Ketch Secor (Old Crow Medicine Show)
Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show is the first person I’ve interviewed to compare the songwriting process to feline copulation. But this...
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Songwriters on Process
In-depth interviews with songwriters about their songwriting process. That's it. Nothing else. No talk of band drama, band names, or tour stories. Treating songwriters as writers, plain and...
Episodes
20 of 211 episodesLucius
"You need to be somewhere where you allow yourself to be totally stupid," say Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig of Lucius. Not great life advice,...
Kyle Grim (Dogwood Tales)
Kyle Grim of Dogwood Tales was born in the wrong century. He really belonged among the Romantic poets, who saw the purity of nature as a sou...
Jim James (My Morning Jacket)
Jim James needs a bigger head. How else to accommodate all the bursts of creativity he has throughout the day? They happen all the time. The...
Alicia Witt
You have seen Alicia Witt. Of that I can be sure since she's appeared in so many movies and tv shows. (She starred most recently opposite Ni...
hey, nothing
Tyler Mabry and Harlow Phillips of Athens-based hey, nothing have been friends since middle school. And when you've grown up with your songw...
David Shaw (The Revivalists)
Took a wonderfully deep dive into the songwriting process with David Shaw of The Revivalists. We discuss middle of the night epiphanies, how...
Lenny Kaye (Patti Smith Band)
Lenny Kaye's tenure as Patti Smith's guitarist and collaborator extends from 1971 to the present, but the 79 year old is only now releasing...
Alex Cameron
"I don't like closing a book on words, not even my laptop," says Alex Cameron. This is no metaphor. Cameron means this literally because he...
Bedouine (Azniv Korkejian)
"You don't have to be a tortured artist to write a song, but it's important to write about what you're feeling and not run away from it," Az...
Dragos Chiriac (Men I Trust)
It's not often (ever?) that I get to talk Hegel, Jung, and Goethe with songwriters. But Dragos Chiriac of Men I Trust and I go deep into phi...
Keenan O'Meara
"The failure is not in writing a bad song. The failure is in writing no song." Keenan O'Meara has always honored the value of work. Maybe it...
Jason Newsted
Jason Newsted blends words and acrylics. Literally. The former Metallica bassist and leader of Jason Newsted and the Chophouse Band is also...
Molly Hamilton (Widowspeak)
I'd like to call myself an OG Widowspeak fan, as I told Molly Hamilton. I saw them when they opened for 2:54 back in 2011 or 2012 on their f...
Nick Allbrook (Pond)
"Hard work is important, and it feels good. My family put a lot of stake into working hard, so it's been ingrained in me," Nick Allbrook of...
Futurebirds
Go Dawgs! Loved having the Athens-bred Futurebirds on the pod. They're no longer college students at the University of Georgia, of course, b...
Ben Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie)
"If I could sum up my process, it would be this: finish everything," says Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie. "I finish every song I start e...
Greg Mendez
Greg Mendez has a shelved album concept that he says you can have if you're a songwriter. The plan was to center each song around the rhythm...
Euan Manning (Cardinals)
The formula is simple. Step one, read great Irish literature. Step two, write killer songs. It's worked pretty well for Euan Manning of Card...
Rostam
"A great way to write is to overwrite. Write more verses than could be contained in a song. Then take the best of what's there," says Rostam...