45 facts about singer Mat Kearney

1. Kearney was born on December 1, 1978 and raised in Eugene, Oregon.

2. He has two brothers.

3. At South Eugene High School, Kearney was a soccer player.

4. He attended California State University, Chico in Chico, California on an athletic scholarship.

5. Majored in literature, playing soccer until his junior year.

6. Kearney first became interested in music after traveling to Nashville with music producer Robert Marvin.

7. Using a roommate's guitar, he tried covering songs by other artists, but realized he was not very good at it, and began writing his own.

8. Though things were going well for Kearney at school, the partying atmosphere at Chico caught up to him. In an interview, Kearney said, "I guess I lived it up and did what everyone said you should do in college. I discovered the depth of depravity, the bleakness of that lifestyle. It just wasn't working. I finally started understanding there must be more to life."

9. Kearney began focusing on music fusing his simple guitar playing with spoken word or rap.

10. He started to play at coffee shops and soon began to make small amounts of money.

11. Marvin had plans to move to Nashville, Tennessee. Marvin asked Kearney to help with the move and he accepted. Kearney says, "I helped him pack up his trailer and we put a mattress on the back of his truck. We basically drove cross-country and slept in the back. When we pulled into Nashville we slept in a school parking lot for three days until we finally rented this apartment where the roof was caving in and mice were crawling all over."

12. Kearney decided to stay in Nashville to record a few demos with Marvin and after a few months, Kearney had no plans on returning. "By the end of the summer, we had three or four songs and I realized this is what I wanted to do. It just clicked. So I called home to Oregon and said, 'I'm not coming back' and I never left Nashville."

13. On April 18, 2006, Kearney's second album and major-label debut, titled Nothing Left to Lose, was released.

14. His major-label debut contains several reworked songs from Kearney's first album Bullet, as well as some new material, and has sold over 450,000 copies to date.

15. Single "Nothing Left to Lose" was the first single from the album, peaking at No. 41 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the week of February 10, 2007. The single has sold over 500,000 copies and won numerous BMI awards.

16. The track "All I Need" was featured on Grey's Anatomy and NCIS and began to chart on iTunes top 100 downloaded songs. It peaked at No. 94 on the Billboard Pop 100.

17. To promote Nothing Left to Lose, Kearney toured with John Mayer, Sheryl Crow, Train, Mutemath, Meiko, and Cary Brothers throughout 2005, '06, and '07.

18. He also headlined VH1's first ever "You Oughta Know Tour" in the spring of 2007.

19. His full name is Mathew William "Mat" Kearney.

20. Lists U2 and The Beatles as influences. 

21. He is based in Nashville, Tennessee.

22. Kearney has received critical acclaim and widespread recognition for his Columbia Records debut, Nothing Left to Lose.

23. So far, he has a total of 5 top 20 hits on the Adult Top 40 Chart.

24. His most recent album, Just Kids, was released on February 24, 2015.

25. Kearney's album, City of Black & White, was released through Columbia Records on May 19, 2009.

26. He collaborated with Nashville artists such as Trent Dabbs, Matthew Perryman Jones, Kate York, Paul Moak, Daniel James, Will Sayles, and Josiah Bell.

27. In May 2009, Kearney toured with Keane and The Helio Sequence for several weeks to promote City of Black & White.

28. He also toured with Owl City and Unwed Sailor on Owl City's "All Things Bright and Beautiful Tour".

29. On August 2, 2011, Kearney's fourth album Young Love was released.

30. To promote his fifth album he toured with both Judah and the Lion and Parachute during his "Just Kids" tour.

31. Kearney's songs have appeared on the following television series: 30 Rock, Awake, Dirty Sexy Money, Kyle XY, The Unit, Without a Trace, Laguna Beach, The Hills, Bones, Jericho, Friday Night Lights, Wildfire, What About Brian, South Beach, 8th & Ocean, One Tree Hill, Scrubs, The Closer, NCIS, Life Unexpected, Grey's Anatomy, Parenthood, So You Think You Can Dance, The Vampire Diaries and A to Z.

32. His song "Runaway" is featured on the Soul Surfer movie soundtrack.

33. Kearney's song "Sooner or Later" provides the background music to the WWDC 2013 and Google's Zeitgeist 2011: Year In Review video, which was uploaded to YouTube on December 14, 2011.

34. He was also on The Today Show performing the song "Billion".

35. Kearney's guitars of choice are usually the Martin D-28 or the Gibson Hummingbird.

36. Mat began to regularly use the Martin when he toured with Keane to promote City of Black & White.

37. Previously he was seen with his Gibson guitars.

38. The Martin was lost in the May 2010 Tennessee floods along with much of his other equipment.

39. Kearney currently resides in Nashville, Tennessee, in Hillsboro Village with his wife.

40. His wife is a model/actress Annie Sims.

41. He and Sims married on June 5, 2010.

42. Kearney has stated that his legal name is Mathew due to a nurse's error on his birth certificate.

43. He discovered the error on his name while in the 8th grade when he noticed how his mom corrected the error with red ink, never legally correcting it. Since then, he embraced the one T in his legal name.

44. His official website is matkearney.com.

45. He enjoys skiing.