Five Questions: Bucktown Ramblers Founder Mathew Thornton

Mathew Thornton is a man of many talents.

Five years ago Thornton, his wife Kathy, and their daughter Molly opened the Union Coffee House & Café in Buchanan, MI, where he runs the weekly Sunday Music Session in the old Union State Bank building. When he’s not at The U, he’s likely in his wood shop making custom furniture, or in his home studio, where he still occasionally dabbles in the advertising and jingle game, an industry Thornton spent 20 years in. He won a People’s Choice Award for inventing The Noid — the advertising character in a red, skin-tight, rabbit-eared body suit for Domino’s Pizza in the 1980s.

Where Thornton may feel most at home these days, however, is on a stage. Along with cofounder, guitarist, and vocalist Trevor Gibney, Thornton fronts the acoustic band Bucktown Ramblers.

Although the band – formed in 2012 – has largely been a duo, occasionally augmented by other players, Bucktown Ramblers recently unveiled its new six-member lineup with Gibney (vocals, guitar, mandolin) and Thornton (vocals, guitar, banjo) backed by an all-star Southwest Michigan ensemble of Will Navalon (viola, violin), Andrew Osano (cello), Bill Bosler (percussion) and Tim King (bass, soprano sax).

Jeremy D. Bonfiglio: Your original music is obviously influenced by Americana styles such as Appalachian folk and bluegrass, but there are other elements, such as improvisation, mixed in there as well. So how would you describe  Bucktown Ramblers?

Mathew Thornton: It’s a big warm Americana sound, but there aren’t a lot of bands around who sound like us. When Trevor and myself started the band we were looking to create something a little different. It’s like a progressive bluegrass feel. We look more toward groups like Nickel Creek and Alison Krauss and Union Station, and we like to jam some, too, so I’d throw in Béla Fleck and The Flecktones as influences as well. The guys in the group are all accomplished musicians. Tim King plays bass and sax. Bill Bosler, who is really known in this area as a hammered dulcimer player, plays percussion for us. Will Navalon plays viola. He works at Andrews University, but before that he was with the New England Symphonic Ensemble. Then we have another young player from Andrews, Andrew Osano, who plays cello. These are things you don’t normally see in a folk-rock band. It’s a gas.

How did you and Trevor meet and start the band?

He played at one of our sessions here. The whole thing about The U is that it’s all original music. We’re really not interested in people doing covers. It’s not like a bar where we’re trying to put butts in seats. We’re more interested in seeing what musicians are doing around here on their own. Trevor has a group called The Barn Storm, which is essentially him and his wife (Rachel Gibney), and they will then bring in other people to fatten up the group. They came in and played at The U and I just fell in love with them. They had really cool songs. I have a recording studio and they came in and recorded a couple songs. We just hit it off musically. When I had the idea to start the band, the very first guy I thought of was Trevor, and then we just started writing together.

When did you first become interested in playing and making music?

I took piano lessons as a little kid, and finally convinced my mom that I didn’t have to when I was 10. I picked up the guitar when I was 12, and really fell in love with Simon & Garfunkel and Gordon Lightfoot and these folkies that were big at that time. Folk music was huge in the late ’60s, and I really got into it. I tried to pattern my style after Paul Simon because I thought he was the greatest musician ever. I got out of high school, went to Michigan State and got my degree in music from Oakland University. I continued to play folk music and then started to play with other musicians. I started playing jazz and rock. The college scene and music in general in the early ’70s was just a free for all. What’s interesting is that I see that happening again now. You can draw a line from 1974 and 2014 and they are very similar in terms of the creativity going on, and the blooming of original music in communities. I’m seeing a lot of cool original music happening now that I didn’t see in the last couple of decades.

How did you get involved in advertising and jingle writing?

I was an itinerant musician for hire. I had been on the road as a musician playing in all kinds of different bands. Then I got married and we started having babies and I thought, I’m going to have to change this lifestyle. So I thought, what is the least real job I can get, and I BS’d my way into this little ad agency in Ann Arbor as a writer. The agency sort of took off around the same time, and landed the Domino’s Pizza account. I rose up through the ranks and became the creative director. We did some pretty famous stuff. I came up with The Noid. The very first night The Noid came on, the California Raisins were in the same pod of three spots. It was like the California Raisins were the big thing of that year, and then The Noid was considered the infamous version of it. … Eventually I decided I wanted to get back to more music. … I opened my own studio in Chicago from 1995-2005 and did some pretty big advertising stuff. It was a great way to make a good living being a musician without going on the road and playing in bars.

You’ve since closed your Chicago studio and moved it into your home in Buchanan, Mich., where you’ve recorded some jingles along with other area bands. So why don’t we have that Bucktown Ramblers debut album?

(Laughs) It’s hilarious that we don’t have a record out. It’s like being a carpenter who never makes anything for himself. In a sense, I feel this (new lineup) is going to be our real coming out party. Trevor and I always knew we wanted this thing to be bigger. As a duo we love playing, but we always wanted to hear all the other parts we had in our heads. This is what we’re really supposed to sound like. … We feel like we’re really coming together now.