Matthew Kerns
Matthew Kerns is a historian, author, and digital archivist from Chattanooga, Tennessee. He grew up traveling in the western United States while listening to Steely Dan, pastimes that over the years have turned into writing about western history and following Steely Dan on their 2000 tour. His most recent public project is the Walter Becker Media Project, as reported in Rolling Stone. He has won no prestigious awards but was twice the recipient of Media Play #8171's Employee of the Month (May 1998 and August 2001). He manages the popular western podcast Dime Library and the Texas Jack Facebook page. He has had multiple articles about Texas Jack published in The Texas Jack Scout, the triannual publication of the Texas Jack Association. His forthcoming book Texas Jack: America's First Cowboy Star will be available May 1, 2021, from Two Dot Books.
Twitter: @mattkerns
Instagram: @kidcharlem
Have you ever experienced Imposter Syndrome?
Big time. I always intended on being a fiction writer, so writing non-fiction struck me internally as something I was not remotely qualified to do. I spent the better part of the research, and much of the initial writing phase of my book terrified that some more established, ostensibly better, author would announce their Texas Jack Omohundro biography. At some point, and I can't pinpoint exactly when it happened, it felt like no other author could have written the book I had written...the one that NEEDED to be written. There was a moment on a Zoom conference last year when an incredible historian named Louis Warren deferred to me on an issue related to my research, and it felt like in that moment I was completely validated. Established writers, remember that your words, especially of encouragement, have a lot of power.
Is there a work of art that you love. Why? Have you ever visited it in person?
I was never a Van Gogh fanboy, and found the veneration of the man and his art a little absurd, until the moment when I stood in front of Starry Night at the MoMA in New York and found myself completely transported. It wasn't just that I got the painting, or the artist, but that something woke up in me that would never go back to sleep. I felt the same way, years later, when I went to the Musee d's Orsay in Paris and saw his Starry Night Over the Rhone. The colors are the same as when you pull it up on your screen at home or see it in a coffee table book, but there is something about the depth that draws you in and holds you there.
What’s your favorite comic strip or graphic novel?
I was, and remain, a Superman nut. It's easy to think of the Man of Steel as cliché and as a big superpowered boy scout, but he's only cliché because he is the yardstick by which all other superheroes are measured. It didn't hurt that the movie starring Christopher Reeve came out at just the right time to become the single enduring image of heroism during my childhood. Later, when I discovered that the character's creators were Jewish kids in New York, writing about an outsider--a literal alien--trying not only to assimilate but to better the American culture and city he found himself in, I found something about the character both enduring and endearing in a way that remains true for me even now.
Vacation druthers… City or Rural destination? Why?
Rural for sure. My mother was a teacher, so growing up we tended to head west the moment school was out. My father would pack us all in his big Suburban at 3 or 4 in the morning and we'd hit the road bound for Wyoming or Utah or New Mexico. We spent a lot of time camping and hiking in the deserts or mountains, depending on if it was Spring or Summer break at the time. There are things that cities can offer, like great museums, fine dining, the heights of culture...but for a real reset, or break from whatever tedium day to day life has to offer, give me a winding trail and a sleeping bag every time.
What piece of clothing tells the most interesting story about your life?
In my Senior high-school yearbook there are four or five shots of me other than the main one of me wearing a suit and looking to the left of the camera for some reason. In each of those shots, I'm wearing a t-shirt for the band Steely Dan. I was always a fan, but the summer before my senior year I got a box in the mail with a bunch of concert tees from Walter Becker, the lead guitarist and half of the songwriting duo that made up the group. I spent the summer of 2000 following Steely Dan on tour, acting like a Deadhead, but for a band that tended not to have such vehement fans. I got to know members of the band, including Mr. Becker, who were incredibly kind and encouraging. We kept in loose touch over the years, and after Becker's death in 2017 I teamed up with his estate to design and run a website to give fans free access to his unreleased music.
