Songwriters on Process
In-depth interviews with songwriters about their songwriting process. Nothing else. No talk of band drama, band names, or tour stories. Treating songwriters as writers, plain and simple. By Ben Opipari, English Lit Ph.D.
Episodes
148 episodes
Cody Jinks
Cody Jinks had me at "I could talk about books forever." He estimates that he reads 80-100 books a year. All that reading leads to a lot of writing: songs, poetry, a journal, and an almost completed memoir. O...
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Episode 148
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45:08
Mary Chapin Carpenter
"Songwriting is about being awake to something you've never thought of or a way of thinking about something you've never experienced before," Mary Chapin Carpenter says on the pod. The five-time...
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Episode 147
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55:20
Indigo De Souza
I'm a huge Indigo De Souza fan, so I had a great time on this episode! We went deep into her songwriting process and discussed, among other things, how moving from western North Carolina to Los Angele...
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Episode 146
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38:15
Jade Bird
"I'm realizing how neurotic my process is as I'm talking to you," Jade Bird said, laughing, during our conversation. Indeed, Bird is pretty specific about her writing ritual, which can be intense: she usu...
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Episode 145
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44:49
Purity Ring
At some point I told Megan James and Corin Roddick, who compose Purity Ring, that this was the bizarro episode: I'd mention something that a lot of songwriters do, and they told me that they actually di...
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Episode 144
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49:22
The Swell Season
Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová of The Swell Season feel no need to write every day. They both wait patiently for a sp...
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Episode 143
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1:00:13
John Gourley (Portugal. The Man)
"I'm always chasing that ADHD thing: whatever it tells me to do, I just do it," John Gourley of Portugal. The Man told me. This episode hit hard. I used to be a middle school special educatio...
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Episode 142
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49:26
Laura Stevenson
Laura Stevenson returns to the pod! This was an easy decision to have her on again (the first time was 2011...
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Episode 141
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49:13
Cautious Clay
Cautious Clay and I spent the first ten minutes of this episode talking about the role that painting plays in his creative process. Then a few minutes later, the topic turned to the through line between ba...
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Episode 140
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39:51
Shura
This episode with Shura marks a first: we managed to draw a through line between Marcella Hazan's bolognese sauce and t...
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Episode 139
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59:54
Orla Gartland
"The more I do this, the less I want to understand where it comes from," Orla Gartland says on the pod. Like most songwriters, Gartland likes to walk as a part of her songwriting process. She'll usuall...
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Episode 138
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50:52
Sunflower Bean
It's the return of Nick Kivlen and Julia Cumming of Sunflower Bean! We had so much fun in 2022 that we had to do it again....
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Episode 137
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50:30
Matt Gervais (The Head and the Heart)
"Without the labor, channeling can't happen," Matt Gervais of The Head and the Heart told me. He has stacks upon stacks of Mead notebooks to prove it, all the way back to when he was