Songwriters on Process

Ed Note: Here’s my 2013 interview with Leithauser and my 2022 interview with his bandmate Walter Martin from The Walkmen.

Hamilton Leithauser keeps regular hours. And those hours can be early: on the day we talked, he had started writing at 5am. It’s a problem if he doesn’t write every day, he says. "If I don’t write every day, I feel anxious or like I’ve done something wrong."

I don't think Leithauser ever rests. "I can't ever stop doing stuff," he says, saying that it may border on "maniacal." So when he's not writing, his other hobbies include, but are probably not limited to, woodworking, photography, racquetball, kitesurfing, and chess. (Even when he's playing chess, he admits to writing music.) Oh, and he has two young kids.

Leithauser’s new solo album This Side of the Island is out March 7 on Glassnote Records.

If you see Cecilia Castleman browsing the paint aisle at Home Depot, she’s probably not looking for paint. She’s looking for song ideas. Castleman finds inspiration everywhere, but paint names, she says, are particularly rich sources for song ideas and lyrics. And as you’ll hear, baking cakes and looking at old houses are great sources too. 

It took me about ten seconds—the first notes of the opening guitar riff—of listening to the opening track “It’s Alright” to realize I was going nowhere for the next 48 minutes. This album is good. I mean really, really good. Cecilia Castleman’s self-titled debut is out on Glassnote Records.

Rebecca and Megan Lovell, the GRAMMY-winning sisters who compose Larkin Poe, call themselves “serial idea keepers.” This means they don’t write every day. Instead, “we pull back on ideas until we are ready to write,” they say. This seasonal writing, as they and other songwriters like to call it, requires discipline: you have to resist the urge to write every day and only write during certain times. The advantage of this is that the words flow freely when it’s time to write.

But the Lovells bemoan this age of constant online stimulation, where artists are missing one critical element for creativity: boredom. “There’s not enough boredom in our lives. We need time to daydream,” they say.

Larkin Poe’s latest album is called Bloom.

Ed note: to clarify my intro, Larkin Poe won the 2024 GRAMMY for Best Contemporary Blues Album for their 2023 album Blood Harmony.

Flipturn's Tristan Duncan (guitar), Devon VonBalson (drums), and Dillon Basse (vocals) join the pod and go deep into their creative processes. We talk about, among other things, why certain times of day are better for writing, how exercise improves songwriting, and the places they find the most inspiring.

Flipturn's latest album Burnout Days is out January 24 on Dualtone Records.

Is Vera, the debut album by Phil and Tim Hanseroth (The Hanseroth Twins), really a debut? After all, they've won three GRAMMYs and have been nominated seven more times for their songwriting collaboration with Brandi Carlile. (They're the twins who flank her in concert live.) The twins' songs have been covered by Adele, Dolly Parton, and the Avett Brothers. So while this may be their first album as a duo, they've had excellent songwriting chops for a while.

Had a great time talking about why it's important to not take the writing process too seriously, why the outdoors are so integral to creativity, and their uncanny ability to craft fully formed songs in their head before committing them to paper. 

The last time I interviewed Josh Carter of Phantogram was in 2010, before this site was even a podcast. It was one of the first interviews I ever did, and Carter mentioned the author Breece D'J Pancake. The name stood out, of course, but it took a while for me to read about Pancake's tragic backstory. Then more songwriters started mentioning him in interviews, so I finally read his book, and wow. Incredible. 

This time, Carter and Sarah Barthel join me on the podcast to talk about their decidedly old-school writing process. We talk about Barthel's collection of analog typewriters, Carter's use of his Dictaphone, and how we just need more time to be bored. Yes, we sound like three cranky old people railing against the impact tech has on creativity. But I'll take that any day as long as Phantogram continues to make such good music. 

Phantogram's latest album Memory of a Day is out now.

Whenever Sophie Allison (aka Soccer Mommy) puts something out, I know I'll like it. Her new album Evergreen is no exception. We take a deep dive into her songwriting process on this episode.

Ed note: Here's my 2022 podcast episode with Fontaines D.C. singer Grian Chatten. 

Unfortunately, I stopped recording before Conor Deegan (Deego) and I started reading poetry to each other. But that should give you a sense of how deep I went into the creative process with the Fontaines D.C. bassist. This is less a discussion about the particulars of the songwriting process than it is about the creative mind and the drive to write. And yet, even our discussion of why Deego likes to write with a pencil was a window to his soul. Of course, we also talked literature, from Blake to Baudelaire to Hemingway.

Fontaines D.C. is my favorite band today. Their latest album is called Romance.

Hello Mary on the pod today! Stella Wave, Helena Straight, and Mikaela Oppenheimer released their debut album in 2020, when Wave was 19 and Oppenheimer and Straight were 16. The band talks about their collective and individual writing processes, and we also discussed our shared love for the novelist Jennifer Egan.

Hello Mary's latest album Emita Ox is out now on Frenchkiss Records. 

"Bravery is underrated when it comes to art," Mike Einziger, guitarist and songwriter for Incbus, told me. In other words, don't be afraid to write the bad stuff. (I'd listen to a guy whose band has sold 23 million records.)
 
As you'll hear on this episode, Einziger's intellectual curiosity runs deep, expanding far beyond music into the world of physics; the overlap of these two passions, he told me, means that he is constantly "driven by curiosity. And when that happens, songwriting doesn't feel like work."