Matthew Perryman Jones Debuts Album and Details 'Genius Loci' Writing Concept

"One day I'll know as I am known," Matthew Perryman Jones sings in "Happy", the opening track of his fantastic new album, The Waking Hours. The line is both a hopeful prayer and a knowing promise that tugs at the heartstrings of the song cycle: the idea of letting control go and giving ourselves over to the transformative power of love and life. That's what Matthew did to write this album, which you can listen to today viaSounds Like Nashville, ahead of tomorrow's global release.

To create the energy and aliveness of The Waking Hours, Jones traveled the country to write in various locations, to find his 'Genius Loci', Latin for Spirit of Place.

"When writing for the record, I didn't want to just sit in a writers room in Nashville and hope inspiration would float through the walls," admits Matthew. "I wanted to see how the 'spirit of place' would inform the creative process, so I decided to hit the road and see if the muse would be up for an adventure -- to see where the 'spirit" would lead and not plan much on where I would go."

The adventure started at a quiet house in Carbondale, IL and a cabin in an artist commune in Sophia, NC to an abandoned missionary college in Tehuacana, TX with the occasional owl flying across the room.

"I felt like I was in a David Lynch film while I was there. It's a small ghost town in the middle of Texas, with interesting characters who live there. I met a woman named Rosi who is a sister in law of Mick Jagger who told me that Tehuacana is an energy vortex and explained the lay lines and stone structures. She also read my past lives."

The final destination was a studio casita in Santa Fe New Mexico where he set up a small writing studio and worked at ideas all day and took long walks in between.

"After I got home to Nashville I went back into my studio, shut the door and the songs flowed free and started to finish."

Produced by Josh Kaler (Butch Walker, Paris Runner) and Owen Biddle (The Roots), The Waking Hours became the wake up call to come back to what is central in ones own life and live out of that. "To be in love is not being smitten with another human but simply being in a state of love-to be awake-and living out of that place, whether alone or with someone," says Matthew.

In the spirit of that philosophy, MPJ is announcing the 'Waking Hours Wake Up Call' contest where fans can enter to win a wake up call from Matthew during his Waking Hours of tour, which starts tomorrow in Ohio. Keep in mind it may not be very early, but he will be awake.