OK Go coming to NU to play, sing and then talk about it all

By Nadya Ivanova

4:12 p.m. May 11 2008

Photo by fawksy on Flickr, licensed in the Creative Commons.

What’s it like to be a student songwriter?

The topic of songwriting hits close to home for one Weinberg senior.

Matthew Ryd creates songs with his acoustic guitar and now-shabby lyric book, and performs in noisy bars and house concerts melting with emotion. Somewhere in the prose of daily life, a phrase stuck in his head will cause him to tune his guitar and strum a melody until “something in that stream of nonsense will make sense,” he said.

Ryd, a religion major, started writing songs in high school, and now performs his acoustic-based pop rock in Chicago at least once a month.

“I used to write poetry but most of my poems were very lyrical in their execution, very song-like,” said Ryd, who released his “Rock and/or Roll” CD at a Cafe Ambrosia show last April. “My style of writing has always pointed me towards music.”

Although there is a “level of ingrained creativity to anybody,” songwriting is a learned skill that feeds on avid listening and persistent writing: A good song should be “meaningful to yourself but not exclusive,” Ryd said.

‘I can still hear you in a crowded room…‘is a “simple statement” from “All Words Change,” one of Ryd’s favorite songs. “I imagine a really crowded party on which someone talks with a really familiar voice so that you can hear it from across the room. This song is about friendship drifting apart, about friendship in general,” Ryd explained. “People should relate the songs to themselves. Songs have to touch a nerve.”

As Mayfest lines up its musical constellation for Dillo Day, the Center for the Writing Arts will strew its own handful of stardust. Grammy-winning band OK Go will heat up Spring Quarter this Friday when its members perform songs and discuss songwriting at Northwestern.

“The stars were aligned. They happened to be in town,” said Stacy Oliver, assistant director at the Center for the Writing Arts, regarding OK Go’s concert in Chicago’s Grant Park later the same day. A&O Productions also brought the band to Northwestern at the end of Fall Quarter.

The Northwestern event, which will be held at noon at the McCormick Tribune Center, will replace OK Go’s typical concert with a more-academic performance in an attempt to celebrate writing of all forms. Band members will perform some songs, and talk about their sources of inspiration, how they bring songs to life and how they nourish their musical creativity.

The center kicked off its first songwriting event last year with regional artists Krista Detor, Alice Peacock and Dylan Rice, a Northwestern alumnus. With OK Go, Oliver aims to confirm songwriting as a regular topic in the center’s spring schedule.

Although she plans to invite a varied line-up of artists, she picked OK Go because of its pop-and-rock style, as well as their age, which puts them in Northwestern students’ peer group.

“What I like about them is their playfulness with phrasing, their cleverness. Their music is so catchy, hard-driving and funky, but when you really listen, you catch the thoughtfulness of that, the fun of it,” said Oliver, who likes OK Go’s treading the boards as the touring band for National Public Radio’s This American Life.

Yet, while OK Go are not to be sneezed at, it’s the songwriting that the Center ultimately celebrates.

”Writing is such a crucial part of the environment and culture of the Northwestern campus,” Oliver said. “Our goal is to bring writing to the forefront — the importance of it and the beauty of all types of writing.”