With a new Best Of collection out now on vinyl, we spoke to The Big Heist about how they decided which songs made the cut and what sets them apart from other Motern Media bands

When most artists fall 25 songs short of an album goal it can only be considered a catastrophic failure. When The Big Heist falls 25 songs short, they still have a 75-song, three-album cycle called MO75, a concept record about partying in the woods. The Big Heist is a Motern Media supergroup of sorts, a band that Motern founder Matt Farley formed with his three most frequent collaborators: Tom Scalzo (guitars, vocals), Chris “Pete” Peterson (bass), and Doug “Froggy” Brennan (drums). Farley calls himself ”the best and most prolific songwriter of all time” and The Big Heist is a band that is dedicated to only writing the best songs — but they still set their ambitions at ridiculously prolific levels. In the six years since forming in 2018 they have released nine albums. A Thousand Tries is a new Best Of vinyl collection of what the band feels are its strongest songs. For anyone looking to begin the voyage into the daunting catalog of Motern Media, A Thousand Tries is as good of a starting point as any and features some of the strongest material of its vast and eclectic songbook.¹

Any discussion of Matt Farley, Motern Media, and his creative works will usually arrive at the numbers: He is the author of more than 25,000 songs by more than 80 bands and pseudonyms; he has been known to write up to 100 songs in a single day; with Moes Haven bandmate Tom Scalzo they routinely knocked out whole albums in a sitting; he’s sung happy birthday to more than 4,000 names; the annual Motern Extravaganza concerts are often five hours long; he’s also racked up millions of streams by building an empire of songs about poop. If you type your first name or hometown into a Spotify search, you will likely find a selfie of a man in a sweatshirt with arched eyebrows staring back at you. That’s Farley. Finding a Farley song in the wild feels like an impossible collision — surely no one has a song called “[insert topic here]” — until you realize just how vast of a net he has cast across Spotify. And if Farley’s strategy is to flood not only funny, but relatable, search terms with results, the song “I Pooped My Pants (in a Bowling Alley)” has a suspicious amount of plays. He is also maybe the only artist to share his personal phone number at any and every chance. All of this has allowed Farley to quit his job and dedicate his days to working on his own projects and homeschooling his children. If he isn’t tailor made to shake up the artist-unfriendly order of streaming, then who is?

Naturally, many people are skeptical of the quality of the songs when so much emphasis is placed on the author’s ability to churn them out. Not all are sacred moments of revelation. But Farley has a stamina that opens every experience and fleeting thought into a creative pursuit. Everything becomes worthy of exploration — or at his most workman-like, at least worthy of the time it takes for a word, phrase, or joke to be transformed by a melody. Whether in songs that suggest gleeful impulsivity or those with a sense of careful craft, his approach and drive should be something that all artists recognize as a challenge: to literally never stop thinking creatively. His belief is that if you truly like creating things, you create. 

With his longtime friend Charles Roxburgh, Farley is also a filmmaker. The songwriting royalties fund their independent films that they shoot around New England with friends and family as the cast. Motern films carry a similar energy as their songs with monsters or monstrous people clashing with impossibly innocent locals and locales. Farley alternates between hero and villain in their best works like Local Legends, Don’t Let the Riverbeast Get You!, Metal Detector Maniac, Freaky Farley, Magic Spot, and Heard She Got Married. He plays a semi-fictional version of himself in Local Legends (2013) who explains the methods behind his approach to music and the dilemma of being an independent artist who gives everything for his craft — only to see the joke songs triumph over the thoughtful ones. Suffering through downgraded gigs and endless, unwanted feedback from relatives, Farley adapts and proceeds with an unshakable purpose. While it’s easy to focus on the explanations of his idea to flood streaming services with novelty songs, Local Legends shows Farley’s dedication to his music. He goes so far as to reverse-shoplift Moes Haven CDs onto the shelves at a local record store and leave a few around town in the hopes that someone will find and enjoy it.

Related: Read Bennett Glace on Heard She Got Married and Metal Detector Maniac

By the time we get to Heard She Got Married (2021), Farley stars as a once-famous musician who returns to his hometown with heartfelt songs and dispiritingly small audiences showing up to hear them. In the interview that follows, Farley suggests a hesitancy to express his feelings directly through his art and opts instead to use “surrogate” characters. His characters in Local Legends and Heard She Got Married convey the spectrum of joys and frustrations that come from being an unrelenting and unrecognized artist. And as discussed in Will Sloan and Justin Decloux’s book Motern on Motern, there is something oddly sincere and affecting that shines through even in his goofiest songs. Farley says, “[O]nce in a while you’re listening to a weird song and are like, ‘Wait, why am I strangely moved by this?’ I think we go for that all the time.” There is often a push-pull with the audiences in Motern films and songs, almost a friendly dare to get on the same wavelength as the presented work. The films have slowly gained more recognition for their eccentric brilliance and their self-aware humor but entirely non-sardonic tone. And in typical Motern fashion, Local Legends and Heard She Got Married, two of the most acclaimed Motern films, both have sequels that make sure no one places their esteemed originals too highly on any podiums for seriousness. Heard She Got Murdered came out in 2023 and throws every viewer who loved Heard She Got Married for a joyous loop, and the forthcoming Local Legends: Bloodbath, which Farley was editing when we spoke for this interview, is a slasher film. 

