Q&A with Chad Mattson from Unspoken

The Christian/pop band, Unspoken, is currently on tour promoting their latest album “Follow Through.” We spoke with lead singer Chad Mattson about how the band came together and what its like to be on tour.

Tell us how Unspoken became a band? 

We’ve been doing this for 13 years and we feel like this is a way that we can give back.

As I mentioned the band has been together 13 years, I  met guitar player, Mike Gomez,  in the Dominican Republic, on a mission trip. I  was a drug addict and I went there to get sober.  The missionary took a chance on me and it changed my life forever.

Before I arrived in the Dominican Republic, I had always been outgoing and always loved people.  When you’re an addict, you live and breathe for drugs, it’s a dark place and a dark time.  The missionaries were American and they had two young children. I quickly became friends with my translator who was also a good singer, he’s the one who actually introduced me to Mike, my guitar player.

What was like to release your new album Follow Through?

Our first record had done pretty well and after living in poverty for a decade, we had just started doing music as a living, and there was a lot of pressure after record two, so we didn’t want to go backwards. They say you have your entire life to write the first record and two years to write your second, but we didn’t have a ton to write and we were touring a lot. They used to give time for artists to take time off from the tour but that wasn’t the case.

We were doing it all at the same time. There was a point where after our first or second song that I had to accept the fact that we just have to work hard, we have all the pieces in place to be successful, but if the Lord doesn’t give us a song, then there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s about accepting the place that the Lord has you. I got to a point in my life where I said Lord, we’re gonna work hard, but you have to meet us halfway. And at that point in the record, we had a ton of fun. We’re a diverse group. Two of us are from Maine,  and we have Mike from the Dominican Republic. There’s a lot of different styles, and we all play a part and have a fingerprint on it. We started writing songs that were fun to us. Some songs have a backstory or meaning, but others were just songs that we had a lot of fun making. It’s got a lot of energy, lots of cool sounds and I think it’s going to be a great addition to what Christian music is already doing.

Your latest music video for “Up in the Clouds” is very upbeat, what was your inspiration?


A little bit of Pharrel with the claps (like Happy), we had 60 or 80 songs for our album and we couldn’t choose just 10, so we did a deluxe edition, and we have a Spanish/pop song, a Latin American/African song. We did different things because we’re diverse. The body of Christ is diverse.

We see you are headed to play at a State Fair, what is your favorite State Fair food?

Where I’m from in Maine, we call them doughboys, but here they’re called elephant ears or funnel cake, and the lemonade, of course.

As a Williamson County resident, what do you enjoy most about living here? 

I live in Spring Hill. Obviously the schools are a great thing, our kids go to Williamson County Schools. When I go into the school the teachers are so kind and they have been  champions to our kids. It’s different coming down here to the schools, after being in schools in the north.

We are enjoying the Williamson County Rec  Center. Delta Bound is a new restaurant, it’s awesome. We love Merridee’s and Homestead Manor. I feel like our community is pretty safe in a culturally Christian way. In the north, you’re a minority and people think you’re an idiot if you’re a Christian. I play songs in my kid’s classes every year that are Christian, and they’d never in a million years let you do that at schools in the north.

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