The Backpage Interview Series

By Timothy Faust and Eric Doctor     10/23/08 7:00pm

The sun was bright and the humidity high when Backpage coeditor Timothy Faust climbed to the top of 180 one recent bright Tuesday afternoon. A few minutes later, he was joined by Advisor to the Dean of Undergraduates Dr. Matthew Taylor. The birds chirped overhead and more than one professor walking past looked quizzically at the two figures atop the crown of the Engineering Quad. The Backpage Interview Series had officially started.Taylor maintains a reputation as an administrator who understands student needs - which makes sense, when you consider his past. After attending Southern Methodist University with a stint at Oxford, Taylor earned his Ph.D. and taught history here at Rice, where he was a Resident Associate at Brown College. But it was not a straight shot from graduate school to Forman's right-hand guy. Taylor was dean of student life at Pomona University - with a few national tours with a rock band peppered in between.

The Backpage spoke to Taylor about life as an academic, a husband, and a rocker.

We hit him with some pretty hard questions.

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Backpage: I saw a photo of you from when you were appointed Dr. Forman's assistant, and if I remember correctly you seemed to have much different hair than you do now. So what have been the hairstyles of Matt Taylor?

Matt Taylor: I suffered a center part for several years in junior high. When I was a grad student, I had what I'd like to call a banker's cut, pretty boring. When I was in LA, I adapted to the environment and it was sort of spiky, especially when I was playing music. From 2000 to 2005, it was colored many different colors... Like a general color with stupid highlights, including purple, which was my favorite. The hairstyle changed mostly in response to my current wife - er, my only wife - who insisted that I stop coloring it and let it go gray.

BP: What was young Matt Taylor's childhood ambition?

MT: Probably to bat .400, lifetime. I'm batting 1.000 with my wife, so I'm happy!

BP: Speaking of which, you got married recently, in April. Congrats! How did you two meet?

MT: Match.com. We're a twenty-first-century couple!

BP: How was the first date?

MT: She hit me up first. I had been on Match for six months and was dating like a fiend, so even though I was not particularly won over by her profile, I went. We spent three hours at Benjy's over cocktails and I actually thought she was a little too much for me. Too strong, super type-A personality. But it worked out, even though I did not ask her for her number. She said she immediately called or emailed her friends after that first date and said, "that bastard didn't ask for my phone number." ... I emailed her the day after and said, "You know, I think we're sort of at different speeds, but the question is, is that a good thing or a bad thing - what do you think?" So I opened it to her. She took the bait.

BP: How many bad dates did you get through Match.com?

MT: At least six or seven. The worst one was a girl who online looked - well, she seemed very charming. We traded emails. She worked for an arts organization downtown; I was definitely charmed; great smile, great- So I showed up at this restaurant where we were meeting, and she was already seated. I knew she was short - she listed her height as 5'1".

It turned out to be a lie. We sat at the bar and things were going okay but, you know, wasn't going out of the park - but still I thought "Well, let's go; see what happens." I asked her to dinner, and when she stood up, I stood up and went, "Uh, where'd she go?" I couldn't see her. I literally couldn't see her! Even though she had cowboy boots on! She was 4'8". I have nothing against short people, but that's just awkward.

Taylor says that despite the bad dates, he believes fully in the matchmaking ability of Match.com - after all, that's how he found his wife. They dated for only six months before he proposed, and they married six months later.

BP: Let's say you're on a Match.com date at a bar. What drink do you get for yourself?

MT: I pretty much only drink one thing, and that's Jack Daniels on the rocks.

BP: You're not a beer guy at all?

MT: Never. Well, not in many years. I started drinking Jack in 1993 - that's while I was an RA at Brown. But I really became a converted Jack drinker in California, sort of as part of my rock and roll lifestyle as a musician, or at least a more serious musician than I am now.

BP: And that was after you were an RA.

MT: Yeah. I was a beer drinker at the time - either Coors Light or Miller High Life. I was old school. I still remember as a grad student I always had a fridge full of Miller High Life or Coors Light. [Miller is] great stuff! It's under-appreciated.

Taylor grew up in Dallas, and he stayed there for undergrad. He felt out of place at Southern Methodist. "My fellow classmates were less-than-motivated," he says. "I was motivated. It was awkward." After nine months in banking and a ten-week stint in law school that "bored him to tears," Taylor was offered a history fellowship at Rice and moved to Houston on New Year's 1986.

BP: So, life as a grad student at Rice... You became an RA in '90. What did you do before then?

MT: I read books. That's all I did - read and suffer! After the first year and a half it was enjoyable... The first year and a half was a lot of confusion. A lot of wheel-spinning, trying to figure out what the hell I was supposed to be doing. I began kickin' it into focus. I was an Allen Matusow student... Matusow is a god. Anyone who has not taken a course from him needs to do so.

BP: You taught History of the Cold War at Rice; that's now taught by Doug Brinkley. Do you think you could take him in an arm wrestling match?

MT: If it were left-handed.

BP: I'm getting the idea that the most rock 'n' roll Matt Taylor phase was not at Rice.

MT: When I was at Rice, I was not rock 'n' roll at all. I had given up the drums to be an academic. I did not touch the drums from 1985 to 1997. But they came back.

