Songwriters on Process

Bank pens and vacuum cleaners: the keys to Emily Scott Robinson's songwriting process.

Robinson and I both agree that having a writing ritual is important. Rituals give us confidence and comfort. But they also help us achieve a flow state where the writing just happens: you don't have to think about the words because they issue forth. It's when you're on a roll.

Achieving this flow state is hard, so that's where the bank pens and vacuum cleaners come in. Robinson is a pen-and-paper person for her lyrics. And there's something about the smoothness of those cheap ball point pens from her local bank that she finds irresistible. When she writes with them, the words flow. So if you see Robinson in your local bank branch when she's on tour, she may be doing more than just a bank transaction.

As for the vacuum cleaner, that's for generating ideas. We talked a lot about the role of movement to the songwriting process. Most songwriters tell me that they get ideas while walking, running, hiking, biking, swimming, or driving. I've also heard cooking and gardening. But Robinson is the first one to cite an upright vacuum. It's not the vacuum itself that gives her ideas, but the repetitive and monotonous movement that helps her brain focus on the writing process, just as it does with the repetitive motion of walking, running, or cutting vegetables. And when your brain can engage in an activity that involves minimal higher order thinking, it can then use that space for creativity.

“You’ve got to be open, you’ve got to fire the judge, you’ve just got to receive it all.”

If you want to be a writer of any genre, says songwriter (and, yes, actor) Jeff Daniels, you also have to keep your radar on 24/7 for what you see and hear. And be prepared to steal it. 

Sure, you know Jeff Daniels from his many films, but he's also been writing songs and playing guitar since 1976. 

This is a conversation about the artistic process writ large, so if you're a songwriter, a playwright, an actor, or any combination of the three, you’ll love this interview. The playwriting process and the songwriting process overlap as Daniels effortlessly segues between the two in our discussion; at some point, he exclaims, "It's all fucking connected!" 

Daniels also says that being an actor has opened up the “get it all out” free for all in the initial stages of the writing process, both as a songwriter and a playwright. In other words, he’s a big fan of just spilling everything on the page and then editing out the bad stuff later. But with experience, he told me, “at least the quality of the garbage has gotten better. 

"The good songs happen like someone is playing a record in space, and I have an antennae to pick it up. I actually hear it, and  write it down as quickly as I can.”—Patterson Hood.

"You don’t just get to have the muse all the time. It’s mysterious. But you have to experience stuff and have time to process those experiences to be able to write about them."—Lilly Hiatt.

There are two different points during my interview with Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers and Lilly Hiatt when each reaches to the sky, grabs a piece of air, and pulls it down. Both were describing their songwriting process: songs come from the muse, from the sky, from somewhere they can’t explain. And it’s their duty to grab that song, pull it down, and create it.

Both Hood and Hiatt talk about the need to create. It’s not something they do because it’s their job or because they enjoy it. Those things are true, of course. But songwriting is such a part of their lives that it’s almost a matter of survival.

When singer/songwriter Martin Sexton gets in a rut, he turns to chaos.

Some songwriters take a break, some take a walk, others plow through until they get a breakthrough. But Sexton needs disruption. He uses two radios at once, one on each side of his computer. Each radio plays a different genre. It could be talk radio and rock, classical and country. The sounds don't matter because the goal is to drive his editor crazy. 

Sexton says that his ruts happen when he gets in his own way: too much editing, too much thinking about what he's writing when the goal is to just get stuff down. "Two radios at once allows the other stuff to come in. It distracts my brain so I can just write," he says. With different songs coming from each side, he can't focus on either. "The chaos confuses the editor and hopefully drives it away." It's a great way to jumpstart his writing.

When he's not in a rut, Sexton prefers silence. His favorite place to write is the family cabin deep in the Adirondack Mountains, where he lives in the summer and visits in the winter.  "It's a magical place. I'm surrounded by clean air and clean water and nature. I'll sit at the table and write for hours," Sexton told me. "I love the dead quiet. There's no one around. Just me and the coyotes." 

There's another place where Sexton gets inspired, and it's common to many songwriters I interview: behind the wheel. "After a few hours, the sound of the tires hitting the pavement puts me in this elevated state of consciousness," Sexton says. And yet "behind the wheel" doesn't have to be the car. He thought of the chorus for his song "Hold On" while on a bike ride with his son. He didn't have anything to record the chorus with, so he sang it to himself over and over until he got home--and sang it to the neighbor too just to make sure he didn't forget it. 

