Ben Ottewell, vocalist and guitarist for Gomez, released his solo album Shapes and Shadows this month. It obviously offered Ottewell much more freedom in his creative process: as you'll read, everything went "a lot faster" since the buck stopped with him. Read my interview with Ottewell about his songwriting process after the video.
Read MorePedals is the new release (out March 8) from the recently reformed post-hardcore supergroup Rival Schools. It’s their first since the critically acclaimed United by Fate in 2001, and it shows that the band has not lost its knack for aggressive yet melodic music. Pedals is also a reflection of where the quartet are in life: it's filled with songs about shedding the bad elements in life and ushering in positive change.
I'm reviewing the album for the Washington Post next week, so I've been listening to it a lot. I recently spoke to singer/songwriter Walter Schreifels about his songwriting process, including how songwriting is like bowling
Read MoreLast Friday I caught Eisley at the Rock n' Roll Hotel here in Washington, DC. I'm a newcomer to their music, so after interviewing sisters and bandmembers Sherri DuPree-Bemis and Stacy DuPree-King, I wanted to check them out live. Leading up to the show, what struck me about their music was its strong melodic element. And live shows by a band whose lyrics I don't really know are a way to confirm this; the music just sounds good even though I may not be able to make out the lyrics. And that's what happened at the Eisley show that night.
What I heard Friday confirms what DuPree-Bemis and DuPree-King told me: that in the first stages of their songwriting process, melody comes naturally. It's so effortless, in fact, that DuPree-Bemis even writes songs in her sleep, literally, as you'll read. And according to DuPree-King, "The melody is a language in itself." Of course, it's not as if the four siblings and their cousin who make up the band are short on lyrical content: the band went through a professional divorce (from Warner Bros.) and a personal one as well (DuPree-Bemis divorced in 2007 before recently remarrying).
Read MoreHow can I not promote a songwriter who reads Shakespeare to prepare to write for his band's latest album? That's what Jesper Anderberg, keyboardist and songwriter for The Sounds, did. The band hails from Sweden, so English is not their native language. Anderberg read some Shakespeare, a man whose writing he admired for its lyrical quality; Midsummer Night's Dream was his favorite. According to Anderberg, you can almost sing the lines from that play.
The Sounds' newest effort, Something to Die For, will be out the end of March on SideOneDummy Records. It's the band's debut release for the label. (photo credit: Markku Anttila)
Read MoreChris Farren, the vocalist and guitarist for Fake Problems, is a disciplined man when it comes to songwriting. When he's in one of his "writing cycles," he gets up early, eats, takes care of distractions, then sits down to write. In fact, he compares this process to an "office job."
And when he writes, he almost always begins with a single line in his head, not music. That's something that I haven't heard too often from the songwriters on this site, who usually begin a song with a guitar and music, letting the lyrics emerge from the chord progressions. And this discipline is reflected in how Farren's songs are created: he writes them in a linear fashion, in the same manner you hear them as a finished product.
Read MoreStillwater, Oklahoma is not the hotbed of indie music in the way that Los Angeles and New York are. But let's face it, the reality of the music business is that many indie artists struggle financially. And living on the expensive coasts doesn't help matters.
So what does Jesse Tabish, the singer and songwriter for Other Lives, do with the rest of the band? They live in Stillwater, where Tabish pays $370 a month in rent. It's an easy decision, really: he can spend more time on the creative process and less time making money by teaching guitar lessons. And that creative process was revamped for the new album, which Other Lives finished last week. It's their second album on TBD Records, having released their first in 2009. Whereas Tabish used to begin writing a song with the traditional guitar or piano, for this new album he started with "a simple medium like a single piano note or some sort of drone." According to Tabish, "I was tired of sitting down with an acoustic guitar and saying, 'I'm going to write a song today,' and falling on the same chord, the same movements."
Read Moref you happen to be in Chicago and see Smith Westerns’ Cullen Omori out at night—which isn’t very often—send the man home if you’d like to see the band’s next album be as good as the new release, Dye It Blonde, released January 18 on Fat Possum Records. By his own admission, Omori’s hometown isn’t that fun, so he tends to stay in a lot and write songs in his room. For inspiration, he listens to other bands—four different songs from four bands, to be precise—and thinks about incorporating those ideas into a song for Smith Westerns. But listening to other bands has its limitations: sometimes he’ll hear something so good from another band that what he subsequently writes just can’t compare. And that leads to writer’s block. What I found most interesting about the band’s creative process is their willingness to put song fragments aside, sometimes for months, then return to them with a new outlook. Sitting on songs, in Omori’s eyes, makes the band more confident in their songwriting.
