by Mike Lisching
Matt Jaffe is a San Francisco–based singer, songwriter, and guitarist known for blending sharp lyrical storytelling with the raw urgency of rock and indie music. First discovered as a teenager by Jerry Harrison of the Talking Heads, Matt has developed a reputation as a prodigious talent, balancing a deep love of melody with incisive, emotionally intelligent writing. On May 11, he will grace the stage of the Mill Valley Music Festival.
Since his debut EP Blast Off in 2015, Matt has released a series of critically praised albums—including The Fire and the Fight, California’s Burning, Undertoad, and White Roses in the Snow—all reflecting an artist unafraid to evolve. His music draws inspiration from icons like Elvis Costello, Tom Petty, and Graham Parker, while maintaining a distinctly personal voice.
A winner of the March Forward American Songwriter Lyric Contest (2024), Jaffe’s songs are celebrated for their wit, soul, and literary sensibility. As a fiercely independent artist, he not only writes and performs his material but often produces his own recordings, layering guitars, bass, synths, and programmed drums with DIY precision.
Inspired by the great lineage of rock n’ roll, he marries literary lyrics with the undeniable urge to dance. Matt has served as musical director for experimental theater, collaborated with poets on genre-bending spoken word, and curated residencies among fellow songwriters.
Matt released his seventh album, Gone Enough to Miss in 2024, and is in the process of finishing its follow-up for release in 2025.
In 2009, a young Matt Jaffe and his dad staked out David Byrne at the backstage artist entrance at the Greek Theater in Berkeley. He got to meet David, and the show… revelatory.
Matt and I chatted last week, just a few days after his 30th birthday, and when he shared that moment, it stuck with me. Every concert-goer has a formative show that lives in their dreams.
When we met, Matt was just back from recording his new album and had a brief moment of downtime before gearing up for summer shows. In just 2 short weeks, Matt will hit the stage of the Mill Valley Music Festival. Mill Valley will be the first to hear sounds from his not-yet-released 8th album.
If you’re new to his music, Matt asks you to take a listen to the recently released single “Play Pretend”, a summary of his musical journey so far.
I did a couple albums that were leaning much more towards the synth-y, new wave thing. This one is leaning back towards a sound that a rock band could just perform on stage. You know, two guitars, bass and drums…And yet I think it’s brought with it sort of an approach to production that’s a little more layered. There are synthesizers on it. There’s vocal production. So for me, obviously there’s recency bias, but I still feel like it is a strong summation of all the different styles I’ve been trying to explore over the last four or five years.
Known as a prolific songwriter, he’s also a dynamic performer, developing his own style and confidence while touring with Chuck Prophet and Blues Traveler. Watching these vets, he’s learned to artfully bring the audience along for the ride using great backstories.
So touring, I’ve learned to incorporate the banter as part of the act…asking a new audience to hear 10 songs they’ve never heard, that’s asking a lot. Whereas if you give each song a little introduction like, “Oh, here’s the song where he did X, Y, or Z.” That gives them something to hang their hat on. So having, like 30 full minutes where every second is scripted is something I’ve learned watching Chuck Prophet, watching Blues Traveler. You can give yourself a little room for improvisation, but ultimately, giving yourself no major wiggle room, is a strength.
Later this summer, he’s playing with a true hero of his, Graham Parker, at Hop Monk Novato. With so much influence from the enclave of Costello, Joe Jackson, and Parker, saying he is excited doesn’t fully capture the admiration.
…To open for someone from the British sort of pub rock, new wave scene. That’s an added level of cool, because one of my big dreams is to tour more internationally, and a lot of my inspiration home base is in the UK. … I would go to the show even if I wasn’t playing. I love his (Graham’s) music, and it’ll be gravy if I happen to have a moment to say “Hi” to him.
I asked Matt if he feels like he’s carrying the torch for Costello and that enclave of artists.
I think there’s a certain style of songwriting that I aspire to. I’ll put it that way. That’s driven by a literary interest, and very much powered by guitar. Something you could show to somebody just sitting down. And at times, maybe a little too clever for its good.… I think I would be honored to be considered someone who is even running with what Costello started. Whether or not I’m running while carrying the torch is another story.
When talking about “where the songs come from”, there is often a discussion around whether the songs are written “with instinct” or “with intellect”. Matt leads with his thoughts on Costello, a top influence of his.
