytelling in Reclamation
LUNA: Black Country musicians have constantly been left out of the conversation in the success and visibility of the genre but also receive some hostility and alienation. How do you define your place in the genre as a Black Lesbian Southern woman?
MATTHEWS: There is so much irony in country music being white-dominated considering when Black people created it. Growing up, Black southern culture bled into so much of what I loved and that included music. I always found it wildly offensive that country music was represented as this white fest when I knew of so many black pioneers such as DeFord Bailey who was the first African American country artist to perform on WSM’s Grand Ole Opry and Alice Randall who is just a trailblazer in the industry. I watched and admired these artists and this inspired me to make “The Difference Between” to reclaim our space in this space, give credit where it is due but also just celebrate how our experiences beautifully influence the music we create.
I think a thing that makes so many people gravitate to the genre at large is because we do have such similar lived experiences, regardless of the things that make us different from one another.
LUNA: You are an award-winning lyricist, acclaimed artist and an impressive discography. Where did it all begin for you and how long have you been making music?
MATTHEWS: My mom is a preacher in a Black church in the South so music has always been a part of my life. I have been a professional singer-songwriter since 2010, that was a time when I started thinking about performing professionally. The first thing that really gave me a boost was in 2017 when I participated in a competition here in Nashville called NewSong Music and it took place at Lincoln Center which is an iconic place over here. The competition had maybe 5000 people and I made it to the top 10. From the top 10 to ultimately winning the contest. That was one of the first things that made people pay attention to me and be like “Who is this? Crys Matthews” which, of course, they pronounced like Crise or something else but it's just short for Crystal. Nevertheless, winning that competition was probably one of the first exciting things that happened in my career and then I had to just start working hard. I mean, because of the type of music that I sing it is extra work.
It is a lot of hard work to want to be able to make the music that I make but then understand how unwelcome I am in so many of those spaces, and so sometimes it makes things take a bit of a longer time, and also because of the types of songs that I sing. But I don't mind a little bit of hard work. That's all my people know is in this country. Hard work.
LUNA: Your mom is a preacher and you've previously opened up about how much of a struggle it was for your mom to accept your identity and sexual orientation. How do you think that's affected your music and artistry? How has having to face rejection or apprehensiveness from your mother and a religion that you believe in and love, influenced your decision to step into a genre where you were most likely not going to be accepted?
MATTHEWS: I mean it definitely hurts to have a parent; somebody who is supposed to love you unconditionally has to figure out how to do that again. My mom and I had a very close relationship before [I came out]. We now have a very close relationship thankfully, and we have done a lot of work to kind of get to the place that we are today. So I think in one aspect it definitely requires you to be able and strong enough to deal with that kind of rejection and still be sure enough in yourself to know that you are a person worthy of love, worthy of being just you and have somebody just root for your happiness. Then to be able to kind of stay the course long enough to actually get to the other side of it. I think so much of what I am grateful for as far as that journey with my mom is being able to tell these other kids who are just like me, who are experiencing what I experienced when I first came out to be able to tell them with with a good bit of authority and legitimacy that it does get better. It takes time. But your parents are put on this planet to love you and so much of the rejection is from a place of shame for things that they are afraid of. How their peers and society are, what they think, and having to interact with them with the fear of being judged. That's their issue to carry and you don't have to worry about that. They'll do that work and figure it out for themselves if they're doing it right. And most parents really want to do it right.
Maya Angelou always says, “I wouldn't give nothing for my journey”. To look back on where we are and look at how we are now, I don't regret a single bit of it because the relationship that we have now is so very beautiful because of that.
LUNA: It is a very tumultuous experience that a lot of people struggle with even these days. I think now with the growth in Queer community and so many people being out and proud, the conversation has kind of shifted. A lot of people are maybe more open to letting go of those relationships but at the same time the parents are more open to accepting and loving their children for being Queer. It is also a very hard thing to let go of a parent-child relationship.
MATTHEWS: I mean it is so different in this country, because from state to state it can look different. Living in a place like DC, where I lived for a very long time, DC overall is very accepting and progressive. New York, very accepting, very progressive. But in places like Tennessee, they're literally actively trying to legislate trans people out of existence, take LGBTQ rights back to where they were before I even came out. I think that's the thing that we also do have to be so mindful of, is that as much progress as we're seeing in certain places there is the exact opposite amount of enthusiasm in the opposite direction. And so we have to keep telling those stories and those truths for those kids who are growing up in places that are regressive to make sure that they know that you know there is a place for them in this world and that what's happening in their state or in their county or in their town isn't it indicative of what's happening in other places. Also to remind other people who are very comfortable in their very safe, progressive spaces that we still have a lot of work to do. That's also something I try to be very mindful of in my music and especially in my live performances, to be able to tell that truth and to tell that story.