Read MoreWarren Spicer, the guitarist/vocalist for the Montreal-based indie rock band Plants and Animals, started as an illustrator. This background still informs his songwriting process, to such an extent that "sketches" are what he calls the preliminary drafting and tooling around before recording a song. And for the new Plants and Animals album, Spicer is trying a new creative process. Whereas like most songwriters Spicer usually begins the process with a guitar and lets the words flow from the music, this time he's trying the opposite tack: he's beginning each song with lyrics before he has any music. According to Spicer, "I want to sing the words without a guitar to find a melody before there are any chords or music. Just sing and see what happens. Then I'll build the chords and harmonic stuff afterwards."
Read MoreAt the end of my interview with Ben Fox, the singer/guitarist and songwriter for the Toronto-based Dinosaur Bones, he was noticeably relieved that I did not make any reference to paleontology. And I think I promised him that I wouldn’t even discuss dinosaurs or prehistorical times in this introduction. But Ben, I have to go back on that promise, because after listening to our interview, I must say that a dinosaur analogy is perfect here. So bear with me.
When we call people or companies “dinosaurs,” it’s not a compliment. What we mean is that they are behind the times, old-fashioned, stale. And therein lies the irony with Dinosaur Bones the band, because Ben Fox’s creative process is anything but stale. In fact, as you’ll read, what’s unique about his songwriting is that he turns the whole thing on its head. While most songwriters begin their creative process with chord progressions, with Fox that part always comes last.
Read MoreThe Get Up Kids formed in 1995 in Kansas and were a major player in the second wave of emo. They enjoyed considerable success, both in worldwide touring and record sales, before disbanding in 2005. Relatively speaking, back then life was pretty uncomplicated for singer and guitarist Matt Pryor. Sure, he was busy touring the world and writing music. But at least he didn’t have kids.
The Get Up Kids have reunited for a new tour and record. And now, Pryor is the married father of three kids ages eight and under. His family informs—in a good way—everything he does now as a songwriter. He is a devoted family man. He takes the kids to school in the morning and writes when they are gone. He puts them to bed and writes when they are asleep. His band schedule revolves around his wife's graduate school schedule. He’s even written two children’s records. As the father of three kids ages seven and under, I can appreciate Pryor's life. But as Pryor told me, people ask him, “Well why can’t you just find time to write?” To which he responds, "Unless you have kids, you just don’t understand.”
Read MoreThe literary history of the British Isles is filled with writers for whom the water played a major role. There's Virginia Woolf, William Butler Yeats, Dylan Thomas, James Joyce, and Shakespeare, among many others. This is hardly surprising, of course, given that they lived on an island and were surrounded by water.
So it made sense that Scott Hutchison, singer and songwriter for the Scottish band Frightened Rabbit, took to the seaside to write their latest album, The Winter of Mixed Drinks on FatCat Records. Hutchison wrote the songs only about 100 meters from the water. Unsurprisingly, the water had a powerful effect not just on his inspiration, but on the finished product itself: he noticed, upon listening to the album, that many of the songs had a cadence and rhythm that matched the crashing of the waves onto the beach.
Hutchison's success as a songwriter also depends, as you'll read, on his ability to make songwriting a routine, something that many songwriters are loathe to do. He sets aside time to write instead of waiting until he feels like doing it. Hutchison finds that this method of enforced discipline yields the best songs. It's a habit that began in college, when he was studying art and illustration; Hutchison was often done with projects in the late afternoon, while his friends toiled well into the night.
Read MoreWhat is it with the connection between manual labor and songwriting? Corin Tucker becomes the third interviewee (Grace Potter and Lissie being the others) to tell me that working around the house inspires her to write, be it housework or yardwork. Tucker offers an explanation: the time when brain and hands are moving is "meditative time" that stimulates creativity.
We know Corin Tucker as the singer and guitarist for Sleater-Kinney. In October she released a solo album entitled 1,000 Years (KillRockStars) that she called "a middle aged mom record." In her late thirties, Tucker is a mother of two with a full-time job outside the record industry. And the routine of her writing process reflects that: her day job has given her a healthy respect for deadlines when it comes to writing, even though she often can't work on meeting those deadlines until after she puts the kids to bed.
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