Meet Matt Jefferson | Music Producer/Musician/Audio Engineer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Matt Jefferson and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Matt, what led you to pursuing a creative path professionally?
At the end of the day I think it was inevitable, and the only career path that made sense for me. I began playing music at a very young age (not traditionally trained) and very quickly felt it was what I wanted to pursue. I spent my younger years working various restaurant, retail, sales, and call-center jobs etc, but always knew I’d rather eventually be doing something in music. Originally I envisioned being a recording and touring musician, and began working toward that goal throughout my late teens and early twenties. That led me to wanting to be able to create my own recordings, and once I started experimenting with recording my own music I was hooked. I didn’t even consider the fact that I may end up working as a producer/engineer working with artists on their music for a living for a quite a while. However, it naturally fell into place when I started getting asked by others if I’d be willing to help them record their music, and even began getting offered money to do so. This landed me in the position of being able to eventually cross over into producing, recording, and mixing music in place of other employment, and soon after that I began an internship at a professional recording studio, where I would eventually end up with the title of Chief Engineer. The process to simply get started making income took many years (around 10-15 years before I started seeing signs I could make a living with studio work, and ending up interning at a studio), and has all ultimately felt like the way things were supposed to go. I continued playing live music and writing with bands in my 20’s while building my career as an engineer/producer, and eventually got to tour the US and play a couple Canadian shows with a band I started with my friend Kyle Castronovo, but after that tour I ended up sinking deeper into my recording career and have been in that mode ever since, taking a bit of hiatus on playing music live and writing my own records. (about ten years has passed since then). I am grateful every day to be in my position and to do what I do for a living, and couldn’t imagine any other type of career or lifestyle for myself. The creative/artistic world is definitely home for me, and it’s inhabitants have a way of almost always feeling like family. I relate with creatives and musicians the most out of all humans, it feels to me, so it’s the one job where I can show up every day in my own flesh, truly being myself, and be rewarded for that.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
Coming from a background of wanting to be a musician for a living, I tend to relate with many musicians very well, and so it feels very natural to spend my time around musicians/artists/creatives, and to sit down to collaborate on their art. It’s literally what I already did with most of my free time outside of work prior to making it a career, so it’s a similar feeling to that when I sit down to work with an artist on session. It’s definitely also still a job, and an EXHAUSTING one at that, but one that I always feel I can handle at the end of the day, (even if just barely at times when the workload is outta control!) as where I may have broken down and quit in the face of equal challenges in virtually ANY other job. I have been through and seen a lot in my years working in the studio that I don’t imagine you’d ever experience in an office job, some amazing, some not so much.
I’ve worked 21 hour sessions, gone 20-30 something days straight without any time off (long long days every day), and done both of these multiple times, along with working for free (A LOT), and even when starting to get paid, often in the early days it came out to around $5 an hour or less (sometimes much less) if I sat down and counted how many hours I worked against what I was paid). Again, things I’d NEVER even think of going through for most any other job.
This tells me that I’m doing what I really want to do for a living. Because the highs are incredible, and because I’ve somehow always been able to pull through even the lowest lows and never felt along the way that giving up was an option whatsoever. I simply don’t feel that level of resolve with anything else in life. It feels woven into my flesh that I stay involved in music and art. Might sound over the top but it is what it is, and could be why my brand name is technically Make Music or Die haha
(MakeMusicOrDie.com is my website).
It was just a random phrase that came to me at one point so I used it for my personal Instagram and for an email address, and it wasn’t until years later that I adopted it as my “biz name”. It’s a mashup of music and skateboarding since they were my two top interests growing up. There was a Nintendo game called “Skate or Die” back in the day, so one day I thought “Make Music or Die is kind of a cool mashup of the essence of what I grew up on, but also a statement of my reality, that I have no choice in this whole music thing” lol…
Through the years, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that life’s path almost NEVER matches what you think it’s going to be in your head, even the things that you DO accomplish along the way that you dreamed of will usually be a slightly different version of what you thought you were after in the first place. Have also had to learn that this isn’t a bad thing, as it has taught me that maybe I didn’t actually know what I would have wanted 20 years down the road. Maybe my ‘dream future’ when I was 16 would have actually led me to a less happy place than where I’ve ended up at.
It’s ok to let life show you what’s next, and to take it’s lead sometimes. I’ve had to learn that little by little, and let go of control of certain things to end up in a better place. I’ve spent plenty of my time (and still occasionally do) worrying about whether or not I’m doing things the way I’m “supposed to” and wondering what life would’ve been if I did this or that or that or that or…. but at the end of the day I think that’s normal and not something we can simply turn off, but rather something that can help guide us for future decisions. It’s our intuition speaking and wondering.
If you look at it that way it doesn’t need to be a big heavy conversation of regret with ourselves about our self perceived failures or ‘what could have been’, but rather a tool for creating what CAN be if we focus on it and work toward it, and besides that, simply a place to allow our minds to ask “what do I want?” and explore all the thoughts around it. Bottom line, I just want people to know that they can do what it is they are passionate about in life, and don’t need to listen to the influence of others, or even themselves, telling them otherwise.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I’d like to shoutout my mom for always supporting my dreams to work in music. I never had to grow up with any “get a real job” sentiment, and for that, I am forever in her debt. My partner, Rebecca, for being a rare gem of a woman (who has also been featured in S.O. Colorado). Absent are the relationship struggles that are all too common for most music professionals, as she herself plays music and is a creative (she’s a photographer, herself). She understands how different the music industry is and is fully supportive of my career, and I’m very grateful for her. My very good friend Taylor Dye (whom you’ve interviewed as well with his incredible band, Futurelust). Taylor has been one of my closest friends in the industry and in life. He never ceases to amaze me with the level of support he gives me in my art and creative pursuits, and has helped push my career along with his tireless efforts to continue creating incredible music, and to ALWAYS find a way to involve me. Big Thanks to Black Diamond Recording Studios, where I spent all my biggest formative years in the industry, and where I still go to record some of my projects. There are so many more people that deserve credit and shoutouts from me: Deen, Kyle, and the rest of the Castronovo family, Jason Mater, the Blue Ember family, Andrew Shartle, Chris Ficht, Alex McDonald, Kris Crummett, Stefan Hawkes, Jeris Johnson, Ryan Chisesi, all my other friends who’ve always supported me, and a HUGE shoutout to all my clients who continue to work their asses of to create music/art, while simultaneously working to pay their bills and still somehow finding the budget to spend on me helping them with their art. I don’t take lightly the fact that people spend their hard earned money on me for my time/essentially my opinion of their art. It’s continually humbling and keeps on my toes trying to do my best for them and for my career so that it’s always a win-win, and for that I owe big thanks to everyone who continues to book my time and keep me employed in the music biz, and even more importantly, who continue to give me no choice but to be employed in the business of ALWAYS learning, growing, and pushing myself creatively. I wouldn’t be who I am without all of you…

Website: MakeMusicOrDie.com

Instagram: @MakeMusicOrDie

Linkedin: Matt Jefferson (Make Music or Die)

Facebook: Facebook.com/MakeMusicOrDie