LUNA: Your intersectionality informs so much of your music and it is a direct reflection of who you are. What or who are some of your influences?
MATTHEWS: As I grew up in a Black church my first love of music was Gospel. I mean, that is inescapable. I think the first song I ever heard was my mom singing gospel music to me. And so I have a lot of love for so much of that old gospel that I grew up with. So much of that is how I most feel at home. All my- a lot of my music, like, “The Difference Between” has a part that almost feels like there's a choir and they're singing with us because that is what I grew up with. Music feels good when we're singing together. Of course, country music, I mean I'm a GenX, like these baby cheeks always fool people, but I'm a GenXer. I grew up listening to country music that was from what I think is one of country's heydays, which means listening to Reba, everybody loves “Fancy” and “Jolene” by Dolly Parton to name a few. I think people who are fans of country music will definitely hear a nostalgic country sound. I think so many of us who have been listening to country music for a long time are kind of trying to figure out how to reconcile this very new pop country sound that is taking over. So much of it is so different from some of those older types of tunes. You definitely hear a bit of an older country sound in my music and I'm proud of that.
LUNA: You've been making music for over a decade. How has your journey been and how do you define success for yourself?
MATTHEWS: Such a great question. I think that's one of the things that is so important for independent artists, to have asked themselves that question because we look around and see all these amazing mega artists begin to get in our own heads. People start to aspire to be what they see.
For me as someone who has been independent my entire career is being able to actually see the growth every year I do my taxes. I find myself slowly creeping up the tax brackets. To me that is success. If I am somebody who is growing my business in a way that I'm able to actually see growth steadily and consistently then I'm growing. My business is growing and reach is growing too. I get to sing in places I was not able to before. I'm getting to play festivals I haven't played before. I think it's important for artists, especially independent artists to not try to cruise along in somebody else's lane. You have to be able to celebrate the growth that you're having on your own and recognize that growth, and then still keep striving for the next level and aspiring to that. That's one of the ways I keep my sanity; I don’t worry so much about what everybody else is doing, I'm really grateful for getting to play in Canada, for example. I'm playing in Canada so much now and five years ago, it was unfathomable to even be playing anywhere outside of the United States. So much of this job is a gratitude practice, because it is a lot of work. We are doing so much of the promotion ourselves. We're making the songs or writing the songs, we're driving ourselves to the shows. We're doing all of the things that biggers artists usually don't have to do because we are independent and it can be so overwhelming. Being able to see the growth and the progress is definitely a thing that makes it easier to keep going, for sure.
LUNA: For “The Difference Between” did you have a particular production process; and can you break down the themes that are most present in the message of this song?
MATTHEWS: There are two friends of mine who also live in Nashville, Melody Walker and Chris Houseman. Chris is this incredible gay man who sings country music, and so he is a lot like me in the way that he's in a genre that is unfriendly and welcoming to him in so many ways. So to be able to kind of join forces with the two of them and tell the story that calls out the hypocrisy of folks trying to act like they have some kind of claim to what it means to be Southern, what it means to be country, just because they're because they're hateful. What kind of thing is it to rally around a message that portrays the South to be a hateful place? By and large, the people in the South are incredible, so loving and so giving. This song was also about taking back that narrative of what it means to be Southern and not have it be a polarizing thing. You know, you go into so many of those country spaces, and everybody's waving the Confederate flag around and spewing toxic rhetoric, and they act like that's the South but that is not my South. That's not the South that built me. That's not my experience as a proud Black Southerner.
It was just such a joy to write this song, especially because I worked with such phenomenal songwriters. Melody Walker's an incredible songwriter, as is Chris. There's this country song that Jason Aldean released a couple years ago called “Try That In A Small Town”, and it's just a song full of nothing but hate and dog whistles, and it's just so toxic and terrible. It felt like he was making people think that hate is all the South is. It was incredibly disrespectful to me as a Southerner because when you tell a story like that you completely erase the fact that there are Black people who live in the South and furthermore, that there are black people who literally built that place with our blood, sweat and tears. The songs came almost as a clap back to that. That song was really just a symptom of a bigger ailment in country music, in the white version of country music and country spaces. Nonetheless, this song was a joy to write. You can hear the joy in the lyrics and especially in the music of the song. I hope a lot of people hear those words, and I hope they see themselves in those words and are viewing us standing up and saying, this is what the South is. This is what country music is. It's not that other thing.
