Episodes

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. Bl...

Ed note: my new permanent intro and outro music is 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 he...

“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 doesn't have songwriting rules. He hates them. But he doesn't need any because he's always creating. "I'm probably writing as I'm talking to you," he told me. In fact, Campbell's problem is that he can't stop coming up with ideas and sometimes wishes he could dial it back a bit. But that's what happens when you keep a guitar next to every chair in your house. Not just in every room, but next to every chair. Besides his work as Tom Petty's guitarist and collaborator/co-writer in ...

I always love having my buddy Derek Miller of Sleigh Bells on the pod! This is Miller's third time as a guest. I don't know how he ever has time to do interviews because the man is either writing music, about to write music, or thinking about why he's not writing music. Miller is inspired by everything, and I mean everything. Even LSU football. (Go Dawgs, sorry Derek!) We also talk about his newfound sobriety and how bands like R.E.M, the B-52s, and The Cars influence his music. The latest...

I'm a much better songwriter when I'm reading," Annie DiRusso says. Truer words have never been spoken; a clear through line connects quality songwriting and reading. And the fact that DiRusso loves poetry makes me even more of a fan. DiRusso does most of her songwriting in her "giant mess" of a bed. "It's covered in guitars, notebooks, pens, a laptop, mics. There's ink stains all over the sheets too," she says on the pod. DiRusso's new album Super Pedestrian is out now. (Photo by Danic...

Running and poetry are all Denison Witmer needs as a songwriter. "When I'm being physically active, my brain opens up," he says. Running is a big part of Witmer's life and plays a big role in his creative process. The other major source of Witmer's inspiration is poetry, and we talk about its impact on his songwriting. We also make a collective case for why the poet Li-Young Lee is so, so, so great and why you should read him right after you listen to this episode. Denison Witmer's new alb...

Benmont Tench is the keyboardist and a founding member of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. That’s reason enough to listen to this podcast. I’ve interviewed other icons—Duff McKagan, Johnny Marr, and Jerry Harrison, to name a few—and they all have one common thread: a voracious appetite for art in all its forms. They consume books, movies, paintings, poetry, sculptures, you name it. Artists with longevity know that to create art, you have to constantly consume it. Tench is no exception. “The m...

"I have no rituals when it comes to writing. I don't want to think something can go wrong if things aren't set up the right way," says James McGovern of The Murder Capital. Indeed, that's the downside of a ritual: a fixed routine can limit your productivity when that routine isn't available. But McGovern does have one tiny "ritual" that I wholeheartedly endorse: writing the bad stuff before he gets to the good stuff. And as an aside, any songwriter who references Yeats, Keats, and Heaney in o...

“My biggest hurdle as a writer is trying to hack my brain to become less critical,” Christian Lee Hutson says. In other words, Hutson wants to get the hell out of his own way when he writes. I've heard this before from other songwriters: Matt Nathanson has a name for that annoyingly critical voice in his head that he's always trying to silence: "the assassin." Hutson and I talked at length about the process of discovery through mistakes. You can’t write the good stuff if you’re afraid of writ...

Eli Hewson of Inhaler usually stays up and writes all night. Come morning, he heads to bed and will sometimes pass his father Bono (yes, that Bono), who is just beginning his day and starting to write. (All of the band members still live with their parents.) Hewson's admittedly "terrible sleeping habits" are nothing new; when he was five years old, his mother often found him watching tv in the middle of the night. Hewson's bandmate Josh Jenkinson wants no part of those late night writing sess...

Send us a text Ed Note: Here’s my 2013 interview with Leithauser and my 2022 interview with his bandmate Walter Martin from The Walkmen. Hamilton Leithauser keeps regular hours. And those hours can be early: on the day we talked, he had started writing at 5am. It’s a problem if he doesn’t write every day, he says. "If I don’t write every day, I feel anxious or like I’ve done something wrong." I don't think Leithauser ever rests. "I can't ever stop doing stuff," he says, saying that it may bor...

Send us a text If you see Cecilia Castleman browsing the paint aisle at Home Depot, she’s probably not looking for paint. She’s looking for song ideas. Castleman finds inspiration everywhere, but paint names, she says, are particularly rich sources for song ideas and lyrics. And as you’ll hear, baking cakes and looking at old houses are great sources too. It took me about ten seconds—the first notes of the opening guitar riff—of listening to the opening track “It’s Alright” to realize I was g...

