Nathan Mattingly opens up about Prodigal Son and learning to tell his own story.
There’s something exciting about catching an artist right at the beginning of a new chapter, and for Nathan Mattingly, that chapter starts with “Prodigal Son.”
The New York–based singer-songwriter is stepping into his own as a recording artist with a debut single rooted in the folk music and storytelling he has loved for years. And there’s already plenty more on the way: “Prodigal Son” is also the title track of Nathan’s debut EP, set to arrive in Autumn 2026.
Before then, Nathan will take the stage at Stone Circle Theatre on August 12, performing alongside Sophia Stewart, I’m Not Holden Caulfield, and Sweetbreads with a full set of original music.
Ahead of the show, we caught up with Nathan about his debut single, making the jump from writing songs to actually putting them out into the world, and everything that has brought him to this very first release.
DicePressPlay: Hi Nathan! I’m so glad I got to hear your debut single in advance because it has genuinely been stuck in my head. Since this is your first original single, how would you introduce Nathan Mattingly the recording artist to someone hearing you for the first time?
Nathan Mattingly: You would think I would have a more succinct answer for this, but I don’t! I would tell them that, as a recording artist, I’m a folk singer with a confessional streak – a troubadour following in the footsteps of storytellers like Brandi Carlile, Noah Kahan, and Marcus Mumford. The music is vulnerable, heartfelt, authentic – my reflections on my upbringing, the world around me, and what little I’ve learned from life so far.
DicePressPlay: You’ve been writing music since you were young, but kept so much of it to yourself. What finally changed and made you think, okay, I’m ready to let people hear this?
Nathan Mattingly: I’ve been writing music since I was about twelve years old, in one of those classic black marble composition notebooks. (I actually still write exclusively in those notebooks; if I don’t have a pencil in my hand I don’t have access to my creative flow.) I used to write, and I performed it for absolutely no one. If someone walked into my room while I was working on an original, I’d probably throw the guitar out the window and dive under the bed. I think what changed for me was just getting older – I woke up one day, and I realized I liked the music I was writing. I thought it was good. And I didn’t care anymore if someone else thought it was bad, or boring, or cringe. Eventually, the fear of dying without ever expressing your truth outweighs your fear of being judged.
DicePressPlay: And why did “Prodigal Son” feel like the right first song to introduce this side of you?
Nathan Mattingly: “Prodigal Son” was a natural fit for a first release. When I first started performing live, I would close my sets with this song. In performance, “Prodigal Son” is a contract with the audience – not an apology, not a plea for absolution, but a celebration of the vulnerability they just saw on stage.
It’s almost my Shakespearean jig, my palette-cleanser for the audience, my Puck monologue to close the play.
“If we shadows have offended…” In the same way, it felt like the right preamble to releasing the rest of my music, for a new (and hopefully) wider musical audience. I’m going to get vulnerable, I’m going to sing some truths about my experiences, the world, religion, masculinity, and more… and let’s agree: I don’t have to apologize for what I believe, and you don’t have to be upset if it doesn’t resonate for you. The people who need to hear this music will find it.
DicePressPlay: Where did “Prodigal Son” actually begin for you? Was there one lyric or musical idea that unlocked the whole song?
Nathan Mattingly: I sometimes compare my writing process to an exorcism. The best songs don’t feel like I’m writing them, they feel like something I was carrying for a long time has suddenly crystallized into something I can comprehend, and I have to race the clock to translate it into English, into lyrics, before it slips away again. The lyrics and melody come together, and for “Prodigal Son,” the entire song flowed out almost in its entirety in that first session. My drafts notebook is usually an unreadable mess, scribbled out lyrics, redrafts of lines, and a madman’s conspiracy board of arrows in a wild attempt to reorganize and sequence the verses. Prodigal Son is eerily clean, maybe 5 rewritten or crossed out lines. It came out as a complete thought, I guess. The stomp-clap setting came later, in the studio with Irving Gadoury – the first draft of the song was the same fingerpicking pattern, but far slower, and cranking the tempo really cracked the arrangement wide open for me.
DicePressPlay: The title comes with a story people already think they understand, and then you turn around and sing, “I ain’t your prodigal son.” What did you want that line to mean in your version of the story?
