Positivity and Interpretation with Mt. Joy
Located within Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County, an area often referred to as the state's Bible Belt due to its long-standing Christian history, lies Mt. Joy.
Neighbouring the Mountain is the darker named, Mt. Misery, the latter, more sad mountain, is where the band Mt. Joy began playing. However, after a quick decision, when asked what their project was called, the more fitting name of Mt. Joy was chosen.
Listening to Mt. Joy, you can’t help but feel like their music ends up in this sphere of radical positivity, the name, the title band's most recent album, Hope We Have Fun, the colourful, inoffensive album covers, and the majority of the lyrics – it’s all screaming positivity. Even when the songs are about sad themes, they’re delivered in uplifting ways reminiscent of megachurch gospel songs. This, all unsurprising when you think back to them being from Pennsylvania’s Bible Belt, but surprising when you find out the band isn’t religious.
Ahead of the band's sets at this year's Laneway Festival, I called Mt. Joy’s lead singer, Matt Quinn, to discuss positivity, the role it plays in the band's ethos and his feelings towards Christianity.
I know you guys named the band after an area close to where you guys grew up in Pennsylvania, but I wanted to know why Mt. Joy stood out as a name.
Sam Cooper, who’s the guitar player in the band, and I were just making music, having fun together. We’d recorded some music, and I remember the moment when our friend Caleb, who was producing our first album, asked us what we called ourselves so he could name the file in ProTools. Sam and I were like, we should call it where we used to play together, which was two hills, one was Mt. Misery, and one was Mt. Joy. Technically, we used to jam on Mt. Misery, but we were like, this music isn’t Mt. Misery vibes, so we decided on Mt. Joy. It was a simple idea. It’s cool because ten years later it’s still the most meaningful thing I’ve ever named.
Positivity comes up a lot within the music you’re making, the lyrics, the uplifting nature of your storytelling, the band's name, and even the title of the band's latest album, Hope We Have Fun. What do you feel like the importance is for you guys bringing in this positive ethos into every element of your music?
It is a big part of it. I’ve struggled with anxiety and depression. The guitar has always been my Zoloft, my meditation; I’m trying to pull joy from the instrument, and I think that shows up naturally through the music. We like the idea that some of our silliest-sounding songs are actually pretty sad. Trying to push those ideas as close as possible together is where some of our best songwriting happens. On the circle of emotions, joy and pain are right next to each other but on opposite sides, and when you play with that, that’s where Mt. Joy is at its best.
Blending those lines of emotion is such an interesting way of looking at it.
We talk a lot about how making a joyful song, you always ride the line of being cheesy, and I think the easiest way to avoid that is for the subject matter to be real and something that isn’t cheesy at all. We’re not pumping joy through the speakers for the sake of joy, that’s sponsored by Ford Motor Company. It’s joy, with this introspective purpose of trying to help myself first, then hopefully it’ll help other people.
Yeah, do you feel that, through everything you’ve been through in your career, music has still been able to provide this meditative outlet for you?
It’s something that I have personally struggled with. You lose your identity at some point when going from being like I love making music to I’m this guy in this band that’s having success, but I also have expectations now. It can be harder to sit down with your guitar and have the same relationship with it as when you were in your bedroom with all the posters of all your favourite bands on the walls. It took some time to adjust, but the short answer is now, yeah, I have surrendered to it. I love playing music, and whatever happens, happens.
What do you want people to get from Mt. Joy?
I hope it moves them in some way. One of the coolest things for me as a musician is seeing people covering the songs or being moved to learn them or be tapped into whatever it is. As I said, for us there’s a catharsis in doing this, and to have someone want to tap into that and find their own joy in it is really cool. Even for the people who aren’t able to play the music, seeing people get tattoos it’s so cool. It’s just world-building; it was never intentional on our part, but being able to build these worlds and have people join in whatever way they can is the coolest thing that’s ever happened to us.
Another theme that comes up a lot that I was curious about is Christianity. I know in the past you’ve said you aren't Christian. But what is it about those themes that keep on coming up for you?
For me, what’s interesting is when you’re growing up, people tell you what they believe, then at a certain point, you break off from that and decide what you believe. I’m really fascinated by organised religion. I’m a man of science, and I believe in a lot of the progress that mankind has made, and a lot of that is at odds with religion. I have an element of wanting to tap into spirituality, but being enshrouded in doubt and worrying that some of those religions may have caused more harm than good.
In “Astrovan”, for example, it was me being like, maybe there are redeemable characters who were misconstrued by the whole thing and maybe there are other ways of looking at there are other ways of exploring spirituality. It’s exploring the questions of: What if Jesus was this way? What if I could redesign the story? I’m really fascinated by it all; I think it’s one of the most fascinating things in human history. If you’re a songwriter trying to put existential thoughts into songs, it’s like, what’s more existential than what happens when we die?
Totally, and as a songwriter, you are storytelling, and you can tell that story in whatever way you feel fits.
Yeah, I have a pretty cool job, I can’t complain.
To wrap this up, I wanted to ask, who in the band do you think would be most likely to climb Mt. Everest?
Sam, our guitarist, he’s the man of the band. He jumped out of an aeroplane, and none of the rest of us did.
Did you all go up to go skydiving together, or was this something he did on his own?
No, just him. We had an off day, and for the rest of us, off days are downtime, but he was like, ‘I want to jump out of a plane.’ I was like, ‘I don’t know what’s going on with you, brother, but godspeed.’