In-depth interviews with songwriters about their creative process. No talk of band drama, band names, or tour stories. Treating songwriters as writers, plain and simple. By Ben Opipari, English Lit Ph.D.
Jane Penny (co-founder of TOPS) stops by the podcast to talk about how Barry White has influenced her songwriting; why she has to write her lyrics in cursive; and why when you see her in the audience at a show and she's looking at her phone, she's actually deeply engaged in the creative process. She promises!
Grace Cummings talks about why her phone has been such a drain on her creativity and why she's making a conscious effort to stay away from it. But sometimes that phone can be pretty useful. For one, it allows Cummings to create her alter ego Cheryl. And it also allows her to create a fantastic filing system for her song ideas with labels like "excellent" and "very excellent" that we both agreed are pretty good mini pep-talks.
Will Taylor and Charlie Martin of Hovvdy take a deep dive into their songwriting processes on the podcast. We delve into, among other things, the nuts and bolts of the revision process and whether distance is important when writing about an event. Hovvdy's new (double!) album Hovvdy is out April 26 on Arts & Crafts Records.
On this episode, Future Islands earns the title of Most Well-Read Band I've Ever Interviewed: just listen to the dizzying number of favorite authors and literary influences they all have. That discussion alone could've been an entire episode.
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Aaron Lee Tasjan has a pretty simple writing process: he gets up around 8am, has a glass of water, and pets his cat. Then he writes. But not every day. "I only write when my body tells me to, when I can go off yesterday's fumes.”