Matt Rodriguez Interview
 Do you hate P-Rod for biting your M-Rod steez?
Nah, it’s free for the taking. No hate; got to make way for the young blood.
Is it true you ride trucks with no bushings?
No, half cut bushings.
Do you have a bolt on your kingpin? They seem as loose as humanly possible.
Yeah, for the most part there’s one there. Loose trucks like that comes from Ricky Windsor, the roots. Daewon rides them loose too. He rides his front truck super loose but not his back. He’s down. But he once jiggled my trucks at a trade show and said, “What the fuck? I thought my shit was on crazy; you got both trucks on wiggle.”
Yet you seem completely in control.
Yeah, I try to be. I just try and pretend it’s not really happening down there. It’s all psychological. For some reason I wanted to make it harder on myself, back in the Stereo days. I know I’m really landing my kickflips because my trucks are barely on.
I was pretty stoked when Jim Greco spoke out on your behalf for designing the Cats style of Ipath and never getting paid for it. Tell me about that.
Basically, I was trying to get my own shoe for a while from Ipath and I felt they needed to recognize what was going down and I basically designed The Cat but I never got credited. I wanted to design something with my name on it and I felt like I already hit a grand slam with The Cat, it’s one of Ipath’s best selling shoes, always has been and still is and so finally they recognized and gave me my own shoe but it’s similar to The Cat; it was kind of my way of letting people know without me talking shit and putting my situation in jeopardy.
But did you get paid off The Cat design?
No, I still don’t get paid for The Cats. I just have my own shoe now. They have done something like 8 or 10 different versions from The Cat but yet it still boils down to The Cat being one of our main shoes to this day. I named it, designed it, brought it to the table but never saw anything from it. That’s that.
What’s the current situation with Ipath now that Timberland has bought it?
It’s still going. There’s a lot of craziness going on with Matt Field getting fired. A lot of the team isn’t too stoked about that. Ipath, no matter whose involved, will always be from the three Matts and Matt Field having trouble with the investors and getting cut out of the picture is severing the roots and you can’t expect the foundation to be as strong as it was when you take out some of the roots. We’re hanging in there and we’ll see what happens. But Fields is alright; he’s just over it and wants to concentrate on something new.
 You have something new too, right? A new board brand?
Yeah, Frontline Skateboarding. We’re doing all bamboo and maple decks. I been doing the bamboo for like five years, before Habitat, you know? I only had my own resources to get it out there but now I’m getting a lot of distributors behind it so it’s kind of cool. It would be great if all companies used other resources besides maple. As far as the pro team it’s Carlos Young, Tony Cox and me and we got some super sick, gnarly, young bucks coming up. It’s just a small grassroots little something. I think the industry is going back to the kids wanting to find and buy what’s not all in their face, being told what’s cool. There needs to be that balance; the big fish and the small fish, even though the small fish sometimes get eaten. Nonetheless you got to do what you can do to put out there what you would like to see. It’s kind of my way of putting out graphics and a certain vibe that’s not really out there. There’s really not a company out there solely dedicated to the conscious vibes I’m trying to push through the whole theme of the company. Money or no money it’s just fun being able to participate in adding more of a soulful aspect to the culture.
Do you ride a fix gear bike? Are you into that craze?
No, not yet. Sometimes I play with Cardiel’s. It makes riding loose trucks seem like nothing. When I ride Cardiel’s fix gear I’m like, “Damn, my trucks are tight.”
Have you ever gotten your hair caught in the spokes of Cardiel’s fix gear?
Shit, not yet. I hope I don’t. I got my foot caught in the spokes once when I was a little kid and me and my dad went for a nice barrel roll together in the middle of the street. It was a good thing I was wearing cowboy boots so I didn’t wrench my ankle.
Maybe that’s what you need to design; some Ipath skateable cowboy boots.
Anti-ankle rollers? Shit, I’ll wear some boots again. If Simon Woodstock can ride boards with carpet griptape then I can ride some boots that have traction.
Matt, my last question is, what if Jah was one of us?
I think he is in everyone as much as anyone wants to submerse themselves in that consciousness and that life. We’re all extensions from the creator whether people want to call him Jah, Allah, or God; we’re all fragments of the supreme creator. We all come from someone other than our mother’s mother’s mother’s mother’s mother’s mother’s. He is alive in all of us if we accept it.
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