Accomplished songwriter and Just Jinjer frontman Ard Matthews still says he’s nursing a “daily psychological trauma”.
|||It’s been a year since the fateful incident, but accomplished songwriter and Just Jinjer frontman Ard Matthews still says he’s nursing a “daily psychological trauma”.
Matthews apologised last year after bungling the words of the national anthem on live television in August, after he was widely criticised on Twitter after his performance in Johannesburg at the announcement of the Springbok squad to the Rugby World Cup.
“It was a big wake-up call for me. I was kinda cruising and my foundations were shaken. It taught me that there’s a lot I still need to learn, take in and understand. I saw how quickly things can go wrong,” said Matthews in an interview with the Daily News yesterday.
He said he knew that the majority of the country had forgiven him, but would never forget the incident.
He said a very low point was when he looked up the write-up on himself on Wikipedia.
“It says that I’m best known for messing up the anthem,” he said.
Matthews was in the city to promote his debut album First Offerings with live band The Ard Matthews Affair and features Ard on vocals and bass guitar accompanied by an all star line-up that currently consists of John Ellis (Tree 63) on guitar and Josh Klynsmith (Gangs of Ballet) on drums.
The album, he said, drew on many themes and thoughts and was recorded over the period of many months, predominantly at his beach house in Durban where he now lives with his dog Jeff.
He said that he was the predominant songwriter in the band and said that he meant no disrespect towards his team mates, but needed a change.
“I might have bitten off more than I intended to chew. I produced, recorded and wrote all the songs by myself, and while it sounds cool, it certainly wasn’t clever,” he said, laughing.
He said that he spent only two months in the studio, but the album took two years to complete.
“I hate to define it or give it a genre. It’s unique. It’s got such a different collection of sounds like INXS, The Beatles, Jinjer … but overall it’s probably rock,” he said
He said that Just Jinjer band members said they were okay with it but they felt insulted after he had told them that he would not play live with them until the band released a new album. - Daily News
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