Songwriters on Process

“When I go to the grocery store, that’s part of the songwriting process. When I work on my truck, that’s part of my songwriting process. Every aspect of our life feeds into our creativity. The more present I can be, the better the songs,” says Buck Meek. Meek, the guitarist in Big Thief, is the first songwriter to discuss how “fluid dynamics” impact his songwriting. The ocean—with its waves, shifting sand, temperature fluctuation, and changing tides—inspires him because these shifting e...

Jade Long and Jessica Thompson of Athens, Georgia based Hotel Fiction have a simple routine for their songwriting sessions: make some brownies, pour some wine. And they like to be outside. It's not complicated. But while food, drink, and the outdoors are all common sources of inspiration for songwriters, one element of the Hotel Fiction writing process is unique. When they're outside, they often prefer the top of a parking deck on the University of Georgia's campus. (Long and Thompson a...

Nat and Alex Wolff had me at Sam Shepard. The playwright/writer/actor was one of my dissertation topics and the brothers acted in his plays, so we agreed early on that he's one of our favorite writers. (After you listen, please read Shepard's Pulitzer Prize winning play Buried Child.) I’ve interviewed other actors who are also songwriters, and as you’ll hear, all channel their stage experience when they write songs. The Wolff brothers call these elements “artistic nutrients”: all ...

Patton Magee of The Nude Party has the best reason why reading makes you a better songwriter: it gives you a stronger and more wide-ranging vocabulary, which in turn gives you more ways to express yourself. "Words that you rarely use are a lot more fun to play around with," he says on the pod. This reminds me of one of my favorite lines in William Zinsser's book On Writing Well, when he says that if a word comes too easily to you, don't use it because it's probably overused. The Nude Par...

"I am a taskmaster," Courtney Marie Andrews told me. When we talked back in 2018, I marveled at Andrews' discipline. She calls it "chunk writing": Andrews doesn't write on tour but instead collects notes and ideas while she's there. Then, when she's home, she blocks off chunks of time on her calendar and does nothing but write. This discipline makes for prolificness: besides being a fantastic songwriter, Andrews is a published poet and a visual artist. And as you'll hear, it all has to go in ...

"To write about something sad and dark, I need to feel content, to feel a sense of well being. I can't write when I'm depressed," Lucinda Williams told me. Much of my discussion with Williams focused on how we prepare to write. By her own admission, she's obsessed with paper. "I could spend hours in an office supply store," says Williams. A comfortable chair is necessary too, but not too comfortable because, well, it's easy to fall asleep in a deep chair. And coffee is important, not ne...

"I've been very happy lately, and that's worrying," KT Tunstall told me. "It's much easier to write sad songs than happy songs. Happiness makes you want to be present, but pain makes you want to escape. And music has always been a way for me to get out." Tunstall is adamant about not writing every day. "I love doing nothing, so mindless puttering is especially effective. When she finally sits down, she has rules: no blue pens, and the paper has to be unlined. Why unlined? Because she hates be...

Why do so many of us feel the need to clean our space before we create? Melody Prochet (aka Melody's Echo Chamber) and I discuss why it's important to our respective writing processes. When she's not writing in that nice and tiny space, she's walking along the water, another important element to her songwriting. The latest album by Melody's Echo Chamber is called Unclouded.

"Pants delivery was my eureka moment," Julien Ehrlich of Whitney says on the pod, and with that we have my favorite out-of-context pull quote. Ehrlich was not speaking metaphorically: when he and bandmate Max Kakacek were writing Whitney's first album, he drove a clothing delivery van that had no working radio. The monotonous drives were great sources of inspiration. Kakacek, on the other hand, was a competitive swimmer until he turned 18. Swimming endless laps staring at the bottom of ...

