Find your freedom machine
Matty Matheson on personal sauce development, putting guardrails on creativity, communing blissfully with O.G. Hell's Angels energies & more
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Matty Matheson — he’s a kindvibed Canadian fireball of UNRULY CHARISMA; a dope-food-and-travel-TV host several times over; and the “kitchen mastermind” behind mad popping restaurants. Also on some triumph of the human spirit s**t he partied so fatalistically hard in his youth that he got LAID ON HIS A** by a heart attack at age 29 — thankfully he bounced back, with time and help from ppl who love him, and came out of the experience with a powerful combination of humility and wisdom beyond his years !!
The next time I’m in Toronto (the city that Matty has long called home, and one we have long loved) I’m going to eat as many meals as possible at Matty’s newest restaurant, Prime Seafood Palace, where the ambiance is so long on “luminous sculptural blond wood” that, gazing upon the pictures, you might think you were beholding the cafe from DENMARK’S LOUISIANA MUSEUM or something… and the food sounds insane 2 boot. Abbondanza!
If all that wasn’t enough, Matty’s taste in CLOTHES is inspired — he executes wild visions with boisterous wit and scuzzy panache — so you know we had to get on an encrypted SpyVideo line with him the other day and chop it up about cheffing it up gourmandishly with GUARDRAILS; rocking fly fits as a “big f**king round ball”; and finding a hobby that makes him feel FREE (so free it trapped him and replaced jawnz copping in his “addict brain” ??)…
Blackbird Spyplane: It’s clear in every pic you’ve taken, except for when yr naked on the toilet taking selfies, that you get a kick out of clothes, AND you figure out how to pull off garments and combos that could easily go extremely wrong. You don’t just wear Carhartt, you wear Carhartt overalls, or you’ll rock Chanel sunglasses with a thrashed Biohazard tee, or like a leopard-print kimono fleece over yr bare chest with some double-knee jeans and a balaclava …?? The effect is advanced “dirtbag flamboyance” … When did you feel like you locked in yr own sense of style?
Matty Matheson: “I don’t know — I had some scary moments trying to find mine, but part of it definitely comes out of the hardcore punk scene I grew up in, part of it comes from ‘90s Deadheads, where it was about wearing piece-of-shit rugby shorts with some weird fleece: that showed me that, even if it’s a juxtaposition, good pieces go together.
“I’m also a big f**king round ball, so there’s a huge amount of big dudes and larger people who contact me to say, How do you do it? And I say, Just wear stuff that fits! The pants I'm wearing now are, like, 52 x 27s, ‘cause I like to wear them up around my belly. I don’t give a f**k!”
Blackbird Spyplane: It’s like what you’re supposed to do when yr car starts hydroplaning — you’re “steering into the curves,” rather than away from them ; )
Matty Matheson: “I also just wear the same thing every day. I collect t-shirts, but I basically wear this Prince shirt daily because somehow I managed to find the largest Prince shirt in existence, and I love it. Sometimes I wear it inside out.
“But I’ve been whittling away at my clothes — and I don’t wear new stuff anymore. Everything’s vintage. When I first started making a little bit of money, I’d go into Gucci and buy Gucci. And people started sending me stuff from all these brands, even brands from my friends that I was so thankful for and wanted to wear on Vice to put my homies on. But all of a sudden you look down and you’re a walking billboard. It isn’t you anymore. Eventually I said, F**k that. Before fame I wore the same Black Flag shirt for 3 years straight. I had one pair of Vans I wore till my toes were coming out. Like, remember the early 2000s, where everyone had a leather jacket and thought they were cool, wearing black, doing little bumpskis and listening to A.R.E. Weapons?”
Blackbird Spyplane: Wow, A.R.E. Weapons, ahaaaa !!! Man, I think I still have their demo on a burned CD. Homie who played bass bartended at Sweet & Vicious … and maybe dated Chloë Sevigny?? What a time. I gotta go listen to “Street Gang” and see how it holds up.
Matty Matheson: “Back then I’d be wearing some ripped-up punk tee and a leather jacket with a bunch of things on it — and now I’ve gone back to that. Spending on designer clothes is ridiculous to me. These days, every dollar I spend is on motorcycles. I’m in this vortex — all the parts I buy are from the ‘30s, ‘40s, ‘50s, ‘60s. I just bought a motor and an oil bag from 1938. That’s where my addict brain is at, to the point I don’t think about clothes anymore. I’ve got enough clothes.”
Blackbird Spyplane: The photos of yr new restaurant are beautiful. It looks like it could be attached to a design museum, baby…