The key to Blondshell’s fruitful songwriting process is not making it look too much like a songwriting process. The more precious she makes the process, the harder it can be to write. "Normalizing it makes me more productive," she says. Yet some awareness of what works is important too, which is why I love the perfect balance in her credo: "Know your process but respect the mystery."
Read MoreAt 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’s 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.
Read MoreJenny 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.
Read MoreIf have plans to meet Bethany Cosentino and she’n not on time, look outside. There’s a good chance she’s out there, in her car, writing. Cosentino finds a (parked) car to be a especially fruitful place for ideas.
Read MoreAcademy Award nominee Emile Mosseri has written with people (The Dig), for people (like the film score Minari), and now he’s writing for one person: himself. Mosseri talks about the differences among the processes—while balancing that with parenthood.
Read MoreJosh Ritter wants you to know that even though he’s a narrative songwriter with roots in Idaho, he doesn’t use a quill pen for his lyrics.
Read More"I'm pretty much always thinking about lyrics every day of my life,” Jess Williamson says on the podcast. But what happens when you're always thinking about songwriting and you’re unable to write a song?
Read More"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.
Read MoreEric 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
Read MoreBoth Amy Ray of The Indigo Girls and H.C. McEntire find the outdoors to be a great place to write songs. For Ray, dog walks are an especially fruitful time. And for McEntire, there’s nothing like a good lawnmower.
Read MoreNOTE: This interview is from December 2020, and I've converted it to podcast form. 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.
Read More"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.
Read MoreFor Sara Watkins of Nickel Creek, the ideal place to write from is curiosity. "The end goal is not to write songs. The end goal is to figure out my stuff, how to be me, how to work through stuff," she told me.
Read MorePhilip 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.
Read MoreFor Liz Stokes of The Beths, distance in the revision process is key. And a good long walk helps too.
Read MoreZach Williams, Kanene Pipkin, and Brian Elmquist go deep into their songwriting processes and even learn a few things about each other that they didn't know before!
Read MoreAly and AJ Michalka have been writing and recording songs together since they were teenagers. It’s easy to see why: their processes are remarkably in sync.
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