Send us a text Rebecca and Megan Lovell, the GRAMMY-winning sisters who compose Larkin Poe, call themselves “serial idea keepers.” This means they don’t write every day. Instead, “we pull back on ideas until we are ready to write,” they say. This seasonal writing, as they and other songwriters like to call it, requires discipline: you have to resist the urge to write every day and only write during certain times. The advantage of this is that the words flow freely when it’s time to write. But...

Send us a text Flipturn's Tristan Duncan (guitar), Devon VonBalson (drums), and Dillon Basse (vocals) join the pod and go deep into their creative processes. We talk about, among other things, why certain times of day are better for writing, how exercise improves songwriting, and the places they find the most inspiring. Flipturn's latest album Burnout Days is out January 24 on Dualtone Records.

Send us a text Is Vera, the debut album by Phil and Tim Hanesroth (The Hanesroth Twins), really a debut? After all, they've won three GRAMMYs and have been nominated seven more times for their songwriting collaboration with Brandi Carlile. (They're the twins who flank her in concert live.) The twins' songs have been covered by Adele, Dolly Parton, and the Avett Brothers. So while this may be their first album as a duo, they've had excellent songwriting chops for a while. Had a great time talkin...

Send us a text The last time I interviewed Josh Carter of Phantogram was in 2010, before this site was even a podcast. It was one of the first interviews I ever did, and Carter mentioned the author Breece D'J Pancake. The name stood out, of course, but it took a while for me to read about Pancake's tragic backstory. Then more songwriters started mentioning him in interviews, so I finally read his book, and wow. Incredible. This time, Carter and Sarah Barthel join me on the podcast to talk about...

Send us a text Whenever Sophie Allison (aka Soccer Mommy) puts something out, I know I'll like it. Her new album Evergreen is no exception. We take a deep dive into her songwriting process on this episode.

Send us a text Ed note: Here's my 2022 podcast episode with Fontaines D.C. singer Grian Chatten. Unfortunately, I stopped recording before Conor Deegan (Deego) and I started reading poetry to each other. But that should give you a sense of how deep I went into the creative process with the Fontaines D.C. bassist. This is less a discussion about the particulars of the songwriting process than it is about the creative mind and the drive to write. And yet, even our discussion of why Deego likes to...

Send us a text Hello Mary on the pod today! Stella Wave, Helena Straight, and Mikaela Oppenheimer released their debut album in 2020, when Wave was 19 and Oppenheimer and Straight were 16. The band talks about their collective and individual writing processes, and we also discussed our shared love for the novelist Jennifer Egan. Hello Mary's latest album Emita Ox is out now on Frenchkiss Records.

Send us a text "Bravery is underrated when it comes to art," Mike Einziger, guitarist and songwriter for Incbus, told me. In other words, don't be afraid to write the bad stuff. (I'd listen to a guy whose band has sold 23 million records.) As you'll hear on this episode, Einziger's intellectual curiosity runs deep, expanding far beyond music into the world of physics; the overlap of these two passions, he told me, means that he is constantly "driven by curiosity. And when that happens, songwrit...

Send us a text Here's a sampling of the authors and artists that Jake Duzsik of HEALTH mentioned in our conversation: Pascal, T.S. Eliot, William Blake, Vonnegut, Joan Didion, Truman Capote, Oscar Wilde, Thomas Pynchon, Camus, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Cormac McCarthy. And somewhere along the lines, we discussed postmodern prose. To be clear, Duzsik was not name checking. It reflects how deeply his creative mind operates. HEALTH's latest album Rat Wars is out now. And shameless plug: if you're a ...

Does writer's block really exist? Or is it just a reluctance to write the bad stuff? The writer Anthony Doerr once told me that writer's block is just "a failure of courage." Pete Yorn tends to agree. On this episode of the podcast, Yorn and I talk about the myth of writer's block, why you should always say yes to a creative project with your kids, and why he still keeps his songwriting notebooks from his days as a college student at Syracuse University. Pete Yorn's latest album, his tenth sol...

Wunderhorse is why you should always get to the show early to see the support act. I was introduced to Jacob Slater's band when I saw them open for Fontaines D.C. (here's my podcast with Grian Chatten of Fontaines) at a small club in Pittsburgh in 2022. I had never heard of Wunderhorse, but they won everyone, including me, over in the first thirty seconds with their volume and their energy. I've been a huge fan of Slater and his band ever since. And as you'll hear, we share a strong affinity fo...