Which brings us back to The Big Heist. This is a band that Farley says he’s angry about — because people don’t know how great they truly are. In an age where greatest hits and Best Of records have mostly fizzled into online playlists, The Big Heist decided to let the world in on a little secret: their band writes really good songs, and these are their best ones. A Thousand Tries is a tight collection of songs that alternate between joyous, rocking, and somber. 

We spoke with Farley and Scalzo about the new vinyl release, why Motern Media always aims for lofty goals and never slows down, and why Farley feels his output deserves a Spotify audience at least one-eighth the size of Guided By Voices’.

Split Tooth Media: You two have been longtime musical collaborators and have released thousands of songs under many different musical aliases. What sets The Big Heist apart from other Motern music projects you’ve worked on together?

Matt Farley: Well, there’s four of us, which is a major factor. Four musicians working together, collaborating. I’d say that’s the defining characteristic of this band versus all the others. Also, there’s always humor in all the stuff we write, pretty much, but we avoid the silliness for these albums. As much as we like being wacky, we feel like we’re written off a lot by people who think, ‘oh, they just write silly stuff.’ So this is our attempt to prove that we also write straightforward good songs.

Tom Scalzo: The Big Heist is more of a true band collaboration. When it’s just me and Farley, we tend to keep things very simple. We may rework a vocal line here or there, or tweak the lyrics if something is really not working, but for the most part we go with our initial instincts and ideas, no matter how weird. Generally, it’ll be Farley on keyboard or me on guitar that gets things started, and one of us, usually Farley, will add in some synth, drums, and bass. That usually ends up being the final arrangement. And we generally don’t go back and tinker with songs much once we have a workable version. With The Big Heist, each member contributes songs and ideas. And we tend to tamp down the weirdness. On The Fifty in particular, the bulk of the songs came out of extensive demo sessions in which we all played live together. In many cases, someone would suggest a progression, provide some idea of the tempo and rhythm, and we’d do a few takes of us all giving it a try. And then after we had the rhythm parts down, we’d spend some time collectively brainstorming lyrics, talking about areas to improve, ideas for solos, etc. It’s much more collaborative and considered.

Generally speaking, Tom, what is your process like when writing songs with Farley? Are there any differences to how you two work together on Big Heist material?

Tom Scalzo: Farley and I tend to share any and all ideas with each other as soon as they have some sort of shape. I’ve probably texted him a few hundred voice memo demo ideas over the years. Sometimes it’s just a riff or a lyric, sometimes it’s a progression for a verse, occasionally it’s a complete song. But at this point there is no hesitation or nervousness about sharing something or trying out something new. We both appreciate what the other can bring to a song and we’ve come to realize that a lot of our best songs come about when we develop them together.

With The Big Heist material, it’s not all that different, although knowing we have a full band to work with changes the vision we might have for some songs. And the contributions from Pete and Frog are always so different from anything Farley or I would have come up with. It’s great to have a chance to work on a new song just from a contribution standpoint, not a composition standpoint. “That Summertime Feeling” is a great example of that. I had nothing to do with that song other than playing the repeating guitar riff that Farley composed. And actually, when I recorded that riff, the song was really just Farley singing ‘oh, oh, oh.’ I had no idea what it would turn into. But Farley just kept telling me to repeat the riff, over and over and over. When I heard Pete’s rap lyrics, I was amazed. To me, that’s the best part of being in a band; being surprised by what the other guys are coming up with.

So Matt, we’ve read various reports — almost all exclusively in Tweets from you — that you are both a dream collaborator and an egomaniacal terror to work with on film sets. What are you like to work with musically? 

Matt Farley: (laughs) So for the Big Heist specifically, we don’t have a lot of time when we’re all together, so if we have a weekend recording session I’m always eager to get to work. But I also recognize that the other guys are doing this on their own time, and they travel to get here. So if they need 30 seconds to use the bathroom, I allow that. (laughs) 

That’s good to hear! Can you give us a miniature overview of how you met each of your Big Heist bandmates and how the lineup came together? 

