Patterson Hood (Drive-By Truckers) and Lilly Hiatt

"The good songs happen like someone is playing a record in space, and I have an antennae to pick it up. I actually hear it, and  write it down as quickly as I can.”—Patterson Hood.

"You don’t just get to have the muse all the time. It’s mysterious. But you have to experience stuff and have time to process those experiences to be able to write about them."—Lilly Hiatt.

There are two different points during my interview with Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers and Lilly Hiatt when each reaches to the sky, grabs a piece of air, and pulls it down. Both were describing their songwriting process: songs come from the muse, from the sky, from somewhere they can’t explain. And it’s their duty to grab that song, pull it down, and create it.

Both Hood and Hiatt talk about the need to create. It’s not something they do because it’s their job or because they enjoy it. Those things are true, of course. But songwriting is such a part of their lives that it’s almost a matter of survival.