Matthew West turning tables on fans

Singer-song­writer Matthew West will play Thurs­day at Mis­sion Hills Church in Lit­tle­ton. His new project, ‘The Sto­ry of Your Life’ is based on sto­ries he received from fans about their lives. Pho­to cour­tesy of Tec Peta­ja

For years Matthew West penned songs about his expe­ri­ences, but with his new project, “The Sto­ry of Your Life,” he decid­ed it was time to turn the tables and the micro­phone. West want­ed to give his fans a voice and a chance to tell their sto­ries.

What hap­pened next was a bit sur­pris­ing to the singer/songwriter. With lit­tle fan­fare West post­ed a note on his web­site ask­ing fans to send in their sto­ries, expect­ing a few 100 or so. Well, he did­n’t receive a hun­dred sto­ries. He received thou­sands and thou­sands of let­ters from peo­ple in all 50 states and 20 coun­tries. Sto­ries that peo­ple want­ed to share to help oth­er or just to get it off their chests.

“I was floored by the response,” said West, who will be play­ing Thurs­day, Feb. 24 at Mis­sion Hills Church in Lit­tle­ton. “Here I was read­ing sto­ry upon sto­ry of people’s real life. It was bet­ter than TV because this was real. It was great inspi­ra­tion.”

West spent two months in a Ten­nessee cab­in read­ing through reams of let­ters. And while ingest­ing all of these tales of tri­umph, bro­ken­ness and woe, West dis­cov­ered some­thing about him­self. He became more aware of a void in his life that need­ed to be filled with love – love for anoth­er.

“The biggest thing is that it changed the way I live my life,” West said. “Our world is ‘me cen­tered.’ It’s about self-dis­cov­ery, tak­ing care of No. 1 … and it’s no dif­fer­ent for me than any­one else. How can I improve my life? How can I make more mon­ey for me and my fam­i­ly?

“The two months that I spent read­ing about oth­er peo­ple’s sto­ries made me won­der about how I had been spend­ing my life. And I start­ed look­ing out and not with­in. Look­ing at each per­son as being of val­ue. Like that home­less per­son that you pull up next to at a light and you lock the door. Now it’s how can I reach out to this per­son? By giv­ing mon­ey, food or a hand­shake?”

That look inward pro­duced the one song, “My Own Lit­tle World,” on his cur­rent CD that is about him­self and it chal­lenges lis­ten­ers to take the extra step to help that wid­ow beg­ging on the street cor­ner.

The expe­ri­ence also brought West back to his roots, “wak­ing him up inside.”

“It returned me to when I was play­ing in cof­fee­hous­es in front of 15 peo­ple,” West explained, “and you got to know the audi­ence and inter­act with them. Peo­ple would tell me about how the songs helped them.”

West said the most reward­ing part of his newest, which got its gen­e­sis about 10 years ago, is meet­ing the peo­ple behind the sto­ries.

“That has been one of the most incred­i­ble parts of this project, is meet­ing the peo­ple that inspired the songs,” West said. “To be sit­ting in the liv­ing room of a sin­gle mom in Indi­ana whose teenage daugh­ter was in a car acci­dent and play­ing them the song you wrote about their life. I wouldn’t change that expe­ri­ence for any­thing. It’s been amaz­ing.”

West’s pas­sion for the music plays through­out the CD and pick­ing out a favorite is a lit­tle tough for the Gram­my nom­i­nat­ed song­writer.

“Wow, a favorite song?” West said. “You know on my oth­er albums I can answer that pret­ty quick­ly, but it’s hard on this one. Every one of the songs is real­ly impor­tant to me and the peo­ple in them.

“I guess if I have to pick one it would be ‘Fam­i­ly Tree.’ It’s a song about a woman and her dys­func­tion­al fam­i­ly life that she grew up in deter­mined not to car­ry on the same ways. ‘Will you grow up to be an alco­holic like your dad? Will your mar­riage end in divorce like your par­ents?’ … It’s to let peo­ple know that they can stop the gen­er­a­tional bag­gage. That they can start a new fam­i­ly tree. That seems to res­onate with a lot of peo­ple.”

That inter­ac­tion with fans that spawned “The Sto­ry of Your Life” is being lost on today’s newest singers, West said.

“In these days of ‘Amer­i­can Idol’ where you go from play­ing in front of your par­ents to play­ing in front of mil­lions you miss valu­able stages of growth,” he said. “Play­ing in front of 10, 15 even a hun­dred of peo­ple, you get to con­nect with the crowd.

“And that is a price­less les­son.”