Songwriters on Process

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Benmont Tench (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) Mar 17, 2025

Show notes

Note: here's my recent interview with Mike Campell, guitarist for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

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 few—and they all have one common thread: a voracious appetite for art in all its forms. They consume books, movies, paintings, poetry, sculptures, you name it. Artists with longevity know that to create art, you have to constantly consume it.

Tench is no exception. “The more I read, the more chance I have to get inspired because I’m opening myself up to language. But I’m inspired by all art; I’m even inspired by looking out the window. It all comes in, and it all shows up in my writing,” he says. When I asked Tench if he favors any certain medium, his response was simple: “From Milton to Milton Bradley.” He’s also the first songwriter I’ve interviewed to cite both Manet and the Steve Martin movie Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid as inspiration.

Tench’s solo album The Melancholy Season is out now.

James McGovern (The Murder Capital) Mar 06, 2025

Show notes

"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 routine can limit your productivity when that routine isn't available. But McGovern does have one tiny "ritual" that I wholeheartedly endorse: writing the bad stuff before he gets to the good stuff.

And as an aside, any songwriter who references Yeats, Keats, and Heaney in one podcast is forever my hero.

The Murder Capital's latest album is Blindness

Christian Lee Hutson Feb 23, 2025

Show notes

“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 songwriters: Matt Nathanson has a name for that annoyingly critical voice in his head that he's always trying to silence: "the assassin."

Hutson and I talked at length about the process of discovery through mistakes. You can’t write the good stuff if you’re afraid of writing the bad stuff. Getting better as a writer is all about surprising yourself, and you can’t do that if you’re too self-critical as you write.

Christian Lee Hutson’s latest album Paradise Pop. 10is out now.

Eli Hewson and Josh Jenkinson (Inhaler) Feb 10, 2025

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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 members live with their parents.) Hewson's admittedly "terrible sleeping habits" are nothing new; when he was five years old, his mother often found him watching tv in the middle of the night.

Hewson's bandmate Josh Jenkinson wants no part of those late night writing sessions. "I just go to bed," he says. Jenkinson is a daytime writer; like Hewson, he's most productive when no one else is around. And in his case, that's when his mother is at work and the house is quiet.

Aside from that difference, Hewson and Jenkinson mostly see eye-to-eye on the writing process. Both extol the benefits of the Rubik's Cube, of all things, on songwriting. Jenkinson says that the problem solving "becomes so mechanical that I can think about other things while I'm doing it." And both lament the "erosion of boredom" and how its loss impacts our ability to create.

Inhaler’s latest album Open Wide is out now.

Hamilton Leithauser of The Walkmen Feb 05, 2025

Show notes

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 talked, he had started writing at 5am. It’s a problem if he doesn’t write every day, he says. "If I don’t write every day, I feel anxious or like I’ve done something wrong."

I don't think Leithauser ever rests. "I can't ever stop doing stuff," he says, saying that it may border on "maniacal." So when he's not writing, his other hobbies include, but are probably not limited to, woodworking, photography, racquetball, kitesurfing, and chess. (Even when he's playing chess, he admits to writing music.) Oh, and he has two young kids.

Leithauser’s new solo album This Side of the Islandis out March 7 on Glassnote Records.

Cecilia Castleman Jan 23, 2025

Show notes

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 particularly rich sources for song ideas and lyrics. And as you’ll hear, baking cakes and looking at old houses are great sources too.

It took me about ten seconds—the first notes of the opening guitar riff—of listening to the opening track “It’s Alright” to realize I was going nowhere for the next 48 minutes. This album is good. I mean really, really good. Cecilia Castleman’s self-titled debut is out on Glassnote Records.

Larkin Poe Jan 19, 2025

Show notes

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 write,” they say. This seasonal writing, as they and other songwriters like to call it, requires discipline: you have to resist the urge to write every day and only write during certain times. The advantage of this is that the words flow freely when it’s time to write.

But the Lovells bemoan this age of constant online stimulation, where artists are missing one critical element for creativity: boredom. “There’s not enough boredom in our lives. We need time to daydream,” they say.

Larkin Poe’s latest album is called Bloom.

Ed note: to clarify my intro, Larkin Poe won the 2024 GRAMMY for Best Contemporary Blues Album for their 2023 album Blood Harmony.

Flipturn Jan 09, 2025

Show notes

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 better for writing, how exercise improves songwriting, and the places they find the most inspiring.
Flipturn's latest album Burnout Daysis out January 24 on Dualtone Records.

Phil and Tim Hanseroth (The Hanseroth Twins) Dec 05, 2024

Show notes

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 collaboration with Brandi Carlile. (They're the twins who flank her in concert live.) The twins' songs have been covered by Adele, Dolly Parton, and the Avett Brothers. So while this may be their first album as a duo, they've had excellent songwriting chops for a while.
Had a great time talking about why it's important to not take the writing process too seriously, why the outdoors are so integral to creativity, and their uncanny ability to craft fully formed songs in their head before committing them to paper.

Phantogram Nov 11, 2024

Show notes

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 name stood out, of course, but it took a while for me to read about Pancake's tragic backstory. Then more songwriters started mentioning him in interviews, so I finally read his book, and wow. Incredible.
This time, Carter and Sarah Barthel join me on the podcast to talk about their decidedly old-school writing process. We talk about Barthel's collection of analog typewriters, Carter's use of his Dictaphone, and how we just need more time to be bored. Yes, we sound like three cranky old people railing against the impact tech has on creativity. But I'll take that any day as long as Phantogram continues to make such good music.
Phantogram's latest album Memory of a Dayis out now.

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