Episodes

"The times when I'm writing the most are when I'm reading a lot," Carl "Buffalo" Nichols says on today's podcast. And wow is this true: you cannot be a writer of any stripe unless you read. Nichols likes to read voices that he cannot relate to. He mentions writers like Flannery O' Connor and H.L. Mencken, as well as books like A Clockwork Orange and A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He didn't even like them all, but he still felt that hearing those voices makes him a better writer. So on thi...

Duff McKagan's latest solo album Lighthouse is dedicated to Cormac McCarthy, which is no surprise given the importance McKagan places on reading. The Guns N' Roses bassist reads without fail every day, so you get some great book recommendations in this episode of the podcast. McKagan doesn't just read for pleasure; he reads to make himself a better person. There's a great post on his Insta page of McKagan in the stacks at the Library of Congress, and he is one happy man in that photo. You'll al...

Jonny Pierce says that The Drums’ new album Jonny is “a little less practice, a little more mess.” That messiness finally made songwriting enjoyable for him because for a long time, it wasn’t. “I never loved songwriting. I was never the type of songwriter who couldn’t wait to get to the studio,” Pierce says on the podcast. It was always something stressful, he said, because he equated it with literal survival. But now Pierce is trying something different: the mess. Which includes, as you’ll hea...

“I’m allergic to routine. I wake up and follow all my whims and desires. But inspiration strikes every couple of days, and when it does you don’t want to be around me because I have a one track mind,” Clem Creevy of Cherry Glazerr says. That applies even when Creevy’s on a date: she once rolled over in bed and starting singing a beat into her phone, much to the confusion of her bedmate. But when she’s not getting inspired in bed, many of Creevy’s songs start on the bass. She likes windowless roo...

Genesis Owusu is the first songwriter to cite Samuel Beckett’s "Waiting for Godot" and Franz Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" as influences. Owusu stops by the podcast to talk about why he's such a huge fan of Beckett and Kafka, what it means to be a "selfish" songwriter, and why he never trusts lyrics that take too long to write. I saw Owusu this summer when he opened for Paramore. What a live show. And his music blows me away; I'm a huge fan. Owusu’s latest album Struggler is out now.

"If you're writing alone, you're still collaborating," Devendra Banhart says on this episode of the podcast. I love that idea: even in solitary writing, you're always running ideas by yourself. Is it the unconscious against the conscious? Reminds me of the time Matt Nathanson told me that he calls his writing partner "The Assassin." What you can't see in the podcast is that behind Banhart was an entire wall of floor to ceiling books as we talked. You can't be a good (song)writer unless you read...

“Surprising yourself is the only way to stay inspired,” M.C. Taylor of Hiss Golden Messenger says in this episode of the podcast. This is the second time I've interviewed Taylor, and here are three things I love about him: He's still the only songwriter in thirteen years of this site to discuss his love for haiku and how it influences his process. The thoughtful pause before he responds makes for some incredible answers. Everyone in the Taylor family--MC, wife, and kids--starts their day read...

Sabrina Teitelbaum (aka Blondshell) wants more joy in her songs. But that can be a problem because happiness is not a productive state for her songwriting process. "When I'm happy, I don't feel the need to write as much," she told me. No matter her emotional state, though, the key Teitelbaum's fruitful songwriting process is not making it look too much like a process. The more precious she makes the process, the harder it can be to write. "Normalizing it makes me more productive," she says. For...

At some point in my interview with Jerry Harrison, guitarist and keyboardist for Talking Heads, I asked him to respond to a quote by the iconic Beat poet Allen Ginsberg. Harrison told me that Ginsberg was a friend. And that is why he is Jerry Harrison. Talking Heads are one of the most influential acts of the past 50 years. Call it new wave, art pop, post punk, whatever: any act with that label can at least partially thank Talking Heads. This conversation centers not just on the writing process...

Jenny Owen Youngs had me at "Shitty First Drafts." This is the Anne Lamott essay espousing the idea that the first draft of anything is supposed to be atrocious. Just get it down, dammit. "Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts," Lamott writes. The polish comes later. I always assigned this essay to my students when I was a professor. The challenge comes when you're a parent, as Youngs is. (We have four kids, so I know the feeling.) How do you even find the time to create m...

ED note: I mispronounced Cosentino’s name in the podcast intro: the first “o” should be long (as in snow), but I used a short “o” (as in top). I’m sorry Bethany! If you have plans to meet Bethany Cosentino and she’s late, look outside. There’s a good chance she’s there writing. Cosentino loves to write in her car—when it’s not moving, of course. She gets great ideas just sitting in it. “I’ll be late to things because I’ve been sitting in my car for too long. I’ll get there early or on time and ...

