When Don Lifted appears in the Orion Free Concert Series at the Overton Park Shell this Friday, September 16th, it may not exactly be his last performance, but don’t hold your breath ’til the next one. That’s the message from artist Lawrence Matthews III, who created the alter ego of Don Lifted, as he ponders the upcoming show. “I’m not treating this as the last time you’re ever going to see me perform,” he says. “That’s too finite of a thing to say.” And yet Germantown’s Renaissance man, who’s exhibited photography and paintings, directed videos, and motivated nonprofits, does seem to feel the Don Lifted persona has run its course.
For one thing, the most recent singles/videos he’s released, “Baby Teeth” and “The Rope,” will certainly be the final recorded products under that name. And that alone is significant, coming barely a year after his major label debut, 325i on Fat Possum. When we featured that album in a story last year, it seemed to portend a storied career for Don Lifted. But in this era, seemingly permanent things can slip through your fingers in a heartbeat.
You might even chalk Matthews’ change in priorities to a heartbeat: the accelerated pulse of a panic attack. “I entered 2022 having a panic attack on Cooper. I don’t even know what triggered it. I managed to get down the street to Overton Park, and I laid in the grass until I could breathe again. I was really, really scared. I had never had a panic attack in my life.”
It turns out that after the album release last fall, and as Matthews commenced work on its follow up, a lot went down. “When I released 325i, there was a lot of anxiety that started to click in. A lot of people who hadn’t been around for a while popped back up. My social circles shifted a little bit. I was way too busy to see what was shifting, and it resulted in me being in a very unsupportive and unhealthy environment. I started getting really paranoid, because there were people around me that were not genuine. Part of that was also my anxiety around Covid. I have asthma and can’t play around. So I closed off and became isolated.”
Furthermore, being snubbed two times over caused the artist a lot of anguish. “Fat Possum informed me they couldn’t do another album with me, and I was already four songs into it. That was very deflating. It took the wind out of my sails a bit, but it was also a chance to be free, not think about a label or budgets. Well, two weeks later, my manager dropped me. After that, I was like, ‘Oh shit, this is coming apart really fast!’ Then I went through a phase of blaming myself. ‘Did I screw up? Did I not make a good record? What? How?’
“Anyway, I was dealing with so much that I just stayed in the studio, working on this new album. At the same time, I spent a month grieving my old job with Tone, which I left in April in order to focus on music more. It didn’t just feel like quitting a job — it felt like breaking up. So I was processing a lot of emotions.”
Somewhere along the way, Matthews also realized that relating to his own Don Lifted persona was becoming more difficult. But while the most recent singles might be Don Lifted’s swan song, Matthews still has a full album under his belt, ready to be released under his own name. And as for Friday’s show, “I’m really excited to show that this is not an ending, but a continuation of a story.
“I’ve been trying to reevaluate this Don Lifted thing for a long time,” he continues. “Now, the trilogy of Alero, Contour, and 325i is perfect. It tells the story of my youth, and me getting to the man I am today. But the story of Lawrence Matthews is so much bigger than that. From here on out, it’s just Lawrence. This is me talking.”