Nathan Mattingly: My writing is full of Christian imagery and metaphor – I grew up in a very religious family and community, and I really dove into theology from an early age, attacking and unpacking these stories and ideas. The prodigal son is a parable about a homecoming, about infinite forgiveness and love without condition or consequence, and a warning against jealousy, which is very lovely. But I think in certain Christian communities, it gets filtered through a very specific lens to be a story about sinners seeing the error of their ways and returning to the fold. I think I used to live with a lot of fear of judgement, and I compartmentalized various parts of my life in order to make myself more palatable, and to live up to other people’s expectations for me. This song was my reckoning with the fact that I can’t do that anymore, if I’m going to sing truthfully. The listener can do whatever helps them come to terms with it – “call me crazy/say I’m lying/curse the devil/take my tongue” – but I’m saying that I’m refusing to “come home” – I was never the prodigal son to begin with.
DicePressPlay: I love that the song sounds so warm and communal even though the story is about breaking away from something familiar. Was that contrast important to you?
Nathan Mattingly: That juxtaposition is essential for me, both in the big stomp-clap rollicking chorus, but also in the quieter beginning. The guitar tone is warm, and bright, and inviting, even when I’m singing about this internal conflict. I think the tone and structure of the arrangement is what steers the song away from anger, and into a celebration of the freedom of releasing expectations.
DicePressPlay: I have to admit, it’s so catchy that I was singing along before I had fully processed how heavy some of the lyrics are. How do you keep all that energy without losing what you’re actually saying?
Nathan Mattingly: Years of practice compartmentalizing my feelings. No, honestly I think it’s because I trust the story – the fun and energy of the arrangement keeps me on track so the song becomes this cleansing ritual or release, but I really say what I mean in the verse, and I really ask those questions at the end of the final chorus. I think if you approach singing honestly, really just tap into the intention behind the words and tell the story, the intention shines through.
DicePressPlay: You grew up in Virgil, New York, where your bio very importantly tells us there are more cows than people. What did music look like in your childhood there?
Nathan Mattingly: Music was a constant in my childhood. I grew up with parents playing worship music in church, and rehearsing it nightly at home – my mother is a wonderful singer and my father is a really talented pianist and guitarist, so we grew up around his piano in the living room. My dad was my first music teacher, he taught me piano from about 5 years old until I declared I didn’t want to learn piano anymore, my small act of rebellion around 13 or so. I picked up oboe in elementary school – I had this wild idea as a small child that playing oboe would get you a scholarship to college, I don’t know where I heard that, but that didn’t quite pan out the way I thought it would! Music really made the leap from academic and intellectual to a practice that feeds my soul when I got hooked playing my dad’s Martin guitar, which is still the guitar I play when I perform live, and the guitar on this record. I learned every Beatles song I could get my hands on (my uncle once had to beg me to stop playing the intro to Daytripper at a family function), took a classic rock detour, and then became obsessed with Travis picking and fell back into the classics in my parents’ record collection, Pete Seeger and Dylan and their contemporaries.
DicePressPlay: Your childhood career options apparently included being a Mets pitcher, a Jedi, an oboist, and a mathematician, which is an incredible list. Were you always someone imagining yourself living completely different lives?
Nathan Mattingly: I guess I was, haha. I loved baseball, and music, and running through the woods for hours imagining sticks were swords and the world was a whole lot more fantastical and magical than it was… I used to daydream about these wildly different lives I might lead, some of them more practical than others (I’m still holding out for my Force-sensitivity to show up one of these days), but when I got older I realized it wasn’t really about the jobs themselves – I didn’t really want to be a baseball player! I didn’t have the size or the discipline for it. I loved to imagine the story of being one, though. It’s always really been about storytelling.
DicePressPlay: Now you’re an actor, songwriter, composer, and multi-instrumentalist. Do those different sides of you finally feel like they belong together?
Nathan Mattingly: They’re a little more connected every day. I used to keep them all separate, I had this wild notion that I would confuse people, or dilute my “brand” – everyone’s always telling young artists about our “brand” – or that people would think I was giving up on one and pivoting to the other. And one day I got over it, realized I’m the sum of my parts (or more!) and my truth is that I have varied interests and talents, and I was a fool for not pursuing all of them to my heart’s content.
Brandi Carlile, always and forever.
DicePressPlay: You mentioned “learn any instrument” as a skill, which might be one of the boldest lines I’ve ever seen haha. How true is it?
Nathan Mattingly: Haha, so far so good, but I do assume that I’ll meet my match some day. I’ve been humbled by many of them, but I think it’s all expectation setting. I won’t be a master, far from it, but I can learn to play a specific piece of music for a play, if you give me a few weeks to really dive into the instrument. I also have the advantage of being a multi-instrumentalist already – I’ve played guitar, piano, double reeds, single reeds, drums… learning other similar instruments is easier than starting from scratch. I once had to learn to play the shofar and managed it – I feel like if I can learn to play a ram’s horn like a bugle in a few weeks, I’ll be alright.
