 |
 Matthew Good has just recovered from a bout of pneumonia, but he’s ready to hit the road in support of his new album, Vancouver. |
If what doesn’t kill you really does make you stronger, Matthew Good should be practically indestructible by now.
For most of his life — and especially the past few years — the Canadian alt-rocker has survived a veritable laundry list of hardships, crises and emergencies.
Mental illness, divorce, prescription drug dependency, disease, you name it, he’s endured it.
In fact, sometimes it seems the only thing Good can’t catch is a lucky break.
So when the 38-year-old singer-guitarist calls from Toronto — where he’s been holed up rehearsing with his band — it’s no surprise that he begins by saying he just got out of the hospital a few days earlier.
“I had pneumonia,” he says matter-of-factly, as if recalling his breakfast.
|
“I thought I was just run-down because we were working pretty hard, but a few days ago, I woke up and stumbled into the bathroom and vomited. Then I passed out — and when I woke up, there was an ambulance there and I was being taken to the hospital. It was not fun.”
Even less fun: While he was there, he was quarantined for several hours while doctors tested him for H1N1.
“Thankfully, the blood work dismissed it,” he says. “Though the funny thing is that my girlfriend called me yesterday from back home in B.C. and both she and my stepdaughter have it. I’m lucky I don’t — I’m the kind of person who would be hit superhard by it.
“My whole life, I’ve had a very bad immune system. When I was a small child, I spent time in an oxygen tent because of my lungs. From an early age, I had bronchitis at least once a year.
“Then when I was 28 or 29, I was diagnosed with sarcoid, which causes inflammation of the nodes in your body, especially in your lungs. In fact, what I just went through are the same conditions Bernie Mac died from. He had sarcoid too and then he got pneumonia.”
But, to borrow a line from Drive-By Truckers, Good can’t die now — he’s got another show to do. He and his band are heading out on a gruelling 33-show Canadian tour to promote his eighth studio album Vancouver, a loose concept disc set in his hometown. He’s at Massey Hall Dec. 18 and 19.
‘PERSONAL POINT OF VIEW’
“After such a long period of time living there and watching the city transform as I have, it seemed like an appropriate time to use it as a backdrop to talk about more introspective material — my experiences of living there. I didn’t set out to write something that attacked or glorified the city; I just talked about it from a very personal point of view.
“There’s only a couple of blatant references to the city itself in terms of socio-economic conditions — and they’re just true statements. The rest of it, there’s a lot of ambiguity.”
If you think that sounds like the notoriously mercurial Good — who reportedly used to sell tour merch that read ‘I hear Matt Good is a real a--hole’ — is mellowing as he heads into his fifth decade, you might be right. Credit his most-publicized health crisis: A full-on nervous breakdown he suffered three years ago which landed him in a psych ward where he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
It was the bottom, he admits — but because of that, there was nowhere to go but up.
“When I got diagnosed, it was like someone lifted a dump truck off me. It was like my life made sense all of a sudden. Everything fell into place for me,” says Good, whose previous album Hospital Music dealt with his breakdown and recovery.
“The fact that I went through all that was an insane positive.”
And while his treatment — which includes a regimen of meds — hasn’t changed the way music comes to him, he does have a healthier relationship with his muse these days, he says.
“Say I’m laying in bed and I hear the inkling of something in my head. Fourteen years ago, I would have jumped up and tried to capture it. Now I lay there and go, ‘Nah, that one’s probably not worth it,’ ” he laughs.
“I lay there and make this deal with myself: If it’s any good, I’ll remember it in the morning. I might miss a few things, but I get a better night’s sleep.”
For the next few weeks, he ought to be resting easy.
“I’m a big fan of tour buses — I sleep better on them than anywhere in the world. And I should be OK health-wise; I’m a bit of a boy in a bubble on tour, and I keep it very cold, about 65 F in the sleeping compartment. So that keeps anything from spreading. The only thing I have to worry about is if I do autograph signings after the show.”
Can’t see what he’s concerned about; the way he’s going, it would probably take a Biblical-level plague to stop him.