via MTV
Jim Cantiello interviewed singer/songwriter Mat Kearney, who recently sat down with Idol winner Kris Allen for a songwriting session. Kearney had some nice things to say about Kris:
“We wrote a song and it’s awesome”
“[His people] called me and he flew into town, and I made coffee and we sat in my living room and we wrote some stuff…He sang it in, like, one take and it was amazing. I was like, ‘You should enter some sort of singing contest. You could do something with that…That guy can sing.”
“Someone wants to ‘write’ a song with you, you’re like, ‘Great, you want to come over and I’ll write a song so you can be co-writer’…He was awesome, and he had amazing input and he had a really strong sensibility. … I was like, ‘Wow, this guy’s the real deal!’ “
It was Kris who reached out to Kearney, “”I think [Kris] was just a fan. What he told me was that he was just picking bands that he liked.”
After their songwriting session, there wasn’t much time to record–Kris had to leave town quickly. A search for a recording studio to lay down a demo led them to Kearney’s friend’s “‘ghetto’ makeshift home studio.” Kearney was amazed that Kris nailed the song in one take.
Kearney admitted that he didn’t know much about Kris before their session. He knew that Kris had a wife and Simon didn’t like it and that he sang “Heartless” on the show.
Still, they bonded during the session, sharing the same sense of humor and a love of southern food, “He’s a totally cool guy, totally enjoyed being with him. … I have nothing to say about it other than he was great. And he bought an amazing trout for everyone. We ate trout! Keeping it Southern.”
Kris is typically tight-lipped about his collaborations, but when he worked with Kearney, the twitterverse learned of the collaboration as the two traded tweets like old buddies. It seemed obvious they were hitting it off.
We’ll see if the collaboration paid off when Kris’s album is released on November 17.
Kris has also been collaborating with Joe King of the Fray, Dan Wilson of Semisonic, Jonathan Foreman of Switchfoot, Claude Kelly, David Hodges, Salaam Remi, Ryan Tedder, Mike Elizondo and Chris Daughtry
