For over 25 years, guitarist, bassist and songwriter Matt Hollywood has staked a reputation as a modern psychedelic and garage-rock mainstay. His first of two runs with the Brian Jonestown Massacre, from the band’s 1990 inception until 1998, is enough to knight him as psych-rock royalty. Nowadays, Hollywood fills a less conspicuous role as Atlanta rockers Reverends’ secret weapon, chasing grassroots success after years of indie rock stardom.
Reverends guitarist, keyboardist and singer Dandy Lee Strickland is no stranger to Hollywood, as the two played together several years ago in Portland, OR band the Rebel Drones, alongside members of the Warlocks and the Dandy Warhols. For the past two years, the former collaborators have lived in Atlanta as roommates, playing a role in each other’s current musical endeavors.
“I’d been in Florida for a while taking care of my mother after she suffered a stroke,” Hollywood says. “When she’d become more stable and I’d found a good assisted living facility for her, I started looking for somewhere I could live that was big enough I could get things done, but close enough to her that I could be there quickly in case of another emergency.”
The move has benefitted Reverends, with Hollywood doing production work on the band’s forthcoming album and occasionally performing with them live. “I told him I had a room open and a good band,” Strickland adds. “We’re old friends, and I think Atlanta just made sense to him.”
Reverends
For Hollywood, the budding partnership provided him with a capable pool of backing musicians when the urge arose to launch a solo act. “When I got some offers to play, it just seemed logical that we all work together,” Hollywood says.
Thus, Matt Hollywood and the Bad Feelings was born. The solo project usually pairs vocalist and guitarist Hollywood with Strickland on rhythm guitar, brother Daniel Strickland on bass and guitarist Taylor Wynn of Reverends, as well as drummer Corey Pallon, formerly of Order of the Owl.
“The songs are mostly things I work on myself, but once other people are involved there [are] always changes,” Hollywood says. “The Bad Feelings is essentially something I tacked on to the end of my name so I wouldn’t feel as silly about going solo. The lineup [isn’t always] the same. That said, everyone who takes part is there because of the creativity and talent they can bring to the songs at the time… I bring in whoever seems right at the moment and has time to do it. We’ve got a pretty deep bench, in sports terms.”
In addition to performing his solo material live since late 2014, Hollywood is plotting a pair of successfully crowdfunded releases relevant to Strickland’s career: the already recorded but unreleased Rebel Drones album and the first Bad Feelings full-length.
“The album’s coming along nicely,” Hollywood says. “Most of what we’re working on continues from things I’ve done before, but goes off in some interesting new directions. It’s not really a psych-rock record by the modern definition. There are elements of that, but I’d like to move away from what seems to me to have become a very stagnant genre. I’m more interested in sounds that are timeless and can’t be pinned down to a particular place or scene.”
For Hollywood, changing musical direction does not diminish the essence of his longstanding approach to songwriting. “I try to write songs in a way that makes you feel like you’ve already known them all your life,” he says. “I try to use the familiar with enough of a twist to make it novel. We live in a time where someone has already done almost anything you can think of with Western music… To me it’s more about being distinctive than original. You can play with what’s gone before, but make your hooks huge, and always try to get stuck in people’s heads.”
Once the Bad Feelings and Reverends albums hit the streets, Hollywood says his family of bands will take a DIY approach to touring, something that wasn’t an option when playing with indie legends Brian Jonestown Massacre. “It’ll be interesting going back to touring on a small scale, rather than as part of something that’s essentially become a profit-making machine,” he says. “I could probably get used to crashing on people’s couches after the gig again.”
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