Meeting the very ordinary Matthew Mole

"Is it okay if I go now?" asks Matthew. We barely started our interview, but the sound crew is already rounding him up him to get on to the stage. 

"Of course!" I say. Why is Matthew asking my permission?

Mat's latest album, The Home we Built, charted number one internationally on iTunes the day of its release and Matthew and Jeremy Loops are the stars of tonight's show. 

A whole crowd is awaiting his appearance, still he apologises to me, the media-girl he just met, because he has to "inconvenience" me do his job. 

Mat returns backstage after hugging and smiling for pictures with queues of fans. 

"Exhausted from smiling so much," he says wiggling his mouth.

oments later, he flops down in a seat next to me and asks me if I want to continue the interview. I just want to give him a breather, but he apologises again for interrupting the interview earlier. Okay then. Here we go:

On an average how many hugs do you get after a show?

Mat: Haha, did you just add that question in?! I don't actually know. Not many usually, but it looks like a lot because of tonight. Maybe Stellenbosch people like to hug a lot. Which is good, because it's cold tonight.

How did you get into making music?

Mat: My dad would always play guitar and I always thought that was pretty cool, so I asked him to teach me. He actually bought me my first guitar and taught me a few chords and songs and that got me started. I started playing piano and teaching myself the basic stuff a few years later.

How do you write your music?

Mat: First I strum a few chords on the guitar and come up with rhythms. Usually in my bedroom or somewhere I'm on my own. I record those on my laptop or wherever and add in few other things, like instrument ideas. Like the percussive thing or organ or something electronic and then I come up with melodies I can sing. Before I come up with the music, I come up with a theme for what's the song about. Then depending on how happy or how sad the song sounds I write and add in the lyrics.

"Kill them!" shouts Mat, watching me squat a row of ants nipping at my ankles.  "Arrgg, these ants, hey! Should we move so they won't bite you?" I say him I'm fine.

"Hopefully that doesn't sound like part of my musical process - 'Kill them', haha" , grins Matthew. 

How does your faith and your music come together?

Mat: It's linked kind of directly. Like my faith is just my life. Like Jesus is just kind of the center of my life. I write songs about what speaks to me in life and it's always going to be based on Jesus and stuff that I've learnt in my walk with God. Even though there might be a few songs about girls I try and add God in somehow, because He's my life, so He's got to be part of my songs.

What do you do when life gets you down?

Mat: It sounds like a typical songwriter thing  to say, but if you're feeling down it just helps to write and use that, not to write negative or depressing songs, but to kind of deal with it somehow. It's a way to make it a bit easier, kind of. I just like the idea of that. I try not to listen to music or be around people that are going to make me feel down. I try and surround myself with people that are going to uplift me. So I don't often find myself feeling down.

Throughout the interview every time my hand moves down to slap away a few ant-offenders, Matthew pauses to ask me if I'm all right.

What's the silliest thing you ever got yourself into?

Mat: I almost went to jail. 

We were walking around in my neighborhood in Sun Valley in Cape Town at night. We were walking home from someone’s house to my house and one guy rolled a wheelie bin on the side of the road. Long story short, someone thought we where stealing stuff and they called the neighborhood watch. When the neighborhood watch came to us we thought someone was trying to kidnap us. So we started running and then we spilt up. Later I got a call from this guy saying "Ja, I'm actually in jail 'cos the cops caught me". So I had to go and get this guy out. We went to court the next day. There wasn't a case, because we didn't do anything wrong. So we were fine after that. It was all just so stupid.

How would you describe the essence of your relationship with God?

Mat: The one thing that stands out in my relationship with God is just grace. Just kind of the way I do what I love to do and I'm the worst person. Well, I'm not the worst person, but everyone towards God - their lives aren't the best. It's just so cool that He's blessed me with the life that I have.

After every question, deep or trivial, he asks me if his answers make sense. It feels as though he is focused intently on helping me get the answers I want to write my story. It feels like he genuinely considers my job equal to his, my journey equal to his. Not something you expect from such a great upcoming celeb.

Is there a specific time in your life that you came to know grace?

Mat: I guess because I've been raised in a Christian family it's always been part of my life. I've just been learning about it my whole life. There's been a bunch of moments in my life that it's been evident, like when things have happened that I didn't really deserve at all. Like with music and relationships and stuff where God has just been there the whole time.

I picked up the theme of pride in your song We, in You, confide - is it about pride?

