“I was taking a break from everything. A lot of different things had happened over the past handful of years in my life, a lot of personal loss — people passing, people leaving, people getting sick. It was nice to take those six months to heal myself and sort of reflect on things.”

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In the six years that former Hüsker Dü frontman Bob Mould has lived in San Francisco, he’s been a club DJ, an author, and an advocate for the homeless. But it’s Mould as songwriter that we’ve known and loved the longest, and nowhere is his talent more present than on his latest album, Patch the Sky.

Listen in as Mould stops by KQED’s studios to discuss the themes and details of album opener “Voices in My Head” — a song, he explains, that came after a long period of personal loss and reckoning, and one of 50 songs that emerged from a hailstorm of songwriting.

Other songs heard in this episode:

The Beatles, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”

Henry Gross, “Shannon”

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