Musician and designer Matt Frazier has spent years on the road touring as a drummer for acclaimed indie rock band, Local Natives. But when he's not making music or creating album art, he's likely exploring the roads and trials of Los Angeles by bike. What began as a quest for physical wellness has evolved into a crucial source of mental clarity and community, offering an essential counterbalance to life in the studio and on tour. In this interview, Frazier explores how he seamlessly integrates these passions, reflecting on the shared, effort-driven bond of a ride, and how riding communities can also share in a collective love of music.

I grew up surrounded by music. It was always the thing I wanted to do with my life, but I was also interested in being some sort of visual artist. During high school, I started getting into photography, as well as designing shirts and album covers for the various bands I was in. There was something really satisfying about trying to create a visual world or identity for each project. Music was still the dream, but because it felt so uncertain, I studied design in college and worked full-time in that field for a couple years. Even in the early days of Local Natives, before the band really started to take off, I was still doing a lot of freelance design work, often crammed in the back of our tour van on long drives.

These days, I still have my hands in some of the design work for the band—merch and so on. Then, during 2020–2021, when COVID was at its peak and no one knew when touring would return (our main source of income), I started picking up freelance design jobs again. It stuck with me, and now when I’m not on tour, I still take on projects here and there. In a way, I guess I fell back in love with design.

It started as a way to take better care of myself. Touring can be pretty rough on your body, so just before I turned 30, I began running a lot. I then bought my first proper road bike as a form of cross-training. As I rode more and more around LA, I fully fell in love with the sport and cycling took over as my preferred way of exercising. I felt so much better physically, and even though I’d lived here for 10 years, it felt like I was discovering the city in a whole new way.

When I started bringing my bike on tour, that was a total game changer. Life on the road can be pretty chaotic but also very sedentary, so having a bike with me helps me feel good not only physically, but mentally as it’s become a form of therapy. Cycling gives me clarity and freedom, which I can carry back into music.

The community. That’s really become such a huge part of it for me. Cycling has made my world so much bigger and honestly changed my life. When you share a ride—especially a hard one—there’s this special bond that forms. And I’ve been so fortunate to share the road (or trails!) with so many wonderful people, many of whom have now become dear friends. I’m forever grateful to this sport and the incredible community that surrounds it.

I don’t know if it directly changes how I write or work on music, but it gives me balance and helps keep me in a good, clear headspace. For me, when life leans too much toward one side—like endless studio days (or, on the flip side, too much riding or downtime)—things can start to feel stale. Cycling helps bring variety and balance, which puts me in the right place to create.

There’s also a kind of flow-state familiarity in both cycling and music. On the bike, you get into a rhythm that can feel very similar to when you’re deep in creating something. It’s the best.

It’s exploded. My favorite weekly group ride, Panda’s Ponies, I feel is a good indicator of how many more people are getting into it. When I first started doing that ride years ago, there were maybe around 15–20 people every week? And now, I’d say there are almost 100 people there consistently! It’s been amazing to see a community that was already diverse become even bigger and more inclusive.

I’ve never really had a strict training plan, but I try to set weekly goals and keep things as consistent as possible, especially when I’m not on tour. On average, I usually get in 10 to 12 hours a week—a couple social rides, a few solo rides, and then a run or two sprinkled in. Weekends are definitely easier for my longer rides in the mountains. And while I currently ride mostly road, I enjoy throwing in some days on the gravel bike. LA has so many great single-track trails and fire roads, so it’s always fun to mix it up.

Mid South Gravel has been on my list for a while. I was supposed to do it in 2020, but COVID got in the way. Honestly, I’m just happy to travel with my bike anywhere, but if I had to choose a few next places to take it, I’d probably say Iceland, Mallorca, and Taiwan are currently at the top of my list.

Yeah, I helped put together this event in Austin with MAAP called AUSTIN MIXTAPE: Vol 01. The basic idea was to find an intersection between cycling and music as well as answer the question: “What does the Austin cycling community sound like?” The ride was free to join—the only ask was that you had to submit 2–3 of your top songs (recent or nostalgic) when registering. We then built a community playlist from those entries. After the ride, we also had a little donation-based “merch table” set up where anyone could design their own custom musette. All the merch proceeds went to an Austin-based nonprofit providing music education called Beat4Beat.

I want to bring something like that to LA as well—mixing cycling and music in a way that brings people together, but also helps support the local community. These communities have given me so much, and I just want to continue to help build and support however I can.

I’m a sucker for minimal aesthetics, so when I came across QUOC for the first time it was love at first sight. I ended up buying a pair of Mono II’s shortly after they came out and was absolutely not disappointed. Great design AND performance in a product? Been hooked ever since.

Photos: Huy Doan