Songwriters on Process

Patrick Hetherington of Parcels says that the urge to write usually strikes when he's had some kind of new input, but then he needs distance from that input to be able to process it and write about it. And a good sunset is mandatory. "I need to touch base with the sunset every day. I take a walk at sunset to feel that change, that shift in the day."

The latest album by Parcels is Loved. 

It's the return of Molly Tuttle! (The first time I interviewed Tuttle was in 2021, when I interviewed her and Katie Pruitt.)

Tuttle won the GRAMMY for Best Bluegrass Album in both 2023 and 2024. And you don't become great without rigorous discipline. As you'll hear, Tuttle kept a flip phone as a student at Berklee because she wanted to maintain her focus on music, not a phone screen. 

Molly Tuttle's latest album is So Long Little Miss Sunshine on Nonesuch Records.

I cannot imagine a world where Scott McCaughey is not writing. But first, some background. He was an auxiliary member of R.E.M. from 1994 to 2011, working with them in the studio and playing with them live. He founded The Baseball Project and The Minus Five, among other bands, both with members of R.E.M. He also founded The Young Fresh Fellows. 

McCaughey doesn't feel pressure to create every day because he's already doing it. It's a daily part of his routine. Many songwriters book studio time, then write the songs. McCaughey is the opposite: he books the studio time then "grabs songs off the shelf." Was there a hardest song to write on the new album? Nope. "It was my most effortless record," he said. McCaughey suffered a stroke in 2017 and lost all verbal ability for time, but after three days in the ICU he began writing songs. 

The latest album by The Minus Five is called Oar On, Penelope! on Yep Roc Records. 

Dev Hynes had me at the bookshelves.

All those bookshelves behind him on our Zoom interview, rising to the ceiling and stuffed with books. Small wonder, then, that Hynes works best in daily consumption mode rather than creation mode. He's adamant about not writing every day.

The creative process is all about keeping it fun for Hynes. He likes to write in the afternoon for the simple reason that he likes his mornings, and who wants to write at night? Hynes isn't big on fancy equipment: he bought his third and fourth guitars only a couple of months ago. "Nothing matters to me as far as equipment," Hynes says. And when he hits a wall in the songwriting process, he doesn't push things too far if it looks like things aren't working. "I won't fold, but I'll see how hollow the wall is," he explains. 

The new Blood Orange album is called Essex Honey.

There's a difference between wanting to write and needing to write. For Will Taylor of Flyte, it's usually a need. Taylor says that he doesn't write every day, but instead writes after an accumulation of experiences. "I know it's time because a sadness comes over me. It's a quite noticeable funk, and the clouds need to break," says Taylor. 

But for Taylor and his bandmate Nicolas Hill, that need to write doesn't mean inefficiency. As you'll hear, they have little patience for those songs that take too long to finish. "We have no problem throwing songs away immediately if they aren't working. We don't keep them lying around to work on them later."

Flyte's latest album is Between You and Me. 

"I write the most when I'm supposed to be doing something else because it tricks me into thinking that songwriting is rebellious," Meg Duffy (aka Hand Habits) told me. "It feels like I get to choose to do it." I love this quote so much. It illustrates how we sometimes have to trick ourselves into being creative. 

Duffy used the word "summon" a few times in our conversation regarding their songwriting process, which implies actively calling on something to be present rather than passively receiving it. This is the eternal question for the songwriter: do you wait for the muse or try to summon it?

Summoning can happen everywhere for Duffy: they even did some summoning during a recent oil change. Duffy also uses walking as a way to summon. In this episode, we dig into all our collective methods of summoning. But stay for the hilarious story of how, when Duffy lived below Kyle Thomas (aka King Tuff), summoning became very, very difficult.

The latest album by Hand Habits is Blue Reminder. It's incredible. 

The theme of today's podcast is nourishment.

It dawned on me a few minutes into my conversation with Hannah Cohen that when she said proper nourishment was critical to her writing process, she was being literal.  It was no metaphor. If Cohen's not hydrated and fed, the creative process becomes much more arduous. She's the first songwriter to ever tell me that. 

But when Cohen also told me that "the body keeps score," she was now talking nourishment as metaphor. She expressed a view that every writer knows: your writing process is always taking place. It's happening when you're eating, sleeping, working, talking, moving, whatever. Pen hitting paper is only a small part of that process. 

Cohen tells a great story in this episode of how her new song "Rag" came about. Back to the literal: it started with an actual rag on the side of the road. 

Cohen's latest album is Earthstar Mountain,

Ed Note: Lzzy Hale has collaborated with Mark Morton (Lamb of God) in the past. I co-authored Mark's new book Desolation: A Heavy Metal Memoir, hence the occasional reference to Mark and our book in this episode.

Many songwriters I interview have a journal. Very few have two. Lzzy Hale of Halestorm is the only one who has three. She has a five-year journal, a freewrite journal, and a pocket field note journal "for when the mood strikes." Which, judging by our conversation, happens every waking moment for Hale. And probably a lot of sleeping moments too. 

Even a cursory listen to this episode will reveal Hale's enthusiasm for the creative process. She loves talking about it. Her passion for writing flows literally: she uses a fountain pen! Hale calls herself "a serial eavesdropper" as she's always listening for song ideas. And most importantly: she's not afraid to write the bad stuff to get to the good. "Every good songwriter has songs under their bed that suck," Hale says. 

Halestorm's new album Everest is out now. 

You think you're busy? You're not busy. Sophie Payten (known professionally as Gordi) is busy. She's a songwriter AND a physician. On this episode, we discuss how she finds time to do anything. We also explore how she so beautifully weaves themes from the world of patient care into her songwriting.

Gordi's latest album, Like Plasticine, is out now. 

"I see no point in being bored. I just don't understand the concept.  So I'm always looking for things to occupy my time and get me excited," Peter Berkman of Anamanaguchi told me. Berkman actually told me this in 2011, when he was one of my first interviews for this site. And let me tell you: he hasn't changed one bit. 

Talking to Berkman and Ary Warnaar, it's obvious that music plays only a tiny role in their inspiration and creative process. In fact, Warnaar says that the only people he even talks music with are the members of the band.  Both men are inspired by music, visual art, movies, video games, and German philosophers. If it invades their senses, it's inspiring.

Anamanaguchi's latest album is Anyway on Polyvinyl Records.