DicePressPlay: You’ve written music for theatrical productions before, where everything has to serve a character, a scene, or a larger story. What changes when you’re writing something that is completely yours?
Nathan Mattingly: Composing and arranging for theatre was always an intellectual adventure – thinking about the dramaturgy of the piece, and the concept of the production, and figuring out what that world sounds like – how can the music support the text, and support the story? What does a certain song or style of music say about a character and what is their relationship to music? But writing my own music, writing “Prodigal Son” was all intuition and feeling. It’s relinquishing control, turning off the academic brain and tapping into the heart. If I can’t do that, I can’t write, it won’t feel honest and I’ll self-censor and revise before I discover anything meaningful.
DicePressPlay: Okay, take me into the studio a little bit. What did actually making “Prodigal Son” look like, and who helped turn what was in your head into the record we hear now?
Nathan Mattingly: “Prodigal Son” was recorded at Hideaway Audio in NYC by Irving Gadoury – he recorded, mixed, and co-produced the record, and the whole upcoming EP, and he’s been a real guiding light through my first studio process. It’s a different world than playing live, and it can be overwhelming when you realize there is no map, no right way to do it. You can really do anything you imagine, and Irving was instrumental in getting what was in my head out into the track. I originally went into this process planning to play everything on the record, but I love collaborative art too much. I laid down the guitar and vocal, including all the background vocals, and the little organ bits. Pete Coco laid down just the most fun bass part in the world – we had probably 3 different solid gold takes from him, and it’s a tragedy that only one could end up in the final mix. Granville Mullings, Jr. is a wildly talented percussionist I’ve played with in other music spaces, and I called him because I knew he’d have more interesting ideas than me when it came to percussion. I knew we wanted to be in the stomp-clap universe, but the nuance and expression in his playing really takes the record to the next level for me. And Sarah Trabue was the last missing puzzle piece for us – the song has these post-chorus humming sections, and my original notebook when I wrote the song just has a little margin note that says, “fiddle?” next to the hums. And the answer to that question was yes, definitely. I don’t control every little detail in the studio – I trust my collaborators to bring themselves and their ideas, and I help refine those ideas and shape them into something that fits the musical world in my head. I don’t always know exactly what I’m looking for, which was scary the first time, but this process taught me that when I hear the perfect part, I’ll know it, I’ll start grinning ear to ear.
DicePressPlay: Watching you disappear into someone else on screen and then hearing a song as personal as “Prodigal Son” gave me such an interesting contrast. Which one makes you feel more exposed: acting or songwriting?
Nathan Mattingly: Songwriting, far and away. Acting is also very vulnerable work for me, but there’s a layer of protection in the writer and director. You’re baring your truth on screen or stage, but refracted through the prism of their story, so it’s a controlled vulnerability. When I perform my music, that’s literally me. If you look too closely, you’ll see exactly who I am in the most intimate parts of my soul, and if you don’t like it, it’s easy for that to feel like a rejection of who I am at the deepest level.
DicePressPlay: You’ve spent so much time living inside other people’s stories as an actor. Do you think that has changed the way you tell stories in your own songs?
Nathan Mattingly: I have to assume it has, but I’ve really never considered it! I think the primary thing I get from acting, especially in theatre, is empathy. Empathy for different people, different lived experiences and perspectives, and that has to seep into how I think about telling stories in song. It’s also certainly influenced my language – when my imagery isn’t Christianity, it’s often Classical – I’m astonished Shakespeare hasn’t slipped in there more explicitly yet.
DicePressPlay: You’re playing Stone Circle Theatre on August 12. What are we getting from a Nathan Mattingly live set that night?
Nathan Mattingly: I’ll be playing a full set of original music! I have a pretty deep catalog already that I try to rotate at my live shows, to build a set that fits the vibe for that lineup and venue. I just have to start recording them all! I’m most excited to play “Prodigal Son” for folks live – I’ve always performed solo, but I have some friends set to play the full arrangement live with me, so the audience can get a little taste of what the record sounds like.
DicePressPlay: And finally, what comes after “Prodigal Son”?
Nathan Mattingly: Prodigal Son is set to be the titular track of my debut EP, which should release late this autumn!
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