Matt Farley: They’re basically the only three musicians I know (laughs), so naturally that’s gonna be the band. Froggy, the drummer, I remember meeting him in second grade and we’ve just been constantly talking about music and sports since then. And we always used to dream about being in a band, recording albums. We dabbled in it in high school and into the college years, but it wasn’t until The Big Heist, I think we were 40 years old, that we really were like, let’s do this. Although, we had done Projection from the Side, too, which is another one of the bands — it’s confusing. 

Then Pete, we met in high school when we were 14. Froggy, Pete, and I, it was late high school, college years, we would meet in Froggy’s basement and record stuff together on tapes. We called ourselves Projection from the Side and that was fun and exciting. But then when college ended Pete moved to Los Angeles; Froggy moved to Florida. So that kind of fizzled out. 

I met Tom in college and we started Moes Haven. So there’s Tom, and then there’s Pete and Frog. They knew of each other, and I would play songs for Tom that I’d done with Pete and Frog, and vice versa. I’ve known Tom the least longest — almost 30 years — the point being that I’m very comfortable with these guys.

Tom Scalzo: I remember that I was in Boston for some reason, I think it was in 2017, and Farley, Pete, and Frog were working on a new Projection from the Side album. Farley and I had Moes Haven, they had Projection, and the projects were completely different. They were much more of a garage band than Moes Haven ever was. But when Farley invited me to sit in on the session and add some guitar, I said sure, since I usually never say no to any music projects.

Matt Farley: And then it was just a question of like, will Pete and Frog accept Tom into the community? And they did to the point where they all like each other better than me, you know?

That’s the risk of introducing friends, right?

Matt Farley: They’re all commiserating about me when I’m out of the room.

Tom Scalzo: At first, I guess it was a little awkward, since we didn’t really know each other. But having a project to work on really brings people together. By the end of that session we were all friends, and it felt like we’d been making music together for years. Now, even if we only see each other a few days a year for the Extravaganza, we always pick up right where we left off. Shared experiences like playing shows or making albums amplifies friendships to an extraordinary degree. I feel like I now know Pete and Frog better than some people I’ve known for 40 years.

You two famously set ultra-ambitious goals for your musical projects. With The Big Heist, early plans were for a 100-song album and a 75-song album. What does aiming so big draw out of you from a creative standpoint? 

Tom Scalzo: It may seem counterintuitive, but having such ambitious goals makes creating music easier. If you go into a project thinking you’re creating a 10-song album, in the back of your mind you immediately start to be critical of each song even as you are writing the song. You’ll think, this could be a good opener, or this would work as a nice end of side A, or whatever. And even worse, you might start to think, this song isn’t very strong, where can we hide it on the album?

But when you go into a project assuming you need 50, 75, 100 songs, you create in a blur and you don’t have time to analyze anything. During the main stretch of demo work on The Fifty, I think we worked on over 70 songs over the course of a weekend. Not fully completed songs, just whatever we could get done. Sometimes it would be Farley or me just humming vowel sounds to get some sort of melody idea going. But there was no time to second guess or criticize anything. You just get it done and move on to the next song. Only later, after the session was over, did we go back and listen to what we had done, and started identifying what was working, what wasn’t, what could be developed. It made it much easier to get some momentum behind The Fifty project, rather than each of us sitting at home trying to come up with something.

The band’s first three albums, MO75, is a trilogy about partying in the woods. How did you arrive at this concept and how did that launch the band? 

Matt Farley: I’ve always been very intrigued by parties in the woods, mostly because I’ve never been to one. But when I was a kid we had extensive woods behind the house where I grew up and it was very memorable when all of a sudden all of these cars are parking on my street and all these teens are hooting and hollering and going out into the woods as it was getting dark. I don’t know what went on, but I do know that we’d go out in the woods the following days and find broken cans and ashes, and all this evidence of the wildness that had happened in the woods at night. And I don’t even like parties anyways. I wouldn’t even want to go to a party in the woods, but it felt like it was rife for creative explorations. So it had always been there, and I was thinking of doing a new album and that idea came to me. 

It was definitely a flash of inspiration. Everything just immediately clicked in terms of like, people similar to my friends from high school who are just always having fun, and joking around, and turning every little thing into something epic. And I think ‘slow,’ ‘drive slowly,’ was literally painted on the street and ‘SLOW’ upside down spells out ‘MO75.’ So what if they would write that on the rock? Or if they ripped down a sign and put it upside down at their spot and it became their thing? My image of the album is all these epic, or even pseudo-epic moments that are blown out of proportion by being immortalized in song. I tried to convey that in the songs I wrote. The other guys would incorporate some of that stuff into what they wrote too, which was cool. 

