Songwriters on Process

Nat and Alex Wolff had me at Sam Shepard. The playwright/writer/actor was one of my dissertation topics and the brothers acted in his plays, so we agreed early on that he's one of our favorite writers.  (After you listen, please read Shepard's Pulitzer Prize winning play Buried Child.) 
I’ve interviewed other actors who are also songwriters, and as you’ll hear, all channel their stage experience when they write songs. The Wolff brothers call these elements “artistic nutrients”: all the things we ingest that help us hone our craft. 
As an aside, this could’ve been the most fun I’ve had on a podcast. And in a first, we were somehow able to connect Watergate to the songwriting process. 
Nat and Alex Wolff's self-titled album is out now.

Patton Magee of The Nude Party has the best reason why reading makes you a better songwriter: it gives you a stronger and more wide-ranging vocabulary, which in turn gives you more ways to express yourself. "Words that you rarely use are a lot more fun to play around with," he says on the pod. This reminds me of one of my favorite lines in William Zinsser's book On Writing Well, when he says that if a word comes too easily to you, don't use it because it's probably overused.
The Nude Party's new album is Look Who's Back.

"I am a taskmaster," Courtney Marie Andrews told me. When we talked back in 2018, I marveled at Andrews' discipline. She calls it "chunk writing": Andrews doesn't write on tour but instead collects notes and ideas while she's there. Then, when she's home, she blocks off chunks of time on her calendar and does nothing but write.
This discipline makes for prolificness: besides being a fantastic songwriter, Andrews is a published poet and a visual artist. And as you'll hear, it all has to go in a green journal. 
Andrews's latest album is Valentine.

"To write about something sad and dark, I need to feel content, to feel a sense of well being. I can't write when I'm depressed," Lucinda Williams told me. 
Much of my discussion with Williams focused on how we prepare to write. By her own admission, she's obsessed with paper. "I could spend hours in an office supply store," says Williams. A comfortable chair is necessary too, but not too comfortable because, well, it's easy to fall asleep in a deep chair. And coffee is important, not necessarily because of the caffeine but because of the nostalgic element. 
We also did some close reading of her father's poetry. I've been a big fan of Miller Williams for many years and taught his poems when I was in academia. We discussed his ability to take decidedly unpoetic images and phrases like radar detector and cellular phone and make them beautiful. 
Lucinda Williams' latest album is called World's Gone Wrong.

"I've been very happy lately, and that's worrying," KT Tunstall told me. "It's much easier to write sad songs than happy songs. Happiness makes you want to be present, but pain makes you want to escape. And music has always been a way for me to get out."
Tunstall is adamant about not writing every day. "I love doing nothing, so mindless puttering is especially effective. When she finally sits down, she has rules: no blue pens, and the paper has to be unlined. Why unlined? Because she hates being told what to do, and lined paper represents a means of control. 
Tunstall is celebrating the 20th anniversary of her debut album Eye to the Telescope with a deluxe edition out now.