When Matt Larson takes the stage at Eamon Patricks Public House on Saturday, you may want to congratulate him. He survived 8,684 miles in a 31-foot RV with his wife, three young boys and a lab/chow mix — all in the name of music.
Larson, a Bloomington native who also has lived in Peoria, has spent the last few years living a quiet life in Fort Mills, S.C., with his family. His music career was coming along nicely and he had several shows booked on the East Coast but wasn’t too excited about all the back-and-forth traveling it would require.
Larson’s wife Kara suggested they tackle a tour together — as in, more together time than most families ever know. They ended up selling their house in and buying an RV, which Larson calls “a glorified dorm room.”
“Everybody thought we were insane,” Larson said, “but it seemed like a good idea. Family is priority for us, and to really get your career going you have to be out playing a lot. It made sense for us to all be together.”
They stayed on the road for four months, homeschooling their 7-year-old (the other boys are ages 4 and 2) while Larson spent his evenings playing gigs in cities from New York to Washington, D.C. to Canada and the Carolinas. They almost decided to stay put for good in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania.
“It’s so beautiful,” Larson said of the area. “We were talking about making our way out to Alaska. But we didn’t make it past Illinois.”
The family was visiting Peoria in November when they decided to hang up the driving gloves. The weather was getting colder, and they had enjoyed reconnecting with friends and family; it felt like they had found something they had been missing for awhile.
These days, they are calling Peoria Heights home. The RV is in storage now and the family plans to sell it. Larson is focusing on booking gigs in the area; he has a show Saturday at Eamon Patrick’s Public House.
Larson said a critic has described his mellow, acoustic music as “Ben Folds meets Ben Harper meets Coldplay meets something else. ... If you find a category that I fit, that would be great,” he says.
Larson has created two full-length albums — “Elevator People” (2001) and “This Living Room” (2006) — and currently is working on his third, titled “Space and Time.”
The song writing will be a lot easier now — he didn’t have much of an office in the RV, and Internet and phone service were always spotty.
Although the whole journey may sound crazy to some, Larson is happy they went on the road.
“We stayed in some really nice campgrounds,” he said, and the boys didn’t mind the togetherness.
“If they have rocks and dirt and bugs, they don’t need too much else,” said Larson, laughing as he recalls ticking off about 10 orange construction cones in the RV during a moment of unbridled adventure, his three boys egging him on.
“There are not too many kids that say, ‘Yeah when we were younger our parents sold their house and bought an RV and went on the road,’ ” Larson said. “I think that will be pretty cool for them to talk about — later on, after they’ve completely repressed all of the horrible memories from the trip.”
Danielle Hatch
Journal Star’s Entertainment Editor.
http://www.pjstar.com/stories/032708/DAN_BG5BAV06.030.php
