Episodes

I'm a much better songwriter when I'm reading," Annie DiRusso says. Truer words have never been spoken; a clear through line connects quality songwriting and reading. And the fact that DiRusso loves poetry makes me even more ...

Running and poetry are all Denison Witmer needs as a songwriter. "When I'm being physically active, my brain opens up," he says. Running is a big part of Witmer's life and plays a big role in his creative process. The other m...

Benmont Tench is the keyboardist and a founding member of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. That’s reason enough to listen to this podcast. I’ve interviewed other icons—Duff McKagan, Johnny Marr, and Jerry Harrison, to name a ...

"I have no rituals when it comes to writing. I don't want to think something can go wrong if things aren't set up the right way," says James McGovern of The Murder Capital . Indeed, that's the downside of a ritual: a fixed ro...

“My biggest hurdle as a writer is trying to hack my brain to become less critical,” Christian Lee Hutson says. In other words, Hutson wants to get the hell out of his own way when he writes. I've heard this before from other ...

Eli Hewson of Inhaler usually stays up and writes all night. Come morning, he heads to bed and will sometimes pass his father Bono (yes, that Bono), who is just beginning his day and starting to write. (All of the band member...

Send us a text Ed Note: Here’s my 2013 interview with Leithauser and my 2022 interview with his bandmate Walter Martin from The Walkmen . Hamilton Leithauser keeps regular hours. And those hours can be early: on the day we ta...

Send us a text If you see Cecilia Castleman browsing the paint aisle at Home Depot, she’s probably not looking for paint. She’s looking for song ideas. Castleman finds inspiration everywhere, but paint names, she says, are pa...

Send us a text Rebecca and Megan Lovell, the GRAMMY-winning sisters who compose Larkin Poe , call themselves “serial idea keepers.” This means they don’t write every day. Instead, “we pull back on ideas until we are ready to ...

Send us a text Flipturn's Tristan Duncan (guitar), Devon VonBalson (drums), and Dillon Basse (vocals) join the pod and go deep into their creative processes. We talk about, among other things, why certain times of day are bet...

Send us a text Is Vera , the debut album by Phil and Tim Hanesroth ( The Hanesroth Twins ), really a debut? After all, they've won three GRAMMYs and have been nominated seven more times for their songwriting collaboration wit...

Send us a text The last time I interviewed Josh Carter of Phantogram was in 2010, before this site was even a podcast. It was one of the first interviews I ever did, and Carter mentioned the author Breece D'J Pancake . The na...

Send us a text Whenever Sophie Allison (aka Soccer Mommy ) puts something out, I know I'll like it. Her new album Evergreen is no exception. We take a deep dive into her songwriting process on this episode.

Send us a text Ed note: Here's my 2022 podcast episode with Fontaines D.C. singer Grian Chatten. Unfortunately, I stopped recording before Conor Deegan (Deego) and I started reading poetry to each other. But that should give ...

Send us a text Hello Mary on the pod today! Stella Wave, Helena Straight, and Mikaela Oppenheimer released their debut album in 2020, when Wave was 19 and Oppenheimer and Straight were 16. The band talks about their collectiv...

Send us a text "Bravery is underrated when it comes to art," Mike Einziger, guitarist and songwriter for Incbus , told me. In other words, don't be afraid to write the bad stuff. (I'd listen to a guy whose band has sold 23 mi...

Send us a text Here's a sampling of the authors and artists that Jake Duzsik of HEALTH mentioned in our conversation: Pascal, T.S. Eliot, William Blake, Vonnegut, Joan Didion, Truman Capote, Oscar Wilde, Thomas Pynchon, Camus...

Does writer's block really exist? Or is it just a reluctance to write the bad stuff? The writer Anthony Doerr once told me that writer's block is just "a failure of courage." Pete Yorn tends to agree. On this episode of the p...

Wunderhorse is why you should always get to the show early to see the support act. I was introduced to Jacob Slater's band when I saw them open for Fontaines D.C. ( here's my podcast with Grian Chatten of Fontaines) at a smal...

It’s always fun to interview two songwriters who have a history together! Before his solo career, Kishi Bashi was a member of Kevin Barnes’ band of Montreal . Kishi Bashi’s new album Kantos is out now on Joyful Noise Recordin...

Mica Tenenbaum and Matt Lewin of Magdalena Bay love hybrid cars. While I’m sure they appreciate the environmental benefits, it’s the humming sound the cars make when they first start moving that the duo finds inspiring. In fa...

"I'm always writing and always creating. I relate to the world by writing," Eva Hendricks of Charly Bliss told me on the podcast. Besides songwriting, she's written a YA novel and is a big journaler. Heck, Hendricks even gets...

Tracyanne Campbell of Camera Obscura has a superpower: she's able to write entire songs in her head before putting them to paper. If Campbell gets an idea and can't write it down immediately, she'll repeat the words over and ...

Matthew Koma of Winnetka Bowling League stops by the podcast to talk about how writing a song is like solving a crossword puzzle, why he doesn't like to dig through discarded melodic and lyrical ideas for new songs, and how h...