Tom Scalzo: Once we had that goal, and agreed that the four of us together would be a separate project than either Projection or Moes Haven, we started thinking about song ideas, as well as names for the band. I can’t remember the final list, but we all had to agree on a name from four or five candidates. The Big Heist, which is the title of the novel Chevy Chase writes in Funny Farm, ended up being our collective favorite.

Several of the Big Heist songs tie in with Heard She Got Married, too. At what point did the Big Heist songs become part of the film?

Matt Farley: The album came first. Then when I was writing the script with Charlie I realized I’ve got this whole ready-made mythology in the MO75 story and we can just plug it in. Instead of creating a whole new set of backstories, it’s already there. And my character is a musician anyway, so it totally fits in. So we built upon it a little bit.

There’s a song called “I Didn’t Come Here Not To Fight.” And the idea was, what if a bunch of tough guys came to the rock one night and one of them gets in someone’s face and says, ‘look, I didn’t come here not to fight.’ And that caused this group of friends to build that up to the point where they’re quoting him for the next six months in every situation. They quote that guy, then boom, they write a song about him. That’s the idea about it, and I’m not known for my humility, so why start now? I love it so much. I feel like it’s this big, grand statement.

Speaking of your humility, one of my favorite things you talk about in your podcast episode about the New York Times article about you is when the fact checker called you and asked, ‘did you really say you’re the world’s greatest songwriter?’

Matt Farley: And I said to them, ‘I said it, and I meant it.’ (laughs) 

The first album I bought of your music was MO75, Vol. 3 because I heard “Late Night Fight By the Rock” in Heard She Got Married. I’m curious, where did that song come from? Pete brought it to the band, right?

Matt Farley: Pete came to me with the bassline and I was like, ‘oh my god, this is so good.’ So I found some chords that went with the bassline. Then together we came up with the rest of the chord progression. So we had that leading into a recording session with Froggy. What’s amazing is Froggy frequently doesn’t even hear the entire song before we record the final version of it. He’s like, ‘OK, I get it,’ you know? And I’ll just shout out ‘chorus!’ as we’re recording. Sometimes it doesn’t work, but usually it does, and I think that captures a certain amount of immediacy. But we just had that, the music. Then Pete wrote a set of lyrics and sent them to me, and I made adjustments to them and sang it. Then Tom came in and did the lead guitar lick, which brought it to a whole new level. It was great collaboration. Whenever we start with a bassline from Pete good things happen.

Pete also brought in “Natural Wizard,” right?

Matt Farley: Very similar situation except lyrically, because he’s rapping on it, he basically wrote the whole lyric except for the refrain that I did with him. I’m jealous of how good that song is. I imagine that they go to breakfast the next morning, and they give each other awards, like, ‘all right the King of Late Night award goes to… Tom! Way to go! The Natural Wizard goes to…’ It’s just these funny guys who turn every bit of their lives into comedy. And then the story is that the main character, my type of person, loves it so much, but senses that it’s coming to an end. People are growing up and you’re not always going to be partying in the woods. But the beauty of it is that it doesn’t have to specifically apply to partying in the woods. I think it’s just any part of life that’s so special to someone that they’re fretting about losing it even before it’s lost.

One thing Craig and I have talked about is that greatest hits records are kind of a dying art. What do you feel a Best Of collection says about a band, and what’s the major goal in putting the tracklist together?

Tom Scalzo: It’s funny because Farley and I really don’t like Best Of albums, at least from the perspective of a fan. We tend to feel that if you don’t have the dedication to delve into an artist’s official discography, you don’t truly appreciate that artist. As an artist though, it can definitely be a more efficient way to get people to give your music a shot. Having one specific collection to point people to helps focus our potential audience.

Matt Farley: We put out nine albums in six years, 2018 to now. We had to do something to at least try to tell the world about how great we are. If we make this record where it’s just start-to-finish great songs that we know people are going to love, then maybe a few extra people will pay attention to The Big Heist. And, especially when it comes to vinyl, I think a greatest hits album is good. It’s not that easy to skip the filler songs. So if you know that from start to finish every track is a good one, it’s a good thing to add that to your vinyl collection. But we made sure to call it ‘Best Of’ as opposed to ‘greatest hits’ because we have no hits.

Tom Scalzo: Also, the very fact that the album is on vinyl adds some legitimacy to the music. Material that is streaming-only somehow seems to lead to a devaluation of both the musical content and the artist. There’s just something about holding an actual album in your hands that creates a visceral connection to that artist. I know some of my kids’ friends buy vinyl just to have it, despite not owning a turntable. They just want that connection. With the Best Of The Big Heist, we tried to provide that connection for our fans. It would be great to have all our albums out on vinyl someday, but this one will have to do for now.

