Chelsea Rifkin (Wilt)
"It's trash that evokes emotion," says Chelsea Rifkin of Wilt referring to her junk journal. The singer for the LA-based band uses this jour...
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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 217 episodesJoy Oladokun
"I get a prebiotic soda and some popcorn, then head upstairs to write. And if I'm not feeling it, I leave." Joy Oladokun is nothing if not b...
Julia Jacklin
“I love to sing out loud there. No one can hear me because everyone is, well, underground,” says Julia Jacklin. And if that’s not the best r...
Brennan Wedl
"I like to write at my desk," says Brennan Wedl. It makes me feel like a professor, so it's correlated with discipline in my brain. It's lik...
L'Rain (Taja Cheek)
"I have my best thoughts in total comfort and complete boredom," Taja Cheek (known professionally as L'Rain) says. After all, who doesn't pr...
Margaret Glaspy
"I like to do things that make me feel integrated with the environment," says Margaret Glaspy. Broadly, Glaspy's process involves a general...
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...
Lucius
"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...