In November 2009, Maserati drummer Jerry Fuchs died in a terrible accident. The band was in the middle of recording their new release, Pyramid of the Sun, when it happened. They released the album this week, and on it they pay tribute to Fuchs. Maserati are an instrumental band, so as band member Matt Cherry explains, during the recording process they constantly asked themselves what Fuchs would have done to a song, and they let that idea take precedence.
Read MoreIn Macbeth, Shakespeare writes, "Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak/Whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break." Faced with loss, we must give voice to our feelings so that we can begin some semblance of recovery. For Alain Johannes, there was no other option. In 2008, Natasha Shneider, his partner in every sense of the word--in romance, in friendship, and in music--died of cancer at the age of 42. They had been together for 25 years.
Out of this grief came Jonannes' solo release Spark (Rekords Rekords). On display are all of the emotions Johannes felt after Shneider's death, from grief to anger to celebration. The album was completed in only four days; in his words, Johannnes was "pregnant" with the inspiration and ideas for it. It just had to be made, because the lyrics were ready to burst forth. He made Spark much for his own benefit: to heal, and to pay tribute to Shneider. But while the inspiration part of the process was easy, it came from a very raw state. As Dante wrote, "No greater grief than to remember joy when misery is at hand."
Read MoreAh, the topics of inspirations for songwriters: love, heartbreak, the wind, the trees, the water, the conversations around them . . . and, in Grace Potter's case, the Plan B contraceptive pill.
Sure, the frontwoman of Grace Potter and the Nocturnals gets inspired by the usually bevy of songwriting topics, but she gets inspired everywhere—even, as you’ll read, by a Plan B birth pill commercial that she saw while in her hotel room. Of course, the theme has universality—the “doings and undoings” in life—but Potter’s ability to be inspired anywhere is a part of her songwriting talent. Perhaps it started in her high school English class, where she found great value in the brainstorming technique called freewriting, those bursts of five minute stream-of-consciousness writing sessions where you never stop writing. Even if you can’t think of a topic, you write, “I can’t think of a topic.” High school, as you’ll find out, was also a place where Potter staged a mini-revolt against the computer as a symbol of technology. She preferred to compose on a typewriter, so she typed a manifesto of sorts to the students and taped it up around the school, advocating something to the effect of “kill the computer.”
Read MoreCarl Broemel, guitarist for My Morning Jacket, reads the New Yorker. His favorite poet is e.e. cummings. And there's a song on his new record All Birds Say (ATO Records) called "On the Case" about the frustration he feels looking at the stack of books on his bedside table, unable to finish them. He sings, "Scary how easy it is to waste the day/Staring at a screen/While gathering dust the stack of unfinished books/That I'll have to start again."
If only the general public read such terrific magazines, admired such great poets, and expressed frustration at not being able to read more. His affinity for the printed word should give you an idea how much he invests in the craft of songwriting.
I talked with Broemel when he was somewhere in New York between tour stops. You'll learn why e.e. cummings makes him a better songwriter, how being a parent affects his songwriting, what book he is dying to read, and where he does his best writing.
Read MoreFor many of the songwriters I interview, the digital revolution has always been a part of their lives. So it would be easy to think that they embrace technology in their songwriting process. Not so. All of them use journals, diaries, little black books, even typewriters. Heck, one even still owns a Sony Discman.
Enter Jack Tempchin, from the southern California singer/songwriter scene in the 1970s. When he started writing, people used yellow pads and pencils. So we might excuse Tempchin for sticking to his original method. But what does Tempchin use? An iPhone. This is the bizarro world of songwriting, where twenty-somethings use typewriters and diaries, and singer/songwriters from the 70s use iPhones.
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