Matt, it sounds like you picked the first round of songs and then had Scalzo whittle them down. What were you looking for to define the greatness of Big Heist? 

Matt Farley: It was just an instinctive thing. I went through all of our albums and picked out about 20-25 songs. Sometimes other members of the band are busy, too busy to be involved in any portion of the project, but Tom had time so it was awesome just to be like, ‘all right, here you go! You’re in charge now, if you don’t mind!’ Then he sent it and it was, ‘Here’s side A; Here’s side B.’ And I try to adhere to a ‘no notes’ mantra, meaning if someone provides a product, don’t criticize it. I didn’t criticize it anyway, but no matter what he sent I would have been like, ‘Yeah this is great! Wonderful!’ It was really cool to let him spearhead that part of it. He also designed the album cover and he remastered all of the songs specifically for the vinyl.

Tom, what were you looking for when selecting the final tracklist, and were there any songs you were disappointed didn’t make the cut?

Tom Scalzo: The process of whittling down the tracklist and thinking through what we wanted to say with this album are closely connected. In general, we wanted to offer both a representative sampling of the band’s work and a solid, stand-alone album that people could enjoy from start to finish.

As a listener, I always appreciate collections that are arranged in a way that makes me want to listen to the entire work. And as artists, we obviously want our fans to feel the same way. So, while we have songs like “Cut Me Open” or “Takedown” that the band really loves, we prioritized tracks that wouldn’t change the vibe too much or require too much effort to understand. We wanted to ensure we maintained a solid flow from start to finish, without anything that would be too jarring.

Matt Farley: I’ll also say doing a lot of these songs live was another good way of figuring out which ones to put on the Best Of album. Most of the ones on the album are ones that we’ve done live a number of times and we know that they work. So that definitely helped for choosing the final tracks.

What was the guiding idea behind the A Thousand Tries cover design? It’s a cool change of perspective from the other records.

Tom Scalzo: I had volunteered to do the cover design for the album, but initially, none of us had any real concept other than ‘make it look good.’ I asked the guys if they had any photos of us, in any context, and they sent over a few ideas. I mocked up an initial design for the cover with just Farley and Pete backstage at one of our shows, but no one really liked it. Then Farley suggested taking some photos of the MO75 rock, but from a reverse angle, from under the little train bridge. We all liked that idea, and it felt like a fitting way to sum up the journey of the band so far, which had started with that first MO75 album. I ended up using the band photos the guys had shared with me to put together the collage on the back cover. I think it all came together fairly well.

Matt Farley: I took the photo though. The photo is the reverse shot of the MO75 cover, which is cool for a couple of reasons. One being that the original cover, you’d kind of think we were deep in the woods. But then you look from the other direction and there’s suburban houses feet away.

Whenever we introduce people to Motern Media and start describing what you do, and just the sheer volume of songs you create, everyone almost always has the same reaction: ‘OK… But is any of it any good?’ You’ve obviously fielded questions about the quantity over quality debate for years, and the hours-long No Jokes Motern playlists suggest that you’ve been directing people to the strongest material for a long time. But does having a physical, Best Of vinyl record for even just one of your bands affect how you may answer that question in the future?

Matt Farley: Absolutely! I can just hold it up and be like, please buy this thing! I promise it’s so good! Or don’t even buy it, all the tracks are on Spotify. Just make a playlist out of it. I don’t care. And the thing is, The Big Heist is me going slow — and that’s nine albums in six years. (laughs) Not to mention in that same time there was a Moes Haven album, a Finklestinks album, two Brennan McFarley albums. So it’s natural for people to say ‘It can’t be any good if there’s that much of it.’ But in terms of the No Jokes albums, they are that good, if I dare say so myself. And the novelty songs are good too!

The record begins with “Let’s Go!” and that guitar riff. It kind of feels like a no-brainer to open a Best Of collection with a song like that, but what were your intentions in selecting that song as track one?

Matt Farley: Well, they were Tom’s intentions, but they were good. And like you said, it was just ‘grab ’em.’ (sings the riff) It’s a little mission statement and just makes sense. Here we are dragging you into the world of The Big Heist whether you like it or not.

Tom Scalzo: And the title and lyrics obviously work well for an opening track, which is why we also used it to open Old Route One. If you don’t know anything about The Big Heist, we thought this was as good a choice as any to serve as an introduction. It’s simple, easy to like, and catchy. And it serves as a nice contrast to the mellower, acoustic sounds of “Taking Care of Each Other,” which follows it. And yeah, the riff is great. Farley wrote that on piano and then had me work it out on guitar. Took a few takes but we got it the way we wanted it.

Matt Farley: Also, I write too many ballads. My instinct is often to write a little more ballady. So for the rest of the band who likes to rock a little bit more, I think they were happy to kind of lean into that stuff for the bulk of the album. 