“I’m a ‘go in phases’ type of gal. It took me a year and a half to write this record, but it came in blocks,” Gatlin says. It’s how she manages her routine in those blocks that makes her songwriting process so fascinating. Gatlin is most effective between 3pm and 5pm, and thanks to a typing class she took as a child, she can type those lyrics at 95 words per minute. She finds walks to be particularly inspiring for lyrics, but when she’s with her guitar, Gatlin sits cross-legged and gently roc...

"I made a conscious effort on this album to be more disciplined in my writing because my ideas were getting stale and I was writing from the same place," Mariel Buckley told me. "I realized that my material was becoming repetitive when I was waiting for inspiration to strike." Buckley's new process involved writing every day and writing from a more joyful place. The result is her fantastic new album Strange Trip Ahead.

Etta Friedman and Allegra Weingarten of Momma return! Momma is my favorite band and their new album Welcome to My Blue Sky is my favorite album of 2025. At least I'm consistent since I said the same thing about them when they were on the pod in 2023. (Their live show is absolutely killer too.) Friedman and Weingarten have been writing together since their teens, and one thing hasn't changed over the years: they still write most of their songs in Etta's bedroom. But as you'll hear, there are e...

"I'm a professional daydreamer," Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes told me. That's the catch-22: are you really daydreaming if you're aware that you're doing it? Daydreaming leads to eureka moments, but only when you don't sit down and say, "I'm going to daydream." As with most people, the eureka moments for Oberst involve mundane activities for a practical reason: no one interrupts him when he's doing the dishes or cleaning a room. The perfect daydream for Oberst involves looking out a windo...

"I get a physical tingling sensation. It's beyond my control, an impulsive feeling where I have to sit and wait for it," Billie Marten says about that moment before a wave of inspiration strikes. The problem, Marten told me, is that it's been a while since she's written anything. But as we soon realized, Marten has been writing a lot: she pulled out her Notes app and scrolled through all the freewriting and thoughts she's written over the past year. "Look at this," she says. "I haven't writte...

"I allow myself to miss the guitar. And the guitar comes calling when I start to feel bored," says William Prince. A multiple JUNO award-winner, Prince is also a member of Peguis First Nation in Manitoba, Canada, writing often about his experience as a member. Prince finds long drives to be productive--and those long drives in Canada are common. "So many voice memos happen on those long drives from Calgary to Vancouver or Winnipeg to Calgary. I’m always trying to recreate the language t...

"It's important to separate my sense of self-worth from my creations. If I was so self-aware of my output, I don't think I'd be having fun," Melina Duterte, who goes by the performing name Jay Som, told me. She says that output is proportional to her introspection: "How much I express through music depends on how much work I've been doing on myself," she says. And there's no better place for Duterte's introspection than at her kitchen sink, doing the dishes. Jay Som's latest album is Be...

It's the return of Hayes Carll! I first interviewed him in 2013 and again in 2016. A recurring theme of those early interviews was Carll's admitted lack of discipline in the writing process. "I'm always looking for something else to do other than write," Carll told me in 2013. But 2025 brings a new Hayes Carll, one who sees discipline as an ally. "I don't turn away from the knock at the door, even when it's inconvenient," he says now. Carll's latest album is We're Only Human.

"The decision has been made, and now it's time to f**k off," Mitch Rowland told me. To be clear, Rowland wasn't saying this to me; instead, it's Rowland ruthlessly killing his darlings in the editing process. Rowland is a solo artist, but he's also the guitarist in Harry Styles's solo band and has co-written many songs with Styles, including "Watermelon Sugar" and "Golden." (Rowland's wife Sarah Jones is the drummer in the band.) His songwriting has appeared on all three of Styles's alb...

If you took a contemporary poetry class in college in the last 30 years, Paul Muldoon was probably on your syllabus. The New York Times has called him “one of the great poets of the past hundred years. . . . Only Yeats before him could write with such measured fury.” The Times Literary Supplement referred to Muldoon as “the most significant English-language poet born since the Second World War.” He's a Pulitzer Prize winner, a former poetry editor at The New Yorker, and currently a professor ...

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.