Songwriters on Process

"Without the labor, channeling can't happen," Matt Gervais of The Head and the Heart told me. He has stacks upon stacks of Mead notebooks to prove it, all the way back to when he was a kid. Gervais finds art galleries to be particularly inspiring; they were a rich source when he worked in the Seattle Art MuseumThe latest album by The Head and the Heart is Aperture, out now.

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 Clear Blue on Rounder Records.NOTE: here are my past interviews with Jarosz, O'Donovan, and Watkins.

"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. She likes to write at the dining room table in a chair that gives her a view of the entire room. "It feels like an unplanned mood board if I need a starting point, with lots of stuff in my periphery," Crain says. That mood board produced one of my favorite albums of the year. I first discovered Samantha Crain's music on Reservation Dogs, one of the best shows on television ever. (I've also interviewed Deerlady, a phenomenal band whose music is also on the show.) Crain's latest album is Gumshoe on Real Kind Records.

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, I start to wonder what's going on," Hood says. "That's when I practice mindfulness." Calum Hood's debut solo album is ORDER chaos ORDER on Capitol Records.

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 than 25 years ago. It's a pretty rich compost heap that can produce "Tom's Diner" and "Luka." Vega wrote "Tom's Diner" on a walk after leaving the diner, further proof of how movement improves the creative process. She's also a voracious reader and cites James Joyce as a big influence.Suzanne Vega's latest album is Flying With Angels on Cooking Vinyl Records.

"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.PUP's latest album is Who Will Look After the Dogs?

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 whimsical. Black ink is me telling myself, You have get real. No more fun and games. Black ink is a declaration, whereas blue ink is for play," Uwade told me.If you're a Fleet Foxes fan, you've heard Uwade's voice on their album Shore and may have seen her open for the band. Her new and insanely good album Florilegium is out now on Thirty Tigers. 

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 always texting each other about the latest books we've read. Our latest obsession, as you'll hear, is Jennifer Egan.The new album by Tennis is Face Down in the Garden. And while it may be their last, I'm excited for what the future holds for Alaina and Pat.

“Scribbling into oblivion” is how Lili Trifilio of Beach Bunny describes her editing process. (It's also an amazing song title.) She used this phrase in response to a question I like to ask songwriters: when you’re editing something you don’t like, do you cross it out with a single line or scratch it out? Trifilio wants that word or phrase to disappear forever. Beach Bunny’s latest album is Tunnel Vision.

Mike Campbell, legendary guitarist for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, shares his boundless creativity and songwriting process. He humorously admits he’s always writing, with guitars strategically positioned throughout his home. Campbell discusses the delicate balance of inspiration versus routine, overcoming writer’s block, and how everyday moments fuel his creativity. He highlights the influence of poetry on songwriting and the importance of revisiting past ideas to spark new ones, making the art of songwriting a truly dynamic journey.