Mat: Pretty much. Most of the songs are troubling through that, because my parents and a lot of people have tough me about humility and being humble which is kind of cool when you meet someone. And I want to try and be like that. I think it's an important thing to have - a cool quality.

After being around Mat for about an hour, I can most certainly yup, Mat you're kind of cool when I met you. You get it right not because you completely disregards your famousness - but rather because you puts others at ease being yourself. You have nothing to prove and you seem to genuinely cares about other peeps - like you would care for yourself. And not in a creepy I-want-something-in-return way (be it approval or me writing a good article on him), but in a one-person-to-another way. You're cool Mat. 

Isn't pride a huge issue when you become famous?

Mat: Ja, it's hectic. You see so much of that happening to people. If something happens too fast and can go to the head, but there's a lot of people in the industry that are really cool. People to look up to in being humble. I meet a lot of people and realise they're just such good people and it hasn't gone to their heads at all and they're so successful. When I meet people like that it's just motivation to be more like that.

I make him show me his tattoos and then end off the interview with a thank-you. "You sure you've got everything you need?" he asks and after I nod enough times he believes me and thanks me genuinely. Mat's being doing that all night - boomeranging thank-you's and compliments right back at the senders.

The most striking thing about meeting up with Matthew Mole is how normal he is. You get the sense that he is just an ordinary guy that enjoys goofy jokes, gets irritated and shy and exhilarated. That has tons of fun, but makes tons of mistakes and apologizes for them just like anyone else. That he longs for God and really can't do without Him. He seems to rely on humility and the grace of God to become a better man, rather than doing so by his own success.

What a relief. Not because a famous dude seems imperfect too, but because he reminds you that it's okay. God's grace frees you to be your ordinary self and His grace give all extraordinary things you need.

MAT'S TATS

Airplane: for traveling (related to Mat 28 verse 16)

Cross: for God

Heart: on his marriage finger for his wife and to symbolise his love for Jesus

Elephants: Elephants mean nothing to me; I just thought it be a cool thing to do, since I've been to Thailand.

The word Free: Everyone is like: 'ah was that tattoo for free' which is pretty lame. It just freedom from God. Once I realised how much of an impact God had in my life, I realised how much freedom I have in life. Freedom from death.

Do you find God gives you freedom in your life?

Ja, caring about the world - not in an emo way. Ja, ja big time. To live the life I need to live rather than doing whatever I want, for myself. 

MAT'S FAVS

Band: Sleeping at Last (at the moment)

Food: Fried rice with chicken

Person: 

< Joey Tribbiani (a character in the TV series, Friends)

MAT ACCORDING TO A BUDDY (thanks Daniella Potgieter!)

He is the most humble human being on the planet probably. I know this Scripture in Philippians that talks about of guarding your heart and mind in Jesus Christ and that pretty much sums up Matthew, despite the fame and everything he finds himself in he's really taking such care and such effort into guarding his heart. 

Someone was saying once, which just really stuck with me, like how Mat doesn't even have to open his mouth for you to see, you don't have to hear the words he's playing for you for you to be able to see when he's standing on stage that there's just something different about him. You can really just tell there's the Spirit of God that exists in him. That's just the perfect summary of who he is.

He's been the same Matthew that I met before he was very big to the Matthew that he is today.

"The Matthew you see on stage is definitely the Matthew off-stage. I've never seen anything else."

He's goofy and he's awkward sometimes, but he's really chilled and really cool.

How is Mat's relationship with God?

His relationship with God is really awesome and really solid, because it's just something he carries with him part of who he is. He doesn't have to go around and declare like "I'm a Christian" to make people change their mindsets of him, like it's just the way he is. He's not someone that will sit you down and be like "Ok let's talk about God". It's something that will come up if it comes up and then it will be Spirit-guided.

Music is such a big part of his life, but God is the center and music is just what he's been using to glorify God's name. That maybe not even be his main intention, but it just comes from his heart, because that is Mat's heart.

What is the silliest Mat's done?

Mat likes to tune people allot. He tunes me allot. So he likes to put you in weird positions sometimes. This one time we were in a restaurant and he thought it would be funny to put my name, the most random hashtags and my number on a serviette and give it to the waiter.

Today we went for lunch and the waiter came up saying "Oh my word, I didn't know you were famous. And then I just joked saying "Ja, I'm also famous". And then Mat was like "You know Taylor Swift, right?". 

The waiter was like "no, I don't know Taylor Swift and Mat said, "Well this is Taylor Swift, so you can tell people you met Taylor Swift".