Derek Miller//Sleigh Bells

“During football season, the weekend is usually the best time for me to write because I get to work in a semi-distracted state.”

For Derek Miller of Sleigh Bells, productivity involves a good football game, 120 decibels, and the Isley Brothers.

It’s an old and tired narrative, isn’t it? Artist moves to country, artist smells flowers and sees forests, artist becomes inspired, artist produces great art. This has certainly happened: one of Romanticism’s central tenets was its connection to nature. It even worked for Chevy Chase, though not always. To be sure, it still works today. Many songwriters have found great success in a lonely cabin, surrounded by clean air and chirping birds.

But a move to Upstate New York gave Derek Miller of Sleigh Bells something different: a chance to be really loud. Miller, who makes up Sleigh Bells along with Alexis Krauss, used to live in Brooklyn, where it’s hard to make noise when you share walls. So the serenity of Upstate New York gives Miller a chance to be . . . not serene. “After a while, that [urban] experience of being confined is deflating and uninspiring. The difference between using studio monitors—and having the sound fill the room—and even really nice headphones is huge. It makes me want to work more. I like being able to play at 120 decibels whenever I want.”

Yet even when Miller isn’t blasting at 120 decibels, he still prefers to stay indoors when he writes. Only now, he watches others play outdoors. Miller likes to have a football game on tv when he writes (unless it’s LSU or the New Orleans Saints, which as his favorite teams require full attention). He puts the game on mute while working on music, kind of as a background distraction. “The second I hit a wall or I hit on something good that I know will stay in the mix, I don’t want to get greedy. So I unmute the game, watch for 15-20 minutes, then invariably the next step will come to me. I love working in that state,” Miller told me.

This is the second interview Miller and I have done; the first was in 2012. The new Sleigh Bells album Texis is out now. Read my interview with Derek Miller below!

How has your move to upstate New York affected your creative process or even affected the music itself? Other artists have told me what a big difference a move to the country makes.

A

The biggest difference is that I no longer have to wear headphones because I’m not sharing walls. After a while, that experience of being confined is deflating and uninspiring. The difference between using studio monitors—and having the sound fill the room—and even really nice headphones is huge. It makes me want to work more. My living room is my studio now. I wake up and I go to work. Some people like to have a separate place to work, but I like being able to play at 120 db whenever I want.

Also, living out here has made it much easier to have a healthy lifestyle. There are so many distractions in Brooklyn. Here, I go to the gym and go to the grocery store. That’s it. These have been the two healthiest years of my adult life. It’s made me realize that I really like my default state, when I’m just me. This is sad to admit, but for about eighteen years, I was either fucked up or hungover 70-80% of the time. I was never a “get up first thing in the morning and drink” kind of person. I was never obsessive about it and never lost any of the things that I loved, which is probably why Alexis stuck around. It’s because I could still get the job done. It was not pretty, and it was compromised, but I could still hack it. And that sucked, because you want to be focused, you want to be a laser beam. All that shit ever did was make me less creative and less motivated. It’s a great destroyer of creativity. I’m so much more productive here. And that’s why I love living here. Because if you poison yourself, shit’s gonna get dark.

Is it important as an artist to create every day, or will things become derivative if you force it?

A

It’s an everyday thing for me, but that doesn’t mean I’m sitting in front of a synth or with my guitar. I might be spinning a lyric around in my head while I’m cooking, for example. Or chasing down different snare sounds in my head for an existing track. Or I might have handful of aggressive synths in a mix that are pissing me off, so I’ll sort through them in my head while I’m shopping for groceries. So in that sense, there’s always something going on. It’s always a part of my day, no matter where I am.

I know that you box now as a part of your workout, and I’ve had this discussion often with songwriters. Do you use any kind of repetitive movement—exercise or not—to stimulate your creative process?

A

During football season, the weekend is usually the best time for me to write because I get to work in a semi-distracted state.Here’s what I do. I’m a big LSU and Saints fan, but outside of those two games, there’s also a handful of games I’m somewhat interested, but not invested, in. I work in the living room where the TV is. So I put the games on mute while I have a session open, messing around with drums or synths or guitars. If I have something interesting going on, I’ll keep at it. But the second I hit a wall or I hit on something good that I know will stay in the mix, I don’t want to get greedy. So I unmute the game, watch for 15-20 minutes, then invariably the next step will come to me. I love working in that state. I hate to sit down and say to myself, “Now, I’m going to write.”

Sure there are times when I can work for eight or nine hours, but usually I’ll work for a couple of hours and then stop. I don’t want to push it. I like to stop as soon as I’ve got something good down. That way I wake up and I cannot wait to start again.

But do your boxing workouts ever help in your creative process?

A

When I’m doing mitt work with my trainer, even for two or three minutes, I’m thinking about so many different things: the balls of my feet, my ankles, my elbows, my hips, my center of gravity. All those things at once, so many microadjustments in a manner of seconds. And somehow that produces a clarity and focus that I just don’t get doing anything else. That focus makes me so much more productive when I work in the studio.