LUNA: For your upcoming album Reclamation you also spoke or sang, rather, at length about reclaiming what the South means to you. With the political climate that the United States is in, with the upcoming elections, women’s autonomy being threatened and increasingly anti-Queer bills being proposed and signed into law we’re seeing women's autonomy being taken and that, you know, write LGBTQ rights being erased how was the songwriting process of like this album and how did the political climate also fully influence this album?
MATTHEWS: The album is a long album compared to the standard 10. This is 17 tracks. There are 16 full songs because there is a lot I have to say right now. There's a song up there called “Sister's Keeper” that is about reproductive freedom and the Me Too movement. There's a song called Suit and Tie that is about gender and gender expression. Every song is about so many different things and yet all just the same thing.
It's also about just trying to live a good life and try to be happy and I think that's the irony in so many of these things being free political conversations when they are only political to the people who aren't living them. To me it isn't political talking about whether or not I get to roll up into a place dressing the way I feel most comfortable dressing, and be okay with that, and not be fearful for doing that. For just existing. That is political to somebody else, but it isn't political to me. It's just me trying to live. So that's the important thing about the many aspects of this album is being able to hold that truth up to the light. These are people's everyday lived experiences. And country music can be a vehicle to talk about that.
I am so proud that it is so deeply country and that it is deeply gorgeous. It sounds like an album that could go toe to toe with pretty much all of the country music that you hear, but the message that's in there is not a message that you ever hear in so much of country music. That's another thing that I'm really proud of, I want people to know that the genre that they love can also love them back, especially if they're one of those people who isn't used to having that be the case. There are so many fans of country music who are LGBTQ. There are so many fans of country music who are Black, and so many women who are fans of country music. And so they should be able to hear us have a tough conversation about something that they are maybe not used to hearing, such as a song about reproductive freedom playing on Country music radio.
LUNA: I can't wait for that. I wish you all the success in the world. I am only just getting into Country music now so your music is the best introduction for me. I know nothing about Jason Aldean and Morgan Wallen, except for all the controversy but I have just never liked the energy.
MATTHEWS: If somebody came up to me and said, “ I will give you $25 million right now if you can sing me one lyric of their songs,” I would have to apologize to my family. I cannot do it. I don't know a single song from these men. We could have been rich, y'all, but I blew it for us.
There are so many black artists in country music but so many of us are independent. I definitely want to shout out the Black Opry. If you guys haven't heard of the Black Opry, definitely go check them out. It's a huge collective of black artists who have talent and roots in Americana and Country music genres. Many of us are so talented and just incredible, but we're independent because we're in a genre that is not usually made for us, which we're working really hard to change. I definitely want to shout them out for folks who are fans of the genre and who want to be able to see more people that look like us in the genre Check out Rissi Palmer’s “Color Me Country” radio show. Alice Randall’s book and album My Black Country. All those amazing resources so that you can get more acquainted with the artists who look like me and who are doing this incredible work in the genre.
LUNA: You are going to have a number of performances here in the upcoming months. So how do you feel about that? And what's your favorite part about performing?
MATTHEWS: Oh my gosh, there are so many cool ones coming up. I'm performing in Austin, Texas soon. I was just talking to my girlfriend about it this morning called “Nevertheless, She Preached”. And that one is so cool, because it's all of these amazing women in faith spaces who are working to kind of decolonize faith spaces. The faith space is a lot like country music space in the way that it is very heavily reliant on the patriarchy. And just seeing people actively doing the work of dismantling is just wildly thrilling to me. I'm going to be on the road in New England for the next little bit, and then going to the west coast as well. I'm going to be all over the country in the next couple of months. And also Mexico! Shout out to Mexico. I'm going to be doing all kinds of amazing things but I'm especially over the moon to be able to start sharing so many of these brand new songs with folks, and especially with this single.
This track is such a good representation of what the album at large is about. I'm just so excited for folks to hear this. I'm ecstatic to take back my Southerness in that space because I've seen so much social justice music I occupy a lot of space in the folk music realm, which folk and country are kind of like cousins, but with Country to be able to just kind of full, full throttle and get to be all of me.
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