Moes Haven never really spent time overdubbing much or adding things like lead guitar lines. Tom, what was it like for you to be able to take some time to develop lead parts?

Tom Scalzo: Yeah, we never really did much of that on Moes Haven albums. In some ways the slower pace of The Big Heist production process was great; having time to really think through solos and get things how I wanted them. At the same time, endless freedom to do take after take can lead to never finishing anything. Especially when I’m at my house by myself doing the recording. It’s so easy to hit stop and go back and do it again, even when the take was perfectly fine.

It actually tends to work out better when the band is all in the room together. Even though we’re still taking our time and getting it right, there’s much more of a sense of, let’s get this done, it’s good enough, stop fiddling with it. Farley always says my best playing happens when I don’t have time to think about it, and that does seem to hold true a lot of the time. So, I’d say that while it is great to have a little more time to assemble The Big Heist songs, it’s crucial not to tinker with things too much.

In The Motern Method Matt talks a lot about how having a day job can make you structure your time after work as a forced period of creativity because that’s all you’ve got. But by 2017 you were able to quit your job and you entered Big Heist in 2018 as a pretty successful full-time musician. How did becoming a full-time artist affect your drive and not get soft, and what goals do you still have as a creator? 

Matt Farley: Well, for one thing, quitting the day job, we homeschool our kids. Four out of five days of the week, I’m the homeschool teacher. Frankly, I have less free time to do the music stuff now than I did when I was working a full-time job. But again, that’s OK because if you have 12 hours to finish a project, you’ll finish it in 12 hours. If you have two hours, you’ll finish it in two hours. It’ll be OK. I haven’t lost my edge, I don’t think. I desperately want to prove myself (laughs) to anyone who will pay attention. You guys interviewing me about this is wonderful. But most people are not paying attention to The Big Heist. So that just motivates me more. 

We were kind of surprised the New York Times article didn’t mention The Big Heist.

Matt Farley: What’s funny is it mentions Moes Haven. And something I said to Tom was, one way to sneak into the zeitgeist is to make people think we were a thing that they’re catching up on. Like, ‘oh they were part of this whole scene in the 2000s.’ No. We weren’t part of any scene in the 2000s. No one was listening to us. But the fact that it’s an older thing makes people a little more curious about delving into it. So we got that going for us.

You named the Best Of album A Thousand Tries, which closes both the MO75 collection and the Best Of. Why was it important for you to not only use this song as the closing track again, but to name the collection after it, too?

Matt Farley: I wish I could tell you. Tom named it A Thousand Tries and I was like, great title! Way to go! I think it applies in that we have tried a lot of times to make the world aware of our genius — dare I say, thousands of times — so I think it applies in that way. And then in the song itself, the narrator was saying that the magic that he had with his group of friends was written insofar as if the world were to restart a thousand times, they would still all end up at the MO75 rock together.

Tom Scalzo: That song, both musically and lyrically, nicely sums up what we’re all about. It has a relaxed rhythm from Frog’s great drumming and Pete’s melodic bass lines. And the guitars and piano are subtle, uncluttered, but quite beautiful. It all mixes really nicely together as a definitive musical statement from the band. Lyrically, it does focus on the MO75 themes a bit, but also expands out to encompass our general outlook as musicians. We will always keep trying, always keep creating. And whatever it is we’re creating at that moment is the most important thing.

I always appreciated when greatest hits or Best Of albums had actual titles, even if they were usually pulled from one of the tracks on the album. It seemed to me that the title helped legitimize the album as a distinct musical statement, not just a random collection of songs. For us, A Thousand Tries perfectly summed up what a Big Heist album is all about.

Matt Farley: And “A Thousand Tries,” the song, oh my god. What a way to end an album. Scalzo’s lead guitar in the whole second half of the song is not something that we would ever have done in the past in the Moes Haven days. Or Projection from the Side days. Like, the songs end. You don’t have a coda where it goes on for two and a half more minutes with just a stately lead guitar. When we were doing that it was like, oh man. We’re making a statement here. We’re bothering to do those little things. In the old days the songs were more like demos. It was almost like, maybe if a better band ever covered us they would do something like that. But now, we’ll be that better band.

The lyrics are mine and I’m super happy with them because they both come from personal experiences, but they’re going through this character. It’s embarrassing to express your own feelings, but if you do it through a surrogate character then it’s a little bit easier. Such was the case with me. But I send letters to people who don’t reply all the time, which is one of the lines in the song. ‘I’ll keep sending letters cause I can’t not try / I won’t be expecting any reply.’ So I’m guilty of that. But better to try than to give up.

