Deep Talk About the Songwriting Process.

"I don't like closing a book on words, not even my laptop," says Alex Cameron. This is no metaphor. Cameron means this literally because he always wants to be able to see his words. He keeps a giant piece of butcher paper spread out on his table 24/7. This butcher paper contains all of his writing, and I mean all: text message drafts, lists, lyrics, journal writing. Anything that gets written down goes here as opposed to a notebook or laptop or phone, and since he's always walking by the table o

"You don't have to be a tortured artist to write a song, but it's important to write about what you're feeling and not run away from it," Azniv Korkejian (aka Bedouine) says about her songwriting process. As proof, she tells a story about how she sobbed the first time she played one of her new songs for her husband. As you'll hear, there's no better place to write those songs than the local public library, and Bedouine provides some pretty powerful reasons why. Bedouine's latest album is N

It's not often (ever?) that I get to talk Hegel, Jung, and Goethe with songwriters. But Dragos Chiriac of Men I Trust and I go deep into philosophy in this episode. I am a huge fan of the band and enjoyed our discussion immensely as we discuss the impact these writers have on Chiriac and why he returns to them over and over. Lest you think this episode was all about existential angst, we also discussed the relatively simple reason why the band wrote my favorite Men I Trust song "Billie Toppy.

"The failure is not in writing a bad song. The failure is in writing no song." Keenan O'Meara has always honored the value of work. Maybe it's because he's also a carpenter by trade, but discipline is his asset even though it's not something that comes naturally. "You have to teach yourself how to work. We've been tricked by the idea of divine inspiration for far too long," he told me. Carpentry has been a boon to his process. "It's great for songwriting. If you ever find yourself out of song

Jason Newsted blends words and acrylics. Literally. The former Metallica bassist and leader of Jason Newsted and the Chophouse Band is also an accomplished painter, and to get started he'll often write song lyrics (not his own) on a blank canvas, then paint over them. The lyrics serve as a way to stimulate his creative process as his brush strokes move over the words and mix. Newsted gives me a great example of how he recently did this with a Jim Croce song. This episode is a deep discussion

I'd like to call myself an OG Widowspeak fan, as I told Molly Hamilton. I saw them when they opened for 2:54 back in 2011 or 2012 on their first tour, and I became an instant fan. Hamilton and I go deep into the songwriting process, including how jobs outside of songwriting can be a boon for creativity--in Hamilton's case it's the food industry, and in her husband Robert Earl Thomas's case it's carpentry--and how becoming a new parent changes, well, everything when you're a two-person band and y