For George Clarke and Kerry McCoy of Deafheaven, it’s not the ritual of the process itself that’s important as much as the preparation before the process. Both use a meditative and repetitive activity to prepare their mind: for McCoy it’s surfing, and for Clarke it’s often running or driving.

Clarke writes the lyrics for Deafheaven, while McCoy writes much of the music. For both men, it’s all about putting themselves in the best possible headspace to make something. Surfing is a big part of McCoy’s creative process; he tries to go every morning because it’s one of the few times in his life where he can purely be in the moment. “No watch, no phone,” he says. More than a few Deafheaven riffs have emerged from his time on the water. Clarke says that a workout—either the gym or running—is a good way to prepare, as is the drive to the LA studio in all its glorious monotony. 

Both also cite their manager Cathy Pellow’s strong cold brew coffee as an important part of the ritual. 

Walter Martin’s most efficient writing process involves not sitting down with the intent to create. Also: being hungover helps. 

Like most songwriters tell me—Britt Daniel of Spoon was the last one—Martin does not sit down to write a song. “When that happens, it comes out the wrong way. I start to sound too smart or like poet,” he says. Instead, he’s writing all the time by constantly observing his surroundings. Song ideas come to Martin throughout the day, like when he’s mowing the lawn, and that’s when he whips out the phone to record those ideas. So when he finally sits down to write, there’s a wealth of source material. 

Martin does find one state of mind to be especially productive: hungover. More than a few songwriters have told me that having a hangover is a great state of mind to write in. Most tell me that it’s because the pain gives them a sense of serenity. But Martin’s theory is pretty simple: the residual alcohol gives his head just enough looseness to spur his creativity. 

Walter Martin’s latest album The Bear is out March 23. Listen to our interview below!

Morgan Wade gets more done by 8am than you do. "The more active I am, the more energetic I feel. And that's when I get my best ideas," she told me.

If you want to schedule a meeting with Wade,  do it early. I mean really early. She's usually up and ready to go by 5am. "I get emails from people who want to schedule meetings at 10am, and that is way too late for me. I'm thinking 8am is a much better time," she told me. In fact, on those rare occasions when she’s slept in until 8am, her day is ruined. (Trust me when I tell you how unique this is. To many songwriters I’ve interviewed, getting an early start to the day means 10am at best.)

Wade's debut album Reckless is out now on Thirty Tiger Records.

For the uninitiated: Debbie Gibson is still the youngest female to write, produce, and perform a #1 single, with "Foolish Beat" at age 17. I think I was just learning how to make toast at that age.

She wrote all the songs on her debut album Out of the Blue—at age 16. The album had four singles in the US top five and sold more than five million albums. Gibson's second album Electric Youth was the #1 album in the US for five weeks. It contains three singles in the top 20, including the #1 song "Lost in Your Eyes." With that song, Gibson came home from school, started playing the piano, and the song just poured out in real time. "I wrote it in ten minutes and never changed a note," she told me. "I have no idea where it came from."

Some artists create because they like the process and the product. They like what they do and they’re good at it, whether they’re amateurs or professionals.

But other artists create because they need to create. They have to write songs. It’s a self-actualizing and at times even a survival instinct, a primal drive. Because of this, external forces like love or relationships or world upheaval aren’t always drivers. These artists create because they must create. And at times, it may not even be enjoyable. 

This is what I thought about after my interview with Julien Baker and Matt Nathanson. It struck me in the metaphors they use to describe lyric writing: words like “shitting” and “puking,” images of violent expulsion that can also bring a tremendous sense of relief—and that are intertwined with instinct and drive. But there’s also genuine anxiety, and at times fear, attached to the songwriting process for both artists.

No matter if she's writing great music or great books, Michelle Zauner goes by one credo: first thought, best thought. It's always garbage before the good stuff. "Raw source material is supposed to be crap,” Zauner says. “You have to allow yourself to be terrible," she told me.

Zauner is the singer, songwriter, and founder of the band Japanese Breakfast. But she's also the author of the bestselling memoir Crying in H Mart, which ended up on many 2021 year-end "best of" lists and is also being made into a movie.