Costello is a great example of writing from intellect, and he’s fantastic, I mean, his countless incredible songs. But I do think he can be too clever for his own good. …. I think he kind of wants people to have to do their homework both lyrically and stylistically.
But Matt hopes to fall closer to the “instinct” side.
I see someone like Tom Petty, who strikes me as very much writing from instinct. He does have incredible turns of phrase, but it hits somewhere differently. It’s not a puzzle, it’s more like a river, in a way. And as someone who does have a lot of literary inspirations in a way. I’m trying to lean a little bit more towards the Petty.
An avid reader, Matt is always collecting phrases and riffs to later incorporate into songs. Songs are often created in an attempt to tell a story or process life experiences.
I think I try to avoid knowing exactly what I’m trying to say with a song, whether to an audience or to myself. I find that things that are overly didactic or moralizing tend not to work for me. So I think it is processing, but in ways that I don’t necessarily fully grasp in the moment.
On using songwriting to process life, Matt continues.
Whenever someone says a song is especially dark or something, I’m like, “oh, I guess so”. But that’s kind of like (the artist) exercising a demon in a way. And I think that creativity is the power to do that.
Matt keeps things close to the vest when writing. It’s rare that anyone, including his fiancée, hears a composition until he can “put a stamp on it”.
It’s daunting. Melodies are different because when I think of melodies, you can just be more like … “Oh, I think this sounds really good”. But lyrics are so personal. And I think the idea that someone, especially someone who I look up to, could just shoot it down immediately is really sort of terrifying.
Yet he has enjoyed collaborating with Chuck Prophet and Tom Higgenson of Plain White T’s, and would love to write with Stephen Merritt from the Magnetic Fields.
He (Merritt) may be my favorite writer for his turns of phrase, and in a big way, the brevity of his songs. They’re often under 3 min, but don’t feel like they sacrifice anything for that length. There’s a quote somewhere. I don’t know who said it, but it says that “all art is too long”. While there are plenty of exceptions to this, I actually agree in principle, and I’m always trying to cut a verse or cut a chorus in half, and he is sort of a beacon of saying it in 2 and a half minutes, and getting out.
For his own songs, he prefers to have the song written and be able to perform it on guitar or piano before he opens his laptop to record. His demos are self-contained these days but the fingerprints of producer James DePrato are all over his process.
The composing feels like the heavy lifting, then, doing a demo where I get to explore a synth part, or a second guitar part, or a terribly programmed drum machine. It’s just so much fun. It sort of feels like the cherry on top after writing… So it’s this really great window to be creative.
Matt’s song vetting and recording processes have changed in the last five years. The COVID pandemic upended the interplay of performance as a tool to vet and refine songs. The question of “Is a song ready for the stage?” is now completely different.
Pre-pandemic, I would perform new songs almost immediately to see how they fared. So it was like, “Oh, a song is performing well on stage”. Let’s get into the studio and do it. Often would perform it like it was on stage, and then and then decorate it from there. Obviously, with COVID, live music stopped. So I started funneling a lot more energy into recording, but without having the sort of vetting process of performing. I would just go into the studio with a song, do the song, record it, and then would have to, reverse engineer it onto the stage. So it’s become more challenging in that a song in the studio may bear no resemblance to the way that I could perform it by myself. Its only form might be barely with a guitar. It might be just like a synth bass and strings or something weird. So it’s become trickier to figure out if a song is stage-ready.
We are a long way from the chia-fueled late nights at Bookbeat in Fairfax, where Matt played open mics as an 11-year-old. Sadly, Bookbeat is no longer, but lives on in Matt’s memories that guided his path to his success in 2025.
It was part bookstore, part cafe, part venue, and I started there when I was 11 years old, and my parents would take me every Monday night as long as I finished my homework, and I was sort of oblivious to so many things, but I just remember it being so wonderful. I tried to learn one new song and write a new song for each Monday.
15 years after that moment at the Greek with his dad, Matt is dreaming of being on the stage at the Greek, and he shows no signs of slowing down, only sharpening his craft with each new release. Whether he is running with the torch lit by Costello or not can be debated, but with instinct guiding his pen and a guitar in hand, he’s steadily building a legacy on his own terms.
See for yourself, come hear Matt play his not-yet-released songs at the Mill Valley Music Festival on May 11! Get your tickets now!
The funny coincidence is that I was at that 2009 David Byrne show at the Greek. I submit this blurry iPhone photo as proof.
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