WATCH / SHARE “OVER NOW” HERE
SUMMERSETS, THE DUO OF KALLE MATTSON AND ANDREW SOWKA, DEBUT LP, SMALL TOWN STORY, OUT JUNE 9, 2023
PRE-SAVE SMALL TOWN STORY HERE
PRE-ORDER SMALL TOWN STORY HERE
SEPTEMBER TOUR DATES NOW ANNOUNCED
Photo Credit : Cayllan Cassavia // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
This Friday, summersets, the duo of Kalle Mattson and his childhood friend and long-time bandmate Andrew Sowka, will release their debut album, Small Town Story. With one more glimpse at the record before it’s available everywhere, the pair are sharing another track, “over now”, which is “one of a handful of songs on ‘small town story’ completely co-written between Andrew and I, he wrote the music/melodies and I wrote the lyrics,” says Mattson. “I remember in the studio we were really influenced by this more obscure Wilco song ‘Black Moon’ and it was our attempt at doing big CSNY style vocal harmonies throughout. Lyrically, in the sequence of the album, it falls right after the two characters breakup and fast forwards the timeline many years. A tricky, yet important song to set up their eventual reconciliation and the latter third of the album/story. One of my favourites we’ve made as summersets.”
WATCH / SHARE “OVER NOW” HERE
MORE ABOUT SMALL TOWN STORY
September is when summer sets. It marks an end and a beginning. When Mattson was growing up in the small northern Ontario town of Sault Ste. Marie, the melancholic dawn of the school year always felt like it should be a calendar reset. It was that feeling that infuses the debut of, summersets, on its debut album small town story.
The pair of Mattson and Sowka sing together in Everly-esque harmony throughout small town story, a 16-track narrative song cycle. “Most people go the opposite way: they have a band and then they go solo,” says Mattson. “But it’s great to have another voice and share the burden.”
WATCH / SHARE “CHRISTIAN SCIENTIST” HERE
BUY / STREAM “CHRISTIAN SCIENTIST” HERE
Kalle Mattson has won or been nominated for every major prize in Canada for his three consecutive albums 2014’s Someday, The Moon Will Be Gold, 2015’s Avalanche and 2018’s Youth.. For someone who had almost exclusively written personal material — including an acclaimed breakthrough about the death of his mother when he was a teenager — the singer-songwriter on the cusp of turning 30 was ready for a new challenge.
That’s when he wrote “never love another”, detailing the arc of a fictional relationship inside six verses, inspired in part by songwriters who put short stories to melody: John Prine, Bruce Springsteen, and Kathleen Edwards (the latter from Mattson’s current home of Ottawa).
WATCH / SHARE “AFTERALL” HERE
BUY / STREAM “AFTERALL” HERE
Mattson wanted to sing and record the song as just a duo with Sowka, who had played in his backing band for years. While touring Youth., the two of them would do four songs in the middle of the set, calling it “the Simon and Garfunkel section” of the show. The first song they then co-wrote was “fake flowers”; that and “never love another” were released on a six-song EP in 2020, credited to a new name: summersets, a reference to the opening line of “fake flowers” and a recurring theme throughout small town story.
WATCH AND SHARE “AFTERTHOUGHT” HERE
The story in question follows one couple from the moment they meet as teenagers through various tribulations, including a breakup when one them receives an “acceptance letter” for a college in another town. “afterthought” concludes the first half of the album, flipping perspective between the two characters after their breakup and when one gets into a car crash. The first single, “afterall” brings the characters full circle after years apart and hints at their reconciliation. Closing track “small town story” is the final letter written to the one character who has passed away, a song for a final-credit sequence.
Mattson wrote all songs in first-person. “I always find it interesting when a songwriter can write from the opposite gender, and be able to sing from someone who’s not your own age,” he says. The couple in small town story are “a lot younger in the beginning, and at the end they’re adults who are parents. To write from all those perspectives, I’d never done that before. I didn’t realize the parallels to my own life until it was done. I’ve never been in a car crash. I don’t have kids. But the emotional core of a lot of it is true.” It was also around this time, in 2021, that Mattson took a job teaching songwriting classes at Ottawa’s Carleton University, espousing the brilliance of Tom Petty and Gillian Welch to his students.
small town story was recorded in short bursts of a song a day, spread over a three-year period, with producer Jim Bryson (Kathleen Edwards, Weakerthans, Tragically Hip), who is one of only a handful of players on the record. After years of Zoom, “I wanted it to sound like people playing together in a room,” says Mattson. Simplicity was the goal, as was starting anew.
WATCH AND SHARE “PASS ME BY” HERE
“I had been ‘Kalle Mattson’ since I was 19 years old, and I had successes but wasn’t successful,” he says. “I wanted a blank slate. I hope there will be people who listen to this and have no clue about my prior records. It was freeing to not only write in this new style and have this snowglobe of a record, so contained, but to have it not be just my face and my voice and have someone else to share it with.”
As one season sets, another begins.
PRE-SAVE SMALL TOWN STORY HERE
PRE-ORDER SMALL TOWN STORY HEREPRE-ORDER SMALL TOWN STORY HERE
SUMMERSETS TOUR DATES
September 8 - Sault Ste. Marie, ON - The Loft w/ Kalle Mattson
September 9 - North Bay, ON - Gateway City Brewery
September 16 - Sudbury, ON - Knowhere Public House
September 23 - Ottawa, ON - Red Bird
SMALL TOWN STORY TRACKLIST
01 fake flowers
02 anywhere you go
03 christian scientist
04 pass me by
05 except (for you)
06 borderline
07 acceptance letter
08 afterthought
09 only you
10 (over now)
11 afterall
12 before you & i
13 unbelievers
14 never love another
15 more less
16 small town story
