Songwriters on Process

Cautious Clay and I spent the first ten minutes of this episode talking about the role that painting plays in his creative process. Then a few minutes later, the topic turned to the through line between basketball and songwriting. And later he mentioned that planks and stretching are a part of his writing ritual. 

He also plays seven (at least) instruments: drums, bass, guitar, piano, sax, flute, and vocals. Cautious Clay is a true ...

This episode with Shura marks a first: we managed to draw a through line between Marcella Hazan's bolognese sauce and the songwriting process. We also talk about why peeing brings great ideas. (To be sure, Shura is not the first songwriter to tell me that.) Lest you think her inspiration is confined to those indoor pastimes, Shura told me that few things beat a hike in the mountains. This was one fun conversation!

Shura's ...

"The more I do this, the less I want to understand where it comes from," Orla Gartland says on the pod. Like most songwriters, Gartland likes to walk as a part of her songwriting process. She'll usually listen to music on these walks, and she walks to the tempo of the music she's listening to. So if you see her on the streets of London walking briskly one day and slowly the next, you now know why.

Gartland's...

When a band has seven GRAMMY wins and thirty-one GRAMMY nominations among them, they're a supergroup. So let's be clear: I'm With Her is a supergroup. The trio of Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O'Donovan, and Sara Watkins are close friends who say that great songs can come from a good trip to the grocery store. I've had all three on the pod before, but never together.

The latest album by I'm With Her is Wild and C...

"I need to have those times of being fully in bloom, then fully hibernating. That's how I get my best, most genuine work," Samantha Crain says. She's a seasonal songwriter who actively takes time not to write, and those times are the hibernation stages. Some of Crain's songs hibernate too: the title track off her new album took twenty years to write.

Crain's writing process is like a wide-angle lens. Sh...

ED NOTE: here's my episode with Hood's bandmate Ashton Irwin.

It's about time a songwriter referenced the movie Lost in Translation, as 5 Seconds of Summer bassist Calum Hood did in our conversation. It's part of Hood's process: he finds inspiration everywhere. And he likes to create every day, but that doesn't always happen. "I'm an anxious person anyway, so if I go a few days without writing...

Suzanne Vega usually heads straight to the compost heap for song ideas. "I have a compost heap of at least 50 notebooks dating back many years, and I pull from those notebooks when writing a new album," Vega says. She starts the process with a theme in mind then heads straight to that pile of notebooks to look for ideas to fit the theme. Some of her songs take years to emerge: "Lucinda" started as an idea more t...

"I assign too much personal value to my creative output. Too much of my self-worth is wrapped up in that process in a way that is unhealthy," Stefan Babcock of PUP told me. 

It's natural for an artist to attach self-worth to what they create, but Babcock says he's working on loosening that attachment. "Trying to write and not have every song be everything has been a big weight off my shoulders," he says...

It's not easy being a songwriter. It's also not easy being a PhD student. I don't know how Uwade is able to do both simultaneously. Uwade is in the first year of her PhD program in Classics at Stanford University, and in this episode we explore how these two lives intersect. We also go deep into her songwriting process, which must involve a .38mm Muji black ink pen. It has to be black ink because "blue is too wh...

Ed note: my new permanent intro and outro music is, in fact, the Tennis song "Need Your Love."

Alaina Moore and Pat Riley of Tennis are good friends of mine, which means this episode is more of a conversation than an interview as we go deep into the creative process. The band's website features Alaina surrounded by books, and this is hardly a surprise: they are voracious, and I do mean voracious, readers. We're a...

ED NOTE: Here's my recent episode with Benmont Tench, keyboardist for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. 

Mike Campbell doesn't have songwriting rules. He doesn't need any because he's always creating. "I'm probably writing as I'm talking to you," Campbell told me. In fact, Campbell's problem is that he can't stop coming up with ideas and sometimes wishes he could dial it back a bit. B...

I always love having my buddy Derek Miller of Sleigh Bells on the pod! This is Miller's third time as a guest. I don't know how he ever has time to do interviews because the man is either writing music, about to write music, or thinking about why he's not writing music. Miller is inspired by everything, and I mean everything. Even LSU football. (Go Dawgs, sorry Derek!)

We also talk about his newfound sobriety and how ...

I'm a much better songwriter when I'm reading," Annie DiRusso says. Truer words have never been spoken; a clear through line connects quality songwriting and reading. And the fact that DiRusso loves poetry makes me even more of a fan. 

DiRusso does most of her songwriting in her "giant mess" of a bed. "It's covered in guitars, notebooks, pens, a laptop, mics. There's ink stains all over the sh...

Running and poetry are all Denison Witmer needs as a songwriter.

"When I'm being physically active, my brain opens up," he says. Running is a big part of Witmer's life and plays a big role in his creative process. The other major source of Witmer's inspiration is poetry, and we talk about its impact on his songwriting. We also make a collective case for why the poet Li-Young Lee is so, so, so great and why y...

Note: here's my recent interview with Mike Campell, guitarist for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Benmont Tench is the keyboardist and a founding member of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. That’s reason enough to listen to this podcast. I’ve interviewed other icons—Duff McKagan, Johnny Marr, and Jerry Harrison, to name a few—and they all have one common thread: a voracious appetite for art in all its forms. They consume books,...

"I have no rituals when it comes to writing. I don't want to think something can go wrong if things aren't set up the right way," says James McGovern of The Murder Capital. Indeed, that's the downside of a ritual: a fixed routine can limit your productivity when that routine isn't available. But McGovern does have one tiny "ritual" that I wholeheartedly endorse: writing the bad stuff before h...