Kelsey Waldon finds the beginnings of spring and fall to especially conducive to songwriting. A good yellow legal pad helps as well.
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Kevin Morby’s writing process involves cheap pens, cheap paper, a good hardwood floor, and running shoes. Dental floss proves it.
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Real Estate’s Martin Courtney is trying to make his songwriting process less “painstaking” by plowing through the initial stages and chipping away later. But he’s always got Strega Nona.
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Laura Veirs find the best way to engage the muse is with a good side eye.
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The key to The Black Pumas' creative process? Turn signals! Adrian Quesada told me that he’s mesmerized by the rhythm of his car’s turn signals when he’s driving. “I’m always superimposing a 6/4 rhythm on them whenever I’m at an intersection,” he told me. So much so that that his wife has to remind him that the light is green.
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I first interviewed BJ Barham of American Aquarium in November 2020, and we had so much fun we decided to do it again! This time we added a third: S.A. Cosby, author of one of our favorite books from 2020, BLACKTOP WASTELAND. Watch these two creative heavyweights discuss the writing process and books and music.
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“If the next album is about whaling, you’ll know where that came from.” For Craig Finn of The Hold Steady, any good creative process involves paying attention to every external stimuli. Even Ishmael.
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Julia Cumming and Nick Kivlen of Sunflower Bean don’t share many similarities in their writing process, but both agree that’s a boon to their creativity.
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Whether he’s longboarding or reading to his kids or drawing, Bardo Martinez of Chicano Batman is always thinking about his next song.
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Jonathan Russell of The Head and the Heart loves structure in his life, from a clean kitchen to his songwriting process. And it’s that structure in his songwriting process that lets the chaos loose and allows him to “play like a five year old.”
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S. Carey (Sean Carey) wrote his new solo album Break Me Open during a time of tremendous domestic change: the dissolution of his marriage, the death of his father, and the growth of his children. Fly fishing helped him through it.
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Why do songwriters always sing about “walkin’ down the street”? And should you always write when you’re hungry? Listen to Tim Kasher answer those questions as we delve into his songwriting process.
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Like many artists, Katie Pruitt and Molly Tuttle have found the creative process to be a hard road over the past year. But as you’ll hear, when those songs do come, dreams are an especially fruitful time: both women have been awoken in the middle of the night by incredible melodies running through their head.
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Journaling is not just an important part of the songwriting process for Paula Cole, it’s an important part of her life. Yet it’s just one piece of the Grammy winning songwriter’s very kinesthetic process. “I feel it in my body, like there are songs burgeoning,” she says.
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For both Sarah Jarosz and Margaret Glaspy, the creative process doesn’t allow for much off time. Jarosz doesn’t write on tour: it’s where she collects her ideas. And when she gets home, that’s when she sifts through all those ideas. “Even if I’m not working on a song, I’m always checking into the creative process every day,” Jarosz told me. Glaspy’s process involves using improvisation as a part of her songwriting process, “acting like I know how the song is supposed to go,” she says
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I’ve been a fan of King Gizzard for a while, but when I realized that they put out five albums in one year (2017) and had sixteen studio albums over the course of ten years, I had to discover how Mackenzie creates. Surely this man is always creating. Surely he spends all day thinking about songs. Surely he gets anxious when he’s not creating something, anything, right?
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Steve Gunn’s songwriting process never stops. Even when he’s not writing, his receptors cast a long throw over his environment as he mines for ideas.
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“If I have anything to give the world as a songwriter, I’m trying to explore the middle ground. That's not the most effective for songwriters since the most provocative things are clear statements of good and evil,” Anand Wilder says.
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