William Matheny

Material Witness is William Matheny’s third full-length album since 2017, but if it feels more like the confident work of an artist who’s been making music for much longer, there’s good reason for that. The Morgantown, West Virginia, multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter paid his dues early, playing in bands with friends and family for two decades, until he was prepared to make his own mark.
“I felt like I had found my voice for real,” Matheny says of the moment around a decade ago when he realized his songwriting was ready. “Up to that point, it was something I did, but I think it just took me a while to figure out exactly what I had to say.”
From 2017’s Strange Constellations to 2023’s That Grand, Old Feeling, plus a scattering of EPs and singles, Matheny has earned his place as one of the Mountain State’s most vivid and dynamic musical voices. Material Witness, recorded in Nashville with Grammy-winning producer-engineer Justin Francis, raises the stakes with ten original songs that often find Matheny “contemplating mortality and the passage of time,” he says.
Musically, it’s a step forward for Matheny, although not a big departure from his previous work. “It’s sort of like the next room down the hallway,” he says. “When I listen back to it, I definitely see a logical progression.” It’s also the most musically diverse album he’s made to date. “It’s got maybe the most raucous moments with maybe the most delicate moments too,” he says. “I think the emotional range of it is a bit wider than my previous albums. It feels a little less hemmed-in by the idea of fitting into anything.”
Indeed. Material Witness kicks off with the anthemic guitar rocker “Babylon Man” and its memorable chorus chant which inverts Hedy West’s folk revival staple “500 Miles”, “Lord I’m one/ Lord I’m two/ Lord I’m nothing without you.” Matheny shifts gears for track two, “Where Do The People In My Dreams Go,” a meditative, almost midtempo melodic gem with a gentle keyboard riff setting the tone and a string quartet sweetening the arrangement. (Matheny says the music of enigmatic 20th-century songwriter Connie Converse influenced this one.) Track three, “Everyone Leaves Everyone,” has more of an indie-roots feel, with trace elements of Guided By Voices in its opening guitar figure. And track five, “Fairmont Hair” — packed with insider references to his hometown of Mannington, W.V. — is down-and-dirty blues-rock that echoes mid-’60s Dylan or perhaps the Beatles’ “Come Together.”
Tying everything together is Matheny’s voice, a conversational tenor that conveys both hard-won wisdom and heartfelt emotionalism with equal weight and resonance. Traveling out of state to record was a first for Matheny and his band, and he says it helped push them to another level. Strange Constellations and That Grand, Old Feeling “were more homespun affairs,” he explains. “This was a big step up for us. It was our first experience with both isolation rooms and a recording facility that has a mini-fridge.”