Matt Mathews on Trauma, TikTok Fame and Finding His Voice in Music: ‘Not Everything Has to Be So Dark’ (Exclusive)

Slowing down isn’t easy for Matt Mathews. But deep down, he loves it. 

“Right now, I am enjoying the farm and the horses and being able to not be on the road currently,” Mathews, 32, told PEOPLE over the summer from the Alabama home he shares with husband Rob Killgore. “So that’s the current situation.”

In many ways, Mathews is a creature of habit, so he would be the first to admit that he loves the routine of life on the farm before he heads back out on his Bougie on a Budget Tour (his next date is Friday, Oct 10). “I wake up every single day and the first thing I do is obviously let my dogs out and I bring the horses in the barn, and I feed them and feed all the chickens and the pigs,” he said. “Then I come inside and feed the dogs and make coffee. Having my coffee is probably my favorite part because that’s what keeps me from killing people.”

He laughs, a familiar sound to the millions who have followed his unfiltered yet hilarious antics on social media since he first began sharing it during the course of the coronavirus pandemic. 

“Growing up as a kid, I used to get put out of class because of my mouth,” remembered Mathews. “I would sit in the hallway out by the door and people would just walk by and they’d be like, ‘Well, Matt got put out of class again.’ And it’s so funny to me because now I get paid for my mouth.”

It’s that insatiable mouth that Mathews said he thinks he partly inherited from his grandmother on his dad’s side. “She’s hysterical and she’s like a spitfire and she’s wild,” Mathews explained. “My dad also has a great personality.”

But there is another side to his humor — a side that he used as an armor through the years. “You really learn to be funny when you have a lot of trauma in your life,” he said quietly. “You have to learn to make jokes and be funny about things so that you just don’t cry about it all the time.”

It’s this sort of humor that Mathews himself often refers to as ‘unhinged,’ as he would be the first to admit that he can sometimes go off the rails once he’s on that stage and the spotlight shines his way.

“I tell people at my shows to prepare to be offended,” admitted Mathews. “I’m going to talk about things that most of you’re going to shy away from. I am going to make fun of everybody. I don’t care what color you are, what sexual orientation you are. I mean, I’m going to make fun of everybody.”

The reasons behind this are many.

“I feel like we’re in such a dark world and there’s so much s— going on that when you come into a comedy show, you don’t want to think about politics,” said Mathews. “You don’t want to think about murders and the things that are happening outside that are so just volatile and ugly and make you feel bad. When you come in, you want to forget about what’s going on outside for 90 minutes. You just want to laugh. Not everything has to be so dark.”

And yes, humor has healed him. But so has his music. 

“People are not one-dimensional,” said Mathews, who has already released two tracks, “Joke’s on Me” and “What a War.” “When I started out, I was the farm chore guy. I was the chicken guy. I was the guy that wears the robes. But I’ve changed. Just because you saw one side of me on the internet doesn’t mean that there aren’t five more sides to me. We have so many different sides and we have so many different parts of who we are that I don’t feel like we have to just be one part.”

Nevertheless, Mathews had his doubts about pursuing music. 

“I was never going to try because I didn’t think I was good enough,” admitted Mathews. “It was going to be too difficult. I was never, ever going to do that. But I really wanted to perform. And when I got on stage to do comedy, I just realized that it was the easiest thing I had ever done. People were literally cracking up and they loved it. And I was like, wow.”

And now, it’s that comedy that has afforded him the chance to make another dream come true.

“I have a fan base of people that truly love and support me and will listen to whatever I do, or if I’m doing music or if I’m doing comedy,” said Mathews, who has been in the studio working on his debut album. “It’s really cool to be able to show two different sides.”