Matt Costa's latest album, 'Mobile Chateau,' finds the indie singer-songwriter taking a metaphorical trip back in time to the '60s. Influenced by the likes of the Byrds, the Beach Boys and Donovan, the impressive collection features a very authentic pop sound from the days of Vietnam, the Summer of Love and the British Invasion.
When Costa returned to Spinner's Los Angeles studios to tape an Interface performance with his new band, Long Beach, Calif.'s the Mother Sons, we asked him what '60s festival he'd go to, given the chance to head back in time.
"I was just reading in this book, 'Orange Sunshine,' about acid and hash smuggling and things that a group of guys were doing down in Laguna in the late '60s and '70s and stuff. There was a festival I live right by in Orange County, the Newport Pop Festival -- I think that was 1969 or something," Costa said. "Jefferson Airplane and the Dead played there. Ken Kesey came down with the Merry Pranksters."
While Costa would be at home in that decade, he's more than content with the present. "The thing about the '60s is all that stuff has had time to simmer in the minds of everyone, especially someone who didn't live through it like myself," he says. "I can romanticize it all that I want, but a lot of the only takes I have are artistic views of it, someone's own camera that their eye saw or the songs that they had, so I'd actually like to leave it a mystery. I like the mystery of it because I like what we've taken from that now."
As someone focused on the present, what does Costa want to see taken from today by people 40 years from now? "We got Obama in there, gay marriage becoming more accepted --
