Songwriters on Process

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 …

Is Vera, the debut album by Phil and Tim Hanseroth (The Hanseroth Twins), really a debut? After all, they've won three GRAMMYs and have been nominated seven more times for their songwriting collabora…

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 Panca…

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.

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 …

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 thei…

"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 …

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 Pyn…

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…

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 Chatte…

"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.…

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 …

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 idea…

Ashton Irwin, drummer for 5 Seconds of Summer, often writes songs out of necessity. While he likes to journal, Irwin finds songwriting a much more effective vehicle for maintaining his mental health.…

All four members of DIIV (Zachary Cole Smith, Andrew Bailey, Colin Caulfield, Ben Newman) joined me to talk about their individual songwriting processes. This interview could've gone on forever becau…