Bartees Strange

“There are days when the songs won’t stop coming. It’s like I’m holding a bucket in the rain and just trying to catch all the ideas.”

Bartees Strange has a lot of song ideas. The problem is getting them all down.

I get the sense that Bartees Strange has so many song ideas but not enough space in his brain to store them. So many projects to complete, so many creative ideas to flesh out. Most of these kernels start out as voice memos on his phone, as he showed me (and safely backed up to the cloud). His phone is filled with them. Filled.

Even so, he’s not the type of writer who can write anywhere and anytime. There are certain parameters to that creative process. One of them has been difficult to fulfill in the past year. “I write about everyday, average things. I need life experiences to be able to write. And it’s hard to write about those life experiences when you’re not around people and doing things,” he said.

Strange also needs distance from events to be able to write about them. “I can write about intense emotional weight,” he says, “But not when I’m in experiencing the weight.” Instead, Strange needs to be on the other end of it.

He prefers paper to computer when it comes to lyric writing. Writing on paper makes him feel more thoughtful. “I think deeper on paper,” says Strange. And when an idea strikes, he heads down to his studio in the basement to catch it. Upstairs doesn’t work as well.

Bartees Strange’s latest album is called Live Forever, and wow is it fantastic. Watch my interview with Bartees Strange below all about his songwriting process!