Songwriters on Process

“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.

ED NOTE: Here's my recent episode with Benmont Tench, keyboardist for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. 

Mike Campbell doesn't have songwriting rules. He doesn't need any because he's always creating. "I'm probably writing as I'm talking to you," Campbell 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 The Heartbreakers, Mike Campbell has worked with countless others. He co-wrote "The Boys of Summer" and "The Heart of the Matter" by Don Henley, and he's worked with Bob Dylan, Stevie Nicks, George Harrison, Aretha Franklin, to name a few. After Tom Petty's passing, Campbell formed The Dirty Knobs. Their latest album Vagabonds, Virgins, & Misfits is out now. 

Campbell has a terrific new memoir out, Heartbreaker, co-written with Ari Surdoval (their editor, Ben Schafer, was also my editor at Hachette Books for my book Desolation: A Heavy Metal Memoir by Mark Morton with Ben Opipari.) 

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 album by Sleigh Bells (Miller and Alexis Krauss) is Bunky Becky Birthday Boy, out now on Mom + Pop Music.

*photo by David Perez

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 album Anything At All  (produced and recorded by Sufjan Stevens) is out now on Asthmatic Kitty Records. 

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

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 album Anything At All  (produced and recorded by Sufjan Stevens) is out now on Asthmatic Kitty Records. 

Note: here's my recent interview with Mike Campell, guitarist for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

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 more I read, the more chance I have to get inspired because I’m opening myself up to language. But I’m inspired by all art; I’m even inspired by looking out the window. It all comes in, and it all shows up in my writing,” he says.  When I asked Tench if he favors any certain medium, his response was simple: “From Milton to Milton Bradley.” He’s also the first songwriter I’ve interviewed to cite both Manet and the Steve Martin movie Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid as inspiration.

Tench’s solo album The Melancholy Season is out now. 

"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 one podcast is forever my hero.

The Murder Capital's latest album is Blindness

“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 writing the bad stuff. Getting better as a writer is all about surprising yourself, and you can’t do that if you’re too self-critical as you write. 

Christian Lee Hutson’s latest album Paradise Pop. 10 is out now. 

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 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 sessions. "I just go to bed," he says. Jenkinson is a daytime writer; like Hewson, he's most productive when no one else is around. And in his case, that's when his mother is at work and the house is quiet. 

Aside from that difference, Hewson and Jenkinson mostly see eye-to-eye on the writing process. Both extol the benefits of the Rubik's Cube, of all things, on songwriting. Jenkinson says that the problem solving "becomes so mechanical that I can think about other things while I'm doing it." And both lament the "erosion of boredom" and how its loss impacts our ability to create.

Inhaler’s latest album Open Wide is out now.