“The whole day involves putting myself in the best position to have something interesting come out of my speakers. ”

So do you make that workout a part of your daily creative process?

A

I have a pretty specific daily routine. I’m up between 10 and 11, then I eat the same thing before I go to the gym: a cup of low sugar Chobani, either vanilla or strawberry, and a can of sugar-free Red Bull. I go to the gym for 60 minutes, come home, cook lunch, then open up a session for the day. That sets the table for something inspiring. When I do that. the day for me counts as a step forward. But if there’s a day when I eat well but don’t get a lot done, I feel like I’m standing in the same place. By 6 or 7pm I’m usually done with a session, so I’ll cook dinner and watch a game if there’s one on. I’m in bed by 11pm, where I’ll read, listen to music, or watch tv. I fall asleep by about 2am. That’s my schedule. The whole day involves putting myself in the best position to have something interesting come out of my speakers.

Don’t you think that having a ritual is important for confidence? And if you altered that routine, would you be less creative that day?

A

Absolutely. i’m thinking of Tom Morello right now, who I think uses the same Dictaphone that he used back in the 80s when he first started recording.

What’s most amazing to me is how music influences my daily routine. So to answer your question: altering my routine would absolutely affect my creativity. Music does that in general for me. When I was living in Brooklyn, there was a grocery store across the street. And if I woke up in a bad mood or even neutral, I may not hold the door for the person behind me as a walk in, unless it’s an elderly person or someone who obviously needs help. But if I wake up that same morning and listen to the Isley Brothers? I’m holding the door for everybody. Music has always done that for me. It increases my connections to humanity and makes me a better, happier person.

Hemingway once said that writers should go to art galleries to get inspired. Do other types of art inspire you?

A

Every day. But art is a big umbrella for me. It could be the way someone cooks a meal or how someone shoots hoops. I get inspired by watching someone do a difficult thing well. Sports are big for me. It’s not about the strategies or the X’s and O’s; instead, it’s about the personal narratives of the players I follow. They have made incredible sacrifices and have tremendous discipline to be where they are. And to be honest, for so many years I lacked that because of self-destructive behavior and substance abuse. So there’s nothing more inspiring that watching someone crush it on the biggest stage. I can feed off of that for a month when I see that. It makes me want to make a record.

How linear is the process for you? Some songwriters, like Daniel Lanois, have told me that their lyric sheets have lines and arrows and thought bubbles and words all over the the place.

A

I try to be as relaxed as I possibly can when it comes to writing lyrics. The worst thing I can do is to sit down and deliberately try to write a lyric because I think This thing needs to be gospel. I keep it loose. I’m not a narrative songwriter; for me, it’s about a feeling. Sometimes a line is very specific, and regardless of where the vowels fall or how many syllables there are, I want to protect it and keep it intact. Other times, I may need a vowel here or there, and any vowel will do.

photo. by Chris Vultaggio

Is there a song on Texis that was so difficult to finish that you wanted to give up?

A

A lot of the songs on this album evolved over time. Many of my songs have been in the oven for a while. Outside of the Notes app on my phone, I have probably 150 document files that are packed with ideas. And most of them are shit. But there are a few lines worth saving, and they’re stuck in my mental Rolodex. So if I’m working on a song that isn’t quite there yet, I go to the Rolodex for that one set of lyrics from five years ago that has two lines that I could use.

I'm pretty patient with my process. On “An Acre Lost,” there’s a riff from December 2002. I wrote it when I was 19 and in Poison the Well. It was a guitar riff, but it didn’t occur to me to turn it into a synth part until 2018. It opens the song as a synth riff and plays in some different synth patches throughout. I spit out a handful of chords for the pre-chorus, I think F major then A major before dropping into the chorus. That little arpeggiated part weaves through all the chord changes. There are these little moments where a dissonance occurs, and I like that. Then there will be a brief tonal harmony. It’s a great piece of ear candy for me. It’s one of my favorite songs on the album. And it’s all built around that one riff.

Last question, since we always talk about this. Who are your recent literary discoveries?

A

Easy. Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh. She was recommended to me by Sasha Free-Jones. It’s funny, inviting, deviant, and dark. It’s got everything, and in that sense it reminds me of Infinite Jest. I just downloaded the new Joy Williams book Harrow, and I know you and I have talked about her before. And right now I’m digging into Robert Greenfield’s books on The Rolling Stones. I’m a huge Stones fan.

I burn through a lot of non-fiction, but fiction really stays with me. I did tons of reading during the pandemic. Those nights I would’ve been at the bar, I instead spent reading. I also loved the Ben Rhodes book The World As It Is. He was one of Obama’s speechwriters when he was only in his 30s. And I also loved Endurance: Shakleton’s Incredible Voyage. It’s a great book and one to read if you need any sense of perspective about how difficult your life is.

Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow influenced our song “Locust Laced.” I’m waiting to see how many people pick up on that. I took his line “screaming comes across the sky” and turned it into “screaming comes a thousand miles.”