In the Motern podcast about Big Heist you said something that I thought was sneakily profound: ‘Ignored art can be something that people later pay attention to.’ What advice do you have for people who have released a passion project to absolute silence and struggle to find a reason to keep going?

Matt Farley: Because much like how a few people are paying attention to Moes Haven now, 20 years later, those people might end up becoming Big Heist fans. But if we had just given up and been like, it’s not happening, then there wouldn’t be a Big Heist for them to join in later. Same thing with the movies, too. Every day people are discovering Don’t Let The Riverbeast Get You! from 2012. And now I’m so glad we made all the movies since Riverbeast for those people to hop on and get excited about, too. 

And it’s like, what else is there to do? If you’re really into creating art, then who cares if no one is listening. You have to do it, you know? Or just find another hobby. Get good at cooking or building stuff, or whatever. But life is kind of boring if you don’t have a project going on. I mean look at you guys working on this website, you know?

We certainly hear, ‘well, if it doesn’t make much money for you, then why do you do it?’ from a lot of people. But it’s like, it’s what we do.

Matt Farley: Yeah! And then why do they go fishing? Why go hunting? Why go running? Why do we do any of this stuff? But you say you’re going fishing with the guys and everyone is like, ‘oh cool!’ But if you say you’re writing a magazine that not many people are going to read, people are a little more critical. Do you find that to be the case? (laughs)

Yes, and often genuinely confused.

Matt Farley:‘What, do you make any money off it?’ It’s like, are you a professional golfer?

We just got together with someone who is a novelist, painter, and musician, and he asked us the same question, like, ‘do people ask you guys why do you do this, too?’ And he goes, no one would ask anybody else but an artist ‘how much money do you make?’ 

Matt Farley: Tactless questions. Questions with no concern for how it’s going to be taken. Like you said, ‘do you make money off that? Why would you do that?’ It’s weird, but hey, it’s the price we pay for being cool. I have a song called “Sleison’s A Boxer” by Moes Haven and that one is completely about that. It’s about Sleison taking up boxing and people saying ‘oh, you’re going to get hurt’ and stuff like that as a metaphor for me being creative, basically. ‘They get mad if you do anything that’s out of the status quo,’ and they do! They really do!

Matt, in the Big Heist podcast you mentioned that A Thousand Tries kind of makes you angry because the songs are so good and have flown under the radar. You’ve pressed 200 records and the band has around 200 monthly Spotify listeners. Is there any metric that will ever let the rage end for you?

Matt Farley: (laughs) Yeah! I’d say like 50,000 listeners on Spotify and I’d be like, OK, that’s good. I can live with that. And that’s less than Guided By Voices, I would think. [checks Spotify] They get me so mad. They’re at 367,000. So just give me 50,000 listeners and I’ll be so happy and so proud. I mean, the 200 copies of the vinyl, they’re going to last me like five years. Like, there was the initial 30 I sold in the first weekend, now it’s just here and there I’ll be selling a few copies. And frankly, even though I’m not at the 50,000 level, the fact that we can put out a record and sell 30 copies in the first week, honestly, that’s thrilling for me and the rest of the band. So we don’t take the small, loyal crew that we do have for granted

Ultimately, if we can sell enough that it was free for us to have our own album on vinyl, like, that’s incredible. I grew up listening to records and I continue to be a record collector, so just being able to have a few copies of my own songs on vinyl is so precious and magical. But I’d like more listeners, and I think we definitely deserve an eighth of the popularity of Guided By Voices. So as much as I’m a megalomaniac and whatnot, I do have relatively modest aspirations. I just want to be a little blip on the radar. That would be cool.

I’m glad you mentioned Guided By Voices though because I don’t know if you’ve seen the documentary Watch Me Jumpstart, but someone tells Robert Pollard that they heard he can write five songs when he goes to the bathroom. Pollard responds, ‘yeah, and three of them are good!’

Matt Farley: Yeah! And I mean hats off to him and all his success. Nothing against him. He’s great and I like a lot of his songs. I’m just jealous of the attention he gets and I feel that I have done both the quality and the quantity to deserve one eighth of his adulation. And that’s (laughs) all I ask for.

Maybe you guys need to do a joint tour.

Matt Farley: I don’t know if I would fit in. I’ve never had a sip of alcohol in my life. I’ve never done drugs. They wouldn’t like me. I would just ruin the vibe. If I ever went to a party in the woods, the whole time they’d be like, ‘what’s this guy’s problem?’ Just keep all that in mind. (laughs)

One thing you said in the podcast while discussing “Taking Care of Each Other” is that ‘if someone plays something in the studio differently than you would, don’t correct them. That’s a gift from heaven.’ I love that approach.

