Songwriters on Process

I love The Beths! So talking to Liz Stokes was a blast. The band's new album Expert in a Dying Field was on almost every 2022 year-end  "best of" list. Listen to Stokes talk about the importance of journaling to her songwriting process, why distance is so important for revision, and the best headspace to write in.  Of course, we talk about why walking around outside is so important to Stokes's process. Again: I love The Beths! 

On this week's episode, I talk to all three members of The Lone Bellow! Zach Williams,  Kanene Pipkin, and Brian Elmquist go deep into their songwriting processes and even learn a few things about each other that they didn't know before! In this episode, we discuss the impact that leaf blowing, linguistics, and literature have on their songwriting process. 

Aly and AJ Michalka have been writing and recording songs together since they were teenagers. It’s  easy to see why: their processes are remarkably in sync.  Listen to the sisters talk about this smooth creative relationship, as well as the important role that both reading and exercise play in their songwriting processes. Book recommendations included in this episode! 

"I'm so much more prolific when I exercise."Tim Burgess of The Charlatans admitted to me during episode 55 of the podcast that "rock stars aren't supposed to exercise, but we all have our secrets, don't we?" Well, the cat's out of the bag. Burgess loves to exercise, and it's an important part of his songwriting process. Many of his song ideas come to him at the gym as he's listening to music and watching whatever is playing on the television there. But physical activity as way to stimulate creativity underscores a bigger theme in his process: "When I'm preoccupied, that's when the ideas come," he told me. His best ideas happen when he's not thinking about writing songs.In this episode, you'll also learn why Burgess needs a white room when he writes (no, it has nothing to do with Cream) and what  Van Gogh painting he saw more than 20 years ago inspired him to write a song that, to this day, he still hasn't been able to finish. 

"When I sit down to write, the house has to be clean. Also, the dogs have to be walked because they need to fuck off and leave me alone," Kathleen Edwards told me. Now in podcast form, my 2020 joint interview with Edwards and Dave Hause! Listen now!

S.G. Goodman was raised a farmer's daughter and studied philosophy in college. This means that not only does she love to ponder, she has time do it during those long days in the field. The product of all the pondering: amazing lyrics.It's not a surprise, then, that Goodman doesn't like to write on tour and doesn't like to be inside at all when she writes. In fact, when she's on tour, she can't wait to get back home, where she can be outside and work with her hands. "Whenever I can, I try to get outside and do some kind of manual labor. That's when I'm the most creative," Goodman told me. In this interview, Goodman also talks about the effect that her diagnosed obsessive-compulsive disorder has on her editing process. It used to mean that finishing songs was almost impossible because she always went back and tweaked over and over. Then one day a friend asked her a simple question: "Have you said everything you want to say?" And that's the litmus test she asks herself at the end of her songwriting process. S.G. Goodman's latest album is called Teeth Marks.

Julian Lage has been hailed as one of the "most prodigious guitarists of his generation," so this was a new one for me: an interview with a songwriter who doesn't write lyrics, only instrumentals. As someone steeped in improvisation, Lage isn't one for specific rituals. And that's why I loved this conversation: it's a deep dive into the abstract elements of creativity as we try to figure out where it all comes from. Lage is on the faculty at The New School, so we talked teaching philosophy too. (I'm a former academic.)Lage's latest album is called A View With a Room, out now on Blue Note Records. 

“A good song has fragmented fireworks. It needs to pull people in with interesting turns of phrases, word combinations that no one has heard before.”Hear Gavin Rossdale of Bush explain why the painters Francis Bacon and Lucien Freud are far and away the biggest inspirations to his creative process. We also discuss why great writers are so important to his songwriting and how he gets so many ideas while walking. (Audio note: I interviewed Rossdale while he was on his tour bus, so audio is a bit muffled.)

"I write all day, every day.  When I'm in the thick of it, it's a struggle to focus on anything else."For Grian Chatten of Fontaines D.C. , there’s no such thing as a writing ritual if you never stop writing.  He calls his writing process  his "constant annoying companion. I have writing on speed dial 24/7."  But Chatten says that he's always had a healthy relationship with writing because he's never forcing it. The key, he says, is to not take it too seriously or to make it appear to precious. "I treat it with as little importance as possible." 

"When you have a regimen, it's ok to let up on yourself. Because you know that tomorrow, you'll be doing it again."Madison Cunningham firmly believes in the writer's regimen. You have to put in the work every day. None of this "waiting for inspiration" stuff.  "Words on a page every day, even if it's not songwriting," she says.  So she starts each day by writing for ten minutes because everyone can make time for ten minutes. No excuses.Cunningham also reads voraciously. "Books are one of my favorite wells to draw from," she says in this episode. She draws inspiration from iconic writers like Mary Oliver, Sylvia Plath, Flannery  O'Connor, and Kurt Vonnegut.  But books are not her only source of inspiration: dishes are too. Cunningham is yet another in the line of songwriters I've interviewed who gets song ideas while washing dishes. "Every time I've put down the guitar and picked up a dish, I've never regretted it," she says.  Of course, it's not that the act of scrubbing food that gives us song ideas; instead, writing happens subconsciously.  Writers of any stripe need to understand that the writing process happens when we're eating, sleeping, walking, talking, sitting, staring, whatever--even doing dishes, because the mundane activities allow our minds to wander. Cunningham is a two-time Grammy nominee (2019, 2022). Her third and latest album is Revealer.