Photo by Caity Krone“You can’t have one without the other,” sang Frank Sinatra on “Love and Marriage.” For Mt. Joy, the group’s musical matrimony comes in the form of touring the world and playing for crowds of rapturous fans before settling down in a recording studio.
Life on the road inspires those studio recordings, and by the end of a tour, “you’re probably as close playing-wise as a band as you’ll ever be,” explains vocalist and guitar player Matt Quinn. “It’s sort of like the whole tour ends up being a practice session. When you do finally get these new songs, you’re feeling like the band’s playing well together, and it’s a good time to press record.” To be honest though, “there’s really no other way for us to do it,” Quinn adds.
Last summer, the five-piece indie rockers played some of the country’s most iconic venues from coast to coast on their North American tour. From California’s Greek Theatre and the Hollywood Bowl, to Red Rocks in Colorado, to Boston’s Fenway Park with Noah Kahan and headlining NYC’s Madison Square Garden, the group’s tour schedule is no less busy this summer—thanks in part to the late-May release of their fourth LP, “Hope We Have Fun.” Accompanying Quinn are guitarist Sam Cooper, drummer Sotiris Eliopoulos, bassist Michael Byrnes and Jackie Miclau on keys and piano, and they’ll revisit some of these same stages and cities this year.
“We’ve been touring pretty consistently for the last eight years, and so we’ve kind of learned to make albums in the little spaces that we have between tours,” Quinn says. “Hope We Have Fun” was no different: “It was made mostly in two installments between two big tours where we had a little break between them. We made about half the album, and then we went back on tour, and made the second half [at] the beginning of this last year.”
Appropriately enough, the first sounds broadcast from “Hope We Have Fun” were the catchy strums of the poppy “Highway Queen,” released a year before the album was even announced. At the time, Quinn didn’t even know what would come of this track:
“That one was just one of those songs in songwriting where it came together really fast. It didn’t feel like it needed a whole lot—pretty straightforward tune. So it was like, ‘Hey, let’s record this and put it out and see if it fits on the record once we make the record,’ because we really hadn’t made the record.”
This year’s April showers brought “God Loves Weirdos,” a true ode to life on the road that romanticizes 4am pit stops at gas stations selling amusing tchotchkes while also pondering the idea of “a benevolent god who actually cares for everyone. I thought that was the point of Christianity, but [it’s] certainly been turned on its head at times,” Quinn explains, “and I just like the idea of flipping it back and throwing that back at people as much as possible.”
During these wee hour refills, “there’s a Wendy’s attached to a Love’s stop or whatever, and we’re all so excited to get in there. And there’s usually ridiculous T-shirts in there that might as well say ‘God Loves Weirdos,’ you know, just a crazy collection of giant trucks on a shirt or like Elmo—things that don’t make any sense,” Quinn describes. “We’ve really fallen for those places, and we’ve gotten some funny memorabilia from them.”
It’s a song that shows how silliness can shine through the grind. Give into laughter when you’re exhausted rather than hold emotions in. The original intention was for “the song to be really sweet but have this underlying darkness,” which represents “how anxiety seems to work,” Quinn says. Amongst the euphoric moments, “there’s constantly that sort of devil on your shoulder,” one that can overtake you. The dark companion to the joyful and buoyant “God Loves Weirdos” is one-minute of intensity in the form of the driving, distorted “Scared I’m Gonna Fuck You Up,” which juxtaposes “something really sweet against something really frenetic.”
“You have these great moments, but in the back of your mind, there’s always this part of you that can’t be present because you’re worried more about maintaining a good thing than just enjoying it while it’s there.”
The importance of living in the moment comes into even more clarity with the following track, “Lucy,” prompted by an encounter with an old friend after the band’s sold-out Garden show in New York. The friend had been recently diagnosed with multiple brain tumors and the prognosis was uncertain. Mt. Joy was riding high, having just played “The World’s Most Famous Arena,” but in an instant, Quinn and Co. were faced with the short, fragility of life. Inspired, he wrote “Lucy” in tribute, opening with “I wanna live like Lucy died, living my life wire to wire,” recounting her dancing, skydiving and drinking cheap champagne. (The good news is that she’s still alive today and accessing the treatments she needs.)
Released on May 30, 2025, "Hope We Have Fun" is Mt. Joy's fourth studio album.“Hope We Have Fun” documents it all—from “rare moments of peace” to “crazy, high-energy moments,” Quinn says. Life on the road can be stressful. It can also be funny. “I hope every band makes as many jokes as we do on the road, and it sort of becomes that summer camp vibe. I think there’s every emotion. And if our goal was to sort of soak up the last couple years of Mt. Joy and project it into the world, I think it has that roller coaster that I think the record has.”
Quinn hesitates to dub themselves touring machines because “that doesn’t capture the soul of our project.” “We love to do it, but we’re glorified traveling salesmen,” leaving home and families behind to travel from city to city hawking tunes and merch.
Hoping we have fun means that both the band and audiences are enjoying themselves, which is something that’s reflected in the playful transitions heard on their 2024 release, “Live at The Salt Shed.” Featuring snippets of iconic songs like Fatboy Slim’s “Praise You,” Grateful Dead’s “Casey Jones,” Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams,” The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby,” Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind?” and The Velvet Underground’s “Oh! Sweet Nuthin’,” “We’re a band that likes to jam,” Quinn admits. “We have great players in our band… so how do you get the best out of a Mt. Joy show?” You let the whole band shine. “Over time, we’ve all gotten better at playing with each other and improvising.”
“The spontaneity of it… keeps you fresh throughout a year of playing music every night. It really is difficult six weeks into a tour to play the same exact thing over and over and over again. Each year as we grow, we challenge ourselves to push it in different directions, as much as makes sense, and I think it ends up being a band that jams.”
“People who love to play music are going to want to express themselves beyond a recording,” Quinn continues. Making a recording and playing live each provide unique challenges, “and I think that those two things should be separate.” From hoots and hollers to moonwalking or James Brown’s splits, all artists have improvisations that allow them to further express themselves during live shows, “maybe in ways that they wanted to on the recording but that medium didn’t lend itself to that.”
Mt. Joy live at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall on Aug. 12, 2022—click here to see more photos by Blake Sourisseau“We’re so lucky to be able to do what we do, and there’s such a pull as you gain notoriety or success to add a level of seriousness to it,” Quinn says, but “the moment that you take yourself seriously, or allow yourself to be sort of self-important in any way, is the moment that the real power of art and connection with people starts to degrade.”
“I still don’t think you should ever forget that music is fun and should be approached with that sort of weirdness and always trying to make sure you’re not taking yourself too seriously.”
Here’s to having fun.
