Deep Talk About the Songwriting Process.

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 abo

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

"Hard work is important, and it feels good. My family put a lot of stake into working hard, so it's been ingrained in me," Nick Allbrook of Pond told me. We did this interview at 6:30am his time, so that's all you need to know about his discipline. But hard work means nothing if you're not attuned to your environment. Allbrook has that covered too: "You miss out on all of life's beautiful moments and forget that you're a writer if you're always staring at your phone. Once you put it down, inspir

Go Dawgs! Loved having the Athens-bred Futurebirds on the pod. They're no longer college students at the University of Georgia, of course, but as longtime friends and bandmates they've evolved from college students to family men. As you'll hear, their songwriting processes have evolved accordingly. The latest album by Futurebirds is Far Out Country . *photo by Brian Harding

"If I could sum up my process, it would be this: finish everything," says Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie . "I finish every song I start even if I know in the first verse that it’s a complete pile of shit. I finish it because there might be a lyrical idea or a theme in a later verse, chorus or bridge that I can use somewhere else." Unsurprisingly, Gibbard calls himself a "completionist." He finishes every song he starts writing, every book he begins reading. It's no mystery why he's so prolif

Greg Mendez has a shelved album concept that he says you can have if you're a songwriter. The plan was to center each song around the rhythm of a different car's turn signal, and the title of the song would simply be the car's name (so "2003 Honda Accord," for example.) It never came to fruition of course, but it illustrates Mendez's hyperfocus on his environment as he mines for song ideas. Mendez's latest album is Beauty Land . *photo by Stephen Yang