I think that music, or at least the kind of music that I make, benefits greatly from improvisation.
Most of my songs are pretty sketchy. There’s not a lot of bass sections. I don’t write big bridges. Sometimes I’ll try. But it’s hard for me to focus that way, because I always think it’s more interesting to just see what will happen next.
Part of the joy of music is listening to lots of different kinds of music and learning from it. Specifically for me, I like writing songs that move me, and what moves me are beautiful songs on the piano or the guitar and really, really heavy music.
There definitely isn’t a structure anymore to how I get ideas. A lot of times I’ll just write down a phrase, or I’ll have an idea that’s attached to just a few chords. Other times, it’s work.
The process of making music is more interesting to me than the end result. If I was a cook, I’d be more interested in cooking food than eating food.
To make a song is a gift, and once it’s done it keeps evolving and changing and becomes a tool to interact with other people. It’s like a conversation.
When I start working on a batch of tunes – like roughly 10 solid tunes – I always know there’ll be another 10 to follow, because for every song I invest a lot of time in, there’s another song waiting behind it.
Not to discount my music, but I’m always suspicious of the music that I make on some level, as to how valid it is. Or maybe not “valid,” but how important.
On Heartbreaker, I had to sing those songs. I drank the way I did those songs. I ate the way I did those songs. I communicated the way I did those songs.
A lot of my songs, they’re like puzzle pieces, and there’s just one way to put them together. You could, if you needed to, get the scissors out and cut up things to make them work. But I don’t want to do that.
For me, a record is valid when I actually hold the vinyl. Like, I’ve worked on the art for a while and I see the vinyl and I go “Ooh, it’s an actual LP. How cool is that?” That’s very sacred to me. You can’t take that back, you know?
The good thing about playing the guitar: You can take on different kinds of music. I’m always doing something different from the last thing I did because I have the shortest attention span on earth.
I always have to remember that I am the narrator, but it doesn’t have to be about me. A lot of songwriting is about trying to use what part of me is valid in telling the story. I don’t want to overcook it, you know? Sometimes it seems that’s really where the work is.
I can sort of will that stuff to happen to me if I put myself in the right headspace. Then I can actually get to a space where it won’t just be one song that comes through, but a series of them.
I like things that reach a little further and are a little more abstract, but I don’t think that’s what I do naturally well. How I write naturally is probably what’s furthest from me, and the most removed from what I understand.
For any producer I’ve ever worked with, their toughest job is to convince me to not to obscure my vocals. A lot of people don’t like the sound of their own voice on, like, cassette tape or something. It’s like that for me, and other songwriters I know. Like, “Oh God, that’s what I sound like?”
It’s really very easy for me to be in The Cardinals, because I bring my voice, my guitar, and my songs to them, and then we all play around to find out what works.
This is going to sound crazy, but I can hear music in my head. I can imagine a piano or a guitar playing, and I can sort of think out...
You can imagine several scenes from Star Wars? The way they looked? For me, that’s how music is. Sometimes I’ll be developing riffs for songs, just while I’m sitting around and not playing.
It sounds like I’m channeling or something, and I don’t really fully understand what it is. I’ll get a piece of paper and write down what I think is coming to me. And I’ll play it once. Whether it’s being recorded or not, I can then usually remember it for a sometimes shocking amount of time.