Matt Nathanson Credit: Jaron Schneider
Matt Nathanson is ready to eat. The 52-year-old songwriter has the world’s kitchen in front of him at home in San Francisco, but cannot wait to be in front of an entire field of teams vying for first place at Tampa Pig Jig this year.
“I like to still be pretty deliberate about what I eat,” he told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay, admitting to being a kid who was heavyset and still struggles with his body physically.
“But dude, I can’t say no to barbecue. So I’ll probably just sort of curate a masterful plate, and then I’ll probably eat it and then take the rest of it back to the hotel and then eat it later again.”
He’ll have home turf advantage as he takes it all in, too. Nathanson’s front-of-house engineer and production, Erick “Otto” Celeiro, is the president of Tampa’s revered ESI-Productions, where Nathanson’s band has spent many years practicing before hitting the road.
“Every tour we start in Tampa. Just as humans like, we’ll go to Tampa, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, and then get on the bus and drive somewhere else,” Nathanson explained.
It’s a good time to welcome the songwriter, who has one of the most-encyclopedic fan brains in pop music, to our neck of the woods.
The Buccaneers and USF football Bulls are playing well, which opens the door to talk about one of the greatest things that ever happened in sports: Whitney Houston’s 1991 performance of “The Star Spangled Banner” ahead of Super Bowl XXV at Tampa Stadium (aka “The Big Sombrero”). The late pop icon was singing to a pre-recorded track, but the spectacle was delivered as George H. W. Bush’s Persian Gulf War raged on and is widely recognized as one of the greatest moments in American entertainment history.
“She was such a force, and that version of it is just so exceptional,” Nathanson told CL, before explaining his fascination with how a country that loved Houston when she was on top and then turned on her as she publicly descended into the throes of drug addiction.
“People love to see people fall, but it was a fame thing. People love to see people get dinged and knocked down. She really struggled in her last bunch of years, and no one gave much of a shit,” he added.
Nathanson’s 2025 album, King Of (Un)Simple, includes a collaboration with Indigo Girls called “Whitney Houston’s National Anthem.”
The opening verse paints a scene all too familiar in modern politics: a couple finding a shred of joy as the world starts to burn, and the division of families torn apart at the hands of a president beloved by ex-hippies who’ve run out of empathy for anyone they don’t agree with.
“I liked it when your hair was long,” Nathanson sings on the cut, “and the last thing we agreed on was Whitney Houston’s national anthem.”
King Of (Un)Simple by Matt Nathanson
In the tune, Amy Ray sings about America as “a country club at best, safe harbor for the famous and the blessed,” right after Nathanson invokes Houston with this lyric: “We’re still pretending we’re not who we are. America’s sweetheart, we tore her apart.”
Lines from the song were written a decade ago when Eric Garner was killed by New York City Police officers. The completed version didn’t really get to its final recorded form until well into the pandemic. The country club lyric gets heavier as the days progress, Nathanson explained, and there are places in the U.S. that get amped up when they hear it.
Just don’t expect to test that theory out in Tampa.
Nathanson—who rose to fame on the 2007 song “Come On Get Higher” after years spent on the club circuit opening for the likes of John Mayer and Tori Amos—played “Whitney Houston’s National Anthem” on his last tour, but is skipping it at Pig Jig, which is more like a tailgate concert that raises a shitload of money to research and defeat rare kidney disease.
For one, it’s an upbeat gig, and for another, there’ll be a bunch of people in the crowd who might only know him from “Run,” the song he wrote with Sugarland’s Jennifer Nettles (the duo performed it at the 2011 CMA Awards). But mostly because that country club lyric is one of the more self-referential lyrics in a canon that features poppier tunes better suited for the party.
“That line comes up in my fucking brain all the time,” Nathason admitted. “I don’t know how other people feel about it… but it’s just true.”
Instead, Pig Jig fans, who’ve sold-out the festival headlined by Megan Moroney, can expect a full band, complete with longtime guitarist and collaborator Aaron Tap. There are going to be some weird songs (like “Suspended” from his 2003 breakout LP Beneath These Fireworks), hits (“Laid” from the “American Wedding” soundtrack), plaintive material about rich kids (“German Cars”), and stuff that’s generally fun.
“Usually, I don’t pick the set till the night before. But in my life I’m trying to be more deliberate recently. So I was like, ‘Let’s curate a Pig jig show that’s awesome,” Nathanson said. “And so that’s the vibe.”
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