I moved to LA, and for the first time in many years I wasn't living on campus or in an apartment. I had my own house so I bought a drum set, and that's when I started playing. Then in the spring of my first year at Pomona [as Associate Dean of Students and a history professor], some freshman students had heard that I play and we had a conversation over dinner. I absentmindedly said, "If you guys are any good, maybe I'll play with you," and they took me up on it. So I was in a cover band, but I also hooked up with these students and played with them throughout their Pomona career.

BP: Were any of them in your classes?

MT: No.

BP: Would it have been awkward if they had been?

MT: Yes. Yes. I was sort of the Don Ostdiek of Pomona, and there was an occasion or two when some of the bandmates would get in trouble and I'd have to deal with it.

BP: When did the band finally begin to make it big?

MT: Their senior year we decided to try and get serious, so we sort of agreed that we had a goal to play out in Los Angeles. Toward the end of that year we applied to the Pantene Pro-Voice contest for female singer-songwriters or female-fronted bands, which we were. We were admitted as one of the finalists - there were like 1500 entrants, and we came out on top. Within weeks of those folks graduating, we won that contest, we played in Central Park with Jewel, we had a development contract with Atlantic. That was 2001.

This made Tim, who's a huge Jewel fan (which is totally normal for a 20-year-old-guy) very excited.

BP: What's Jewel like behind the scenes?

MT: She's very shy. Very shy, and she's shorter than you think, maybe 5'3", 5'4", but she was very shy around us. She's hot. She can really sing... You have to see her live, she can really kick ass.

BP: She's coming to Houston. [The show was canceled - Ed.]

MT: I didn't know that! I'm hurt that she didn't call me! We opened many shows for her. Fantastic times! We were playing places like Verizon, the Greek in LA; big, big places in Dallas. I was still working, I was still Dean. The previous fall, in 2001, I took a leave of absence so that we could take a national tour with Poe. That was a great tour. I had a house in LA, I had a house on campus. I was trying to decide what to do. Actually, that band was in some ways very close to almost being famous, but three quarters of that band split off in '02 and formed another band.

BP: How supportive was Pomona?

MT: They were mostly supportive. My boss, the VP, agreed to my leave that fall; the President wasn't too pleased. If I had asked for another he probably wouldn't have approved it.

BP: Let's say that The National comes to Rice, their drummer passes out, they need you, they like you and want to take you on national tour. Do you think Dr. Forman would okay it?

MT: Nah, there's too much going on, although he's a music lover himself. He used to perform as a folk singer in his youth when he was in Boston.

BP: You ever get together and jam?

MT: No, there's been no jamming.

BP: What about the Houston music scene?

MT: I've gotta say, it's better than I expected when I came from LA. There are some talented people here, but the overall scene is pretty dead because most people don't support it. You see the same people at shows over and over again. I think it could be because the live venues pretty much suck. There's not a lot of places that mix live music and good nightlife. I think the House of Blues might help that.... I'd be surprised if it changed, I really would be. I don't think people realize just how serious you've gotta be to make it out of this town.

Taylor moved back to Houston with a girlfriend in 2004 and was hired in March 2005 to help Dean Forman in his new position. Eventually he was made a permanent employee. We asked him to compare his time at Pomona with his time at Rice.

BP: Who got in more trouble?

MT: Pomona students, hands down. Mostly in stupid ways, but a few got in trouble in creative ways. At Pomona, there are two main streets. On either side, we had what were called cottages - very prized houses with six students in them across from the freshman residence hall. We had one case where some guy took a BB gun and shot at people walking out of the residence hall. My other favorite: once a month we had steak night. Two freshman guys were really excited and had eaten too much steak, and it resulted in some, uh, "prodigious defecation." They, being 18-year-old guys, decided they should do something with their "prodigious defecation" and so they put it in bowls to weigh it to see who was producing the biggest feces. Once it was in the bowls, they didn't know what to do with it. They put it in the women's restroom. You can't make this stuff up!

BP: What about Rice kids?

MT: Rice kids are just creative, a lot more creative and less harmful. There was an incident when I was at Brown. We were sitting in the lobby for Cabinet when we saw a couch on fire fly by the window. That was a good time...

Here's a great jack, one of my favorites - Sid had jacked us during Willy Week. We were all out of the college and they took the shells from shrimp and put them in the dryer. The whole college smelled of dead fish. I mean, it was brilliant, but it was horrible. So we called the Sid president and said "Hey, Dr. Taylor's pissed 'cause his apartment smells awful, so you should come over and apologize." Little did the Sid president know that we had guys waiting there for him. He came over to apologize, and a bunch of big guys grabbed him, put a U-lock around his neck and send him back to Sid. I can't remember how they got it off.

BP: Last year I got drunk and cheered for the Common Reading while your band played at Jamfest. Is it weird when your worlds collide like that?

MT: Well, it shouldn't be. I think I'd be more effective in my job if it was less weird. One of the reasons that I do it is because I want students to see me as accessible and easy to work with; as here for students. I haven't quite crossed that boundary... I do enjoy when they come together.

BP: Last question. Suppose that everyone who works in Lovett Hall and the Allen Center gets in a laser tag match. Who would win?

MT: I'm inclined to say Kevin Kirby, because I think he has some military experience.

BP: And President Leebron?

MT: I- I think he'd make a great commander for whichever side he's on. He's a great strategist.

Editor's note: Matt Taylor will be drumming for Tody Castillo this Saturday at Last Concert Cafe at 8:30 p.m.

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