Mat Kearney

Money definitely does not equal success in recording.

I didn't know music would end up being my job, but I loved it so much I wanted to do it every day.

I played soccer. I was really known as an athlete. It was a shock to people that I was doing music. They thought it was really odd.

Owl City is exactly as you'd imagine him. It's hard to have much on him. He's like a frightened bunny. I feel like if you yelled at him, he'd just dart to a corner of the room.

Hopefully, reading and being around great literature inspires me to write songs, but I'm not sure about that.

Being from Oregon, it's part of who I am.

I never got too specialized but did like the Southern Gothic writers like William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor.

I didn't start writing music until I was a sophomore in college. I would steal my roommate's guitar and sit on the front porch and kind of blend this weird spoken word and these little melodies over simple chords; that really started my whole journey as a musician.

When we tour, there's always this unique quality to every town you visit... Touring, you get a sense of a collective identity for different cities. That's one of the things I love about my job.

It's a job, and it's challenging. But I love music and creating. That's why I got into music.

It's been awesome going indie. I don't need to be on a major label. I love not having to walk into a specific radio person's office to try to convince someone to play my songs. At the end of the day, it's more work, but I've discovered that I like to get my hands dirty.

I think the way I love talking about my faith is through my story because I think that's all we have to work with sometimes. I think it's the most moving way to share your story, too - is what you know, what you've seen and heard and tasted and felt.