Mat Kearney is an American singer-songwriter born December 1, 1978, in Eugene, Oregon, and based in Nashville, Tennessee. A sixth-generation Oregonian, he attended California State University Chico on a soccer scholarship, majoring in English literature, before a borrowed roommate's guitar and a natural feel for language set him on a different path entirely. A cross-country road trip with music producer Robert Marvin led Kearney to Nashville, where the two slept in a school parking lot for three days before finding an apartment, began writing demos, and Kearney decided he was never going home. "I called Oregon and said I'm not coming back," he has said, "and I never left Nashville."
His major-label debut Nothing Left to Lose (2006) on Columbia Records — containing many of the first fifteen songs he ever wrote — produced the gold-certified title track, which peaked at number two on the US Adult Alternative Songs chart and number 41 on the Billboard Hot 100. The record introduced his signature sound: acoustic pop rooted in folk and soft rock but infused with spoken-word hip-hop cadences and an emotional directness that felt genuinely personal rather than calculated. He toured in support with John Mayer and Sheryl Crow and earned appearances on The Tonight Show, David Letterman, Ellen, and Jimmy Kimmel Live.
City of Black and White (2009) was his ode to classic Nashville songwriting and represented a more polished, mature step forward. Young Love (2011) drew lyrical inspiration from conversations Kearney had with passengers while working as a licensed cab driver in Nashville — a detail that perfectly captures his approach to the craft. Just Kids (2015) and CRAZYTALK (2019) continued his exploration of genre-bending pop songwriting. Across his career he has accumulated six top-20 hits on the Adult Top 40 chart and had songs placed in dozens of television series including Grey's Anatomy, Friday Night Lights, One Tree Hill, The Vampire Diaries, Parenthood, and Scrubs.
Wayne Dennon photographed Mat Kearney as part of an archive that spanned the full breadth of American music. Kearney sits at an unusual crossroads — too rock for country, too folk for pop, too hip-hop influenced for adult contemporary — and it is precisely that refusal to fit neatly that has made him one of the more quietly durable singer-songwriters of his generation.