John McCauley and Ian O’Neil of Deer Tick stop by talk about what makes for an effective songwriting process. In no particular order: laundry rooms, a kitchen, a nice rug, running shoes, recumbent bikes, Raymond Carver, and turn signals. Deer Tick’s latest album is Emotional Contracts, out now on ATO Records.

Academy Award nominee Emile Mosseri stops by the podcast to talk about the challenges that come with writing a solo album when all you’ve known is collaboration (his time in The Dig) and film & television composing (like his film score for Minari , for which he received a 2021 Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score). We talk about why he likes to write when he’s not supposed to be writing, why having a child is often good for his process, and why social media is never good for it. Mos...

Josh Ritter stops by Songwriters on Process to declare that while we like to think he writes with a quill pen, he actually writes almost all of his lyrics on his phone. That's a first: many songwriters tell me they write on a computer, but Ritter eschews even that because he prefers the spontaneity that his phone provides. Ritter's latest album is Spectral Lines, out now.

"I'm pretty much always thinking about lyrics every day of my life." That quote represents the energy that Jess Williamson brings to this episode of the podcast. Her level of introspection and enthusiasm made this conversation so much fun. But what happens when you're always thinking about songwriting and you can't write a song? Williamson discusses the anxiety she felt during a year-long songwriting draught that lasted for all of 2022 and even into 2023. It eventually broke one day when she "t...

"We don't write on lined paper. That's a big no-no." This episode with Etta Friedman and Allegra Weingarten of Momma goes deep. We dig into the whys of the writing process, not just the hows. We also discuss, for example, why mundane activities are never good for their creative process--a pretty unique answer among the songwriters I've interviewed. Most tell me that walking stimulates the writing process, but not these two: they use mundane activities like walking as a means to escape, not to cr...

"A washing machine with a clumpy pair of shoes can be a beautiful thing." Legendary drummer Dave Lombardo, a founding member of Slayer, finds beauty in the mundane. And also in the annoying: "Even the rhythm of a jackhammer and the bumps in a road can be inspiring," he says in the latest Songwriters on Process podcast. Lombardo's debut solo album Rites of Percussion (Ipecac Recordings) is an instrumental effort consisting entirely of percussive instruments. What kind? Here's the list: two drum...

Sisters Natalie, Allison, and Meegan from Joseph talk about their individual and collective songwriting processes in this episode. And in that discussion, they each learn something about the others that they didn't know! Joseph's new album The Sun is out April 28 on ATO Records.

"I'm a wrong hallway person. I like to make wrong turns." Eric D. Johnson of Fruit Bats and Bonny Light Horseman makes a lot of mistakes. And that's a good thing, he says, because that's when the good stuff happens. "The excitement is in the mistakes," he says. "The song is a house, and sometimes you walk into the wrong room." Johnson's talking in metaphors, of course, but his literal rooms need to be a place of chaos too. The room where he writes starts off clean, but by the end there's stuff...

"I've written whole songs on dog walks," says Amy Ray of The Indigo Girls. "I write a lot when I'm on the lawnmower, says H.C. McEntire. What a great time this was listening to these two friends and fantastic songwriters go deep into their songwriting processes. For Ray, it involves writing five times a week for no more than two hours a day. For McEntire, it involves cork boards. We also discuss our shared love for Anne Lamott and Sharon Olds. Catch them on on tour together this May.

(NOTE: This interview is from December 2020. I've converted the video to podcast form. You can watch the interview here.) It's like opening a time capsule now when I listen to songwriters talk in 2020 about how they were navigating the pandemic as artists. For some, it was a bane: the isolation paralyzed their creativity. For Alex Skolnick of Testament, it was a boon. Quite simply, he says, "Not having to travel has opened me up to different ways to be creative that I didn’t have before." But o...

"All the time in the world is too much pressure." Shana Cleveland of La Luz prefers a good deadline when she writes songs. And with a toddler in the house, her day is nothing but deadlines, which are also known as When Your Child Wakes From Their Nap. If you're an artist like Cleveland, the best time to write is nap time. (We have four kids, so I know the feeling.) She discovered her knack for writing in those precious moments once she became a parent. "I can write just as many songs now in a m...

I first interviewed Sara Watkins of Nickel Creek in 2013, and this latest conversation reminded me why she is one one of my favorite interviews. The thoughtfulness and introspection she brings to this discussion are wonderful. No matter the art you create, this episode is for you. We didn't focus on the practical aspects of the songwriting process nearly as much as we talked about Creativity (with a capital C): why we create and what it does to us when we do. Where does the urge come from? When...

Philip Selway, Radiohead's drummer, says that his best writing happens when "I'm looking the other way. My songs come along when they choose." But while Selway may prefer to wait for the muse, there are a few things he does to stimulate the songwriting process: Selway likes to write on his drum stool, not a traditional chair. "It grounds me in my wider life," he told me. Selway draws a mind map using a blue pen, a black pen, and a pencil. His lyrics are spread all over the paper with little se...