Matt Farley: Thank you. I’m always writing slow Billy Joel songs. Sometimes I’ll give the chords to the rest of the band and they’ll start playing it in a way that’s more natural to them. Those were my chords and I didn’t correct them and I was like, ‘ooh, I did not envision this happening. This is going from ultra sad to super happy.’ And Tom on that slide guitar thing, we barely rehearsed going into it. Spending hours and hours getting everything perfect in the studio is definitely not for me. You can lose some of the joy and the humanity by doing every part in a pristine way.

What can you tell us about “Bucket Seats?”

Matt Farley: I really like “Bucket Seats.” It starts off as ‘Put your towel on the bucket seats so this time we’re not burned.’ And the whole idea of that is that the characters are giddy with excitement over the fact that they can do anything. Then the line ‘First time we haven’t been beholden to anyone.’ Just the fact that your friend can be so dumb and so unaware of consequences, of actions in the world that you don’t even realize that sitting on a hot vinyl seat in a car is going to burn your thighs, but to think that’s exciting. And then just to be like ‘I don’t see how this could ever get stale / But it seems to happen without fail.’ You look around and the rest of the world isn’t excited about anything. People have just surrendered, you know? So I feel that very much encapsulates my view of things in general.

Does Big Heist play live as The Big Heist?

Matt Farley: It’s all Motern Media, The Motern Manly Band. It’s very confusing and we should have thought this through earlier on, but it’s too late now. So we’ve never specifically billed ourselves as The Big Heist. But when we are the Motern Manly Band doing a live album there’s a lot of Big Heist songs in there. And it’s cool to see people singing along, and they actually do, which is incredible. Life is long! I’m only 46. It’s gonna happen one of these days. (laughs)

How often do you have to have the lyrics in front of you while playing live when you have so many songs?

Matt Farley: Too much. It’s embarrassing. I wish I could do it without looking. There’s probably 15-20 songs I don’t need the lyrics for, but unfortunately most shows we’re doing at least 30 songs. At Extravaganzas we’re doing like 60 or 70. So it fluctuates between some where my eyes are on the paper the whole time, and I feel bad about it because I want to be communicating with the audience, and others where I’ll just need a glance and I’m good through the refrain. So I can go run around and dance and come back for the third verse. But, hey, I think people understand. And we’ve been doing a lot more shows lately, which is just like five to 10 a year. For most bands that’s not that many. So until we’re popular enough that we can actually do regular shows and not lose a lot of money on each show we do, I’m going to keep reading.

Matt, do you have your total song count handy?

Matt Farley: Yeah, 25,196. [Editor’s note: This interview took place on July 6, 2024. By August 11, 2024, Farley had reached 25,246.] I have been a little slow with the songs, but I am currently making two movies and we’ve had a bunch of live shows recently. But I still feel guilty about it.

Guilty in what way? Not enough songs?

Matt Farley: (laughs) Yeah. I should be making more songs. You don’t get to 25,000 without having a ridiculous amount of guilt all the time. Like, oh man, (grits teeth) I should be doing songs.

There’s that drive.

Matt Farley: It’s not pretty! It’s not a pretty quality. You don’t like to observe it. It’s awful. People don’t like spending time with me because I’m just no fun.

For what it’s worth, we’re having a great time.

Matt Farley: (laughs)

What’s next for The Big Heist?

Tom Scalzo: We’ve started talking about a new album based on our experiences playing in American Legion Halls around the country.

Matt Farley: It’s gonna be called Legion Halls and the theme is the ghosts of musical events that happened at Legion Halls. Each song takes place within one of those legendary stories. We play at American Legion Halls quite frequently now, and it’s so cool that these halls exist and any band that wants to play there, they’re like, whatever. They don’t care one bit. There’s some stories in these walls, so that’s the idea there.

Tom Scalzo: It may end up being a single album, but as with all our projects, it may expand into something more complicated. We may also try out some new arrangements, with Pete stepping in on guitar and me trying my hand at bass. Just to mix it up a bit. Since Moes Haven is officially done making albums, The Big Heist is my main focus in terms of writing new songs. We’ll see where it goes.

Matt Farley: And in addition to that, a lot of my other bands, like Projection from the Side and The Finklestinks, I want to release singles for all of them, all on the same day next year, which would be kind of cool to suddenly see like five or 10 different Motern acts all releasing a single on the same day.

Like physical singles or on Spotify?

Matt Farley: Just on Spotify. Although now I want to make 45s from you saying that. (laughs)

Order A Thousand Tries here

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1. For another introduction to Farley’s music and films, see the featurette Motern Madness: A Beginner’s Guide to Motern Media by Justin Decloux, available on the Gold Ninja Video Blu-ray release of Local Legends. Decloux also wrote a guide to five of the best Motern albums on Film Trap.