Jeff Daniels
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“You’ve got to be open, you’ve got to fire the judge, you’ve just got to receive it all.”
If you want to be a writer of any genre, says songwriter (and, yeah, actor) Jeff Daniels, you also have to keep your radar on 24/7 for what you see and hear. And be prepared to steal it.
Sure, you know Jeff Daniels from his many films, but he's also been writing songs and playing guitar since 1976.
This is a conversation about the artistic process writ large, so if you're a songwriter, a playwright, an actor, or any combination of the three, you’ll love this interview. The playwriting process and the songwriting process overlap as Daniels effortlessly segues between the two in our discussion; at some point, he exclaims, "It's all fucking connected!" Daniels also says that being an actor has opened up the “get it all out” free for all in the initial stages of the writing process, both as a songwriter and a playwright. In other words, he’s a big fan of just spilling everything on the page and then editing out the bad stuff later. But with experience, he told me, “at least the quality of the garbage has gotten better.”
Regardless of the genre, though, Daniels says art isn’t passive entertainment. Instead, “art can be a weapon,” he told me, and Daniels says this is especially true given today’s political climate.
[SIDE NOTE: As someone who interviews songwriters and who has a PhD in 20th century dramatic literature, this was my nirvana.]
Daniels’s new album is called Alive and Well Enough.
