Matt Bauer might just get you with his haunting folk songs accented with twinkling chimes and rippling banjo. With a touch of ethereal charm and down home sensibility, Bauer’s music seems like it belongs in a dimly lit log cabin in the best way possible. Pete’s Candy Store in Brooklyn is the perfect intimate venue for his lovely musical cradling, and his CMJ show will be staged there at 8pm Saturday. This week Matt Bauer generously spoke with OTR.

OTR: How did you begin playing music? When did you know that you wanted to be a musician?

MATT BAUER: I took piano lessons for a little bit when I was in grade school and complained until my parents let me quit. The thing was I hated practicing the songs they have kids learn. But I liked making things up or trying to figure out songs I liked. A friend taught me to play the melody to the “Pink Panther” theme and I remember thinking that was just about the coolest thing ever to know how to do. And I’d make up little songs too. My mom recently found sheet music for a song called “Raindrops” that I wrote when I was in 2nd or third grade. So I think I wanted to play music, but I just didn’t like the songs in the lesson books. And I remember being really stressed out about not practicing enough.

I don’t know when I knew I wanted to be a musician. I think in high school, playing drums and guitar in bands, I wished I could do that for life, but I thought it was impossible. And at the time I was more interested in visual art. I went to college to study painting and for a long while thought that was what I would do with my life.

OTR: What makes your music distinctly yours?

MATT BAUER: If anybody could say that objectively, it would be somebody other than me probably. I guess I could say the lyrics because they mostly have to do with my own experiences, places I grew up, places I’ve lived. Specific places like the like the horse stable at my parents’ place in Kentucky or the abandoned lot around the corner from me here in Greenpoint that’s full of stray cats from the neighborhood.

OTR: If you could choose one figure to be your "professor" and teach you everything he/she knew about the music industry, who would it be?

MATT BAUER: Wow. That’s a good question. The first person that comes to mind is Ian MacKaye because of his work with Fugazi (one of my all time favorite bands) and the label he co-owns – Dischord. He has taken brutally admirable stances on keeping ticket prices and record prices extremely low and fighting for all ages shows whenever possible – in general following what he thinks is right and creating an alternate model to the mainstream music business. And just the enormous amount of experience he has from decades of touring, running a label, producing. It would be amazing to talk to him about all of it.

OTR: What makes a great song?

MATT BAUER: It could be anything. Often for me it’s a song with words that say something I’ve never heard before. Like Mariee Sioux’s “Buried in Teeth.” Amazing imagery and totally unique subject matter. But there are also songs with just the dumbest words in the world, or words that are totally buried in the mix or indecipherable, that have an amazing hook or bass line or something and they are just undeniable. There really isn’t any way to construct a great song. I think it just happens and there’s no way to mathematically reduce it. I guess what makes a song great is whatever that thing is you can’t define but that just gets a hold of you on some gut level.

OTR: What is your great musical goal?

MATT BAUER: To make records like the ones that I love – records that I can listen to over and over again and find new things in them. Like The Rachels’ “Selenography,” David Bowie’s “Hunky Dory” or Bob Dylan’s “Bringing it All Back Home,” Gillian Welch’s “Revelator,” Tom Wait’s “Rain Dogs,” Nina Nastasias “The Blackened Air,” recordings of Arvo Part’s “Fratres” or “Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten.” Records I have been able to come back to over the years and still find interesting and moving.

OTR: Is there a particular show or song that you could call your favorite?

MATT BAUER: Some of my favorite shows have been at The Rite Spot in San Francisco where I used to live. I’ve organized a couple shows there where I ask a bunch of different bands that I’m friends with to do short sets, collaborate, and do covers of each others’ songs. Nights like that where you hear something you’ve never heard before and see people perform together who have never performed with each other before… that’s what I love most about playing and hearing music live.

OTR: What's your creative process?

MATT BAUER: Usually there is a fragment of a melody and a phrase or two of the lyrics that comes first. A lot of times the melody just comes to me out of nowhere while I’m walking. Then usually I record a rough version of the banjo or guitar part that I can listen to in order to brainstorm on the lyrics and try out harmony lines on different instruments. Usually it becomes a sort of happy mess of way too many words and tons of instrument lines in demo form before I then start to edit the lyrics and refine the arrangement. But a lot of the writing process to me happens at the same time I’m recording and arranging. And sometimes when I’m lucky, with the songs that work the best, there’s a moment where I finally let go of my initial idea and the song takes me somewhere that really surprises me.

OTR: What's your next move?

MATT BAUER: Well I just got back from six weeks playing shows around the US and I filmed and recorded a lot of friend’s playing music backstage and in kitchens and living rooms and stuff. So I’m sorting through all of that to make a little series of short films. And next I head over to Europe to sing and play banjo in my friend Alela’s band and to do some solo shows. Some recording this winter, more touring in the spring. So lots of traveling and being surrounded by music, which is heaven to me.