ON MEETING MATT HITT

This past Monday I was lucky enough to go to a very intimate show at Local 506 in Chapel Hill to see Drowners along with a couple of other relatively underground bands (if you are unfamiliar with Drowners, here is the promo video for the fall tour that was released this past July). It happened to be my first indoor concert, as every other show I've been to has either been a festival or an outdoor venue. We got there pretty early because I knew we had a good chance of meeting the band beforehand, had dinner in Chapel Hill, and then I loitered around the venue during their sound check. Somehow, the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, god bless his soul, was on my side, because shortly after sound check ended, I noticed a lanky figure in all black about to cross the street a few yards away, smoking a cigarette (ding, ding, it was Matt Hitt!!!!). A friend of mine and I basically hauled ass (as coolly as one can) over to him and briefly introduced ourselves. He was very nice, a little bit shy it seemed. I remember that he seemed smaller in person, even though he still towered over me by at least seven or eight inches. For those of you that aren't familiar with the lovely Matthew Hitt, here's a little background info: Matt formed Drowners back in early 2012 when he moved to NYC from Wales to pursue a career in modelling. The band's first full length album was released at the beginning of this year, and since the release of their earlier EP, they have toured the U.S. and Europe, doing a number of solo shows and also opening for acts like Arctic Monkeys, The Vaccines, Foals, SKATERS, and Temples. Matt has become a pretty established model as well, and in all honesty I kind of just want to sit him down and feed the guy a cheeseburger. He's absolutely precious though, and he complimented my shirt (it's made by a company that his bandmate, Jack Ridley, supports if I'm not mistaken--there's definitely some affiliation) and was really nice about taking pictures and I felt really bad because it looked like he had been about to make a phone call before we essentially ambushed him but he was very chill about it. He was happy to sign my CD and even happier to take a picture and then he went on his merry way while I quietly freaked out.

Here are our photos together:

The show wasn't for a couple of hours so we hung out at the venue until they let us in and then hung out through the first two bands which were pretty awful, in all honesty. Finally, around eleven, Drowners started setting up and Matt Hitt was pathetically drunk and very touchy with his band mates (which was kind of adorable). They opened with "My Little Red Book" which was really exciting, considering I'm a huge fan of The Last Shadow Puppets' cover of the same song back in 2008, and throughout the rest of the show it was a constant back and forth between jamming out and making sure Matt Hitt wasn't about to fall on top of me. Eventually he did fall off the stage, the poor guy, but luckily he seemed alright afterwards. It was actually pretty comical, to tell the truth, and Matt made it into a valuable learning moment, slurring "Shakespeare used little boys in his plays for women parts, how much more embarrassing is that than me falling off the stage?" A part of me desperately hopes (and wholeheartedly expects) that one day Drowners will become huge and I'll have the fortune of being able to say that I saw them when they were just starting out, met Matt and Jack, kissed Matt's neck, drank from his beer, and got him to sign my CD. Oh, and Matt actually sat through an entire song.
Probably the funniest/strangest moment of the show was the very end, when Matt decided he wanted to crowd surf in the tiny congregation of teenage girls clustered at the stage--literally there were like, sixty of us; the show wasn't even close to being sold out. He ended up kind of rolling onto my sister and then into this one girl's arms and nobody could even lift him up because, despite his lanky frame, the man is over six feet and he's got pretty broad shoulders, so it ended after a few seconds with a bunch of people just kind of gently setting him on the ground. That didn't stop him from trying it a second time, however, at which point I think everybody was a little fed up with his antics and he ended up on the floor in shockingly less time. I wanted to help him back up on stage the second time because frankly, it was about four feet high and he was just so drunk, but he decided to kind of thrust himself on stage and I ended up getting shoved out of the way by nothing other than Matt Hitt's nonexistent butt, which was a beautiful experience, naturally. We left pretty much immediately after the show ended--I'd already met Matt and gotten Jack to sign my CD as well and I was pretty pooped and kind of in a daze. All in all, I think they're great live, or rather I think they have the potential to be great live. Let's face it--it must've been kind of an off night. I mean, a Monday night in Chapel Hill during the university's fall break? What idiot scheduled that show for them? So I do feel bad, but I still think they're talented and they played well and while Matt's stage presence was, well, borderline cataclysmic, he was still entertaining and somehow charming.


Here are a few of the videos and photos I took. Sorry the photos aren't great quality--I was reluctant to use flash because I was right underneath Matt and I didn't want to aggravate him but the red light was pretty garish:

SETLIST:

MY LITTLE RED BOOK (COVER)

WAYS TO PHRASE A REJECTION

LUV, HOLD ME DOWN

WATCH YOU CHANGE

PURE PLEASURE

WELL, PEOPLE WILL TALK

UNZIP YOUR HARRINGTON

A BUTTON ON YOUR BLOUSE

LET ME FINISH

SEX BEAT (COVER)

LONG HAIR

SHELL ACROSS THE TONGUE

BAR CHAT

(Matt Hitt, if you ever stumble upon this post, know that I love you)