Songwriters on Process Podcast
1) Tyler Ballgame
Procrastinators unite! Thank you, Tyler Ballgame, you are a kindred spirit. Finally someone who admits that procrastination is a great tool for writing. So much has been written on the evils of procra...Show More
2) Buck Meek (Big Thief)
“When I go to the grocery store, that’s part of the songwriting process. When I work on my truck, that’s part of my songwriting process. Every aspect of our life feeds into our creativity. The more pr...Show More
3) Hotel Fiction
Jade Long and Jessica Thompson of Athens, Georgia based Hotel Fiction have a simple routine for their songwriting sessions: make some brownies, pour some wine. And they like to be outside. It's not co...Show More
4) Nat and Alex Wolff
Nat and Alex Wolff had me at Sam Shepard. The playwright/writer/actor was one of my dissertation topics and the brothers acted in his plays, so we agreed early on that he's one of our favorite writers...Show More
5) Patton Magee (The Nude Party)
Patton Magee of The Nude Party has the best reason why reading makes you a better songwriter: it gives you a stronger and more wide-ranging vocabulary, which in turn gives you more ways to express you...Show More
6) Courtney Marie Andrews
"I am a taskmaster," Courtney Marie Andrews told me. When we talked back in 2018, I marveled at Andrews' discipline. She calls it "chunk writing": Andrews doesn't write on tour but instead collects no...Show More
7) Lucinda Williams
"To write about something sad and dark, I need to feel content, to feel a sense of well being. I can't write when I'm depressed," Lucinda Williams told me. Much of my discussion with Williams focused...Show More
8) KT Tunstall
"I've been very happy lately, and that's worrying," KT Tunstall told me. "It's much easier to write sad songs than happy songs. Happiness makes you want to be present, but pain makes you want to escap...Show More
9) Melody's Echo Chamber
Why do so many of us feel the need to clean our space before we create? Melody Prochet (aka Melody's Echo Chamber) and I discuss why it's important to our respective writing processes. When she's not ...Show More
10) Whitney
"Pants delivery was my eureka moment," Julien Ehrlich of Whitney says on the pod, and with that we have my favorite out-of-context pull quote. Ehrlich was not speaking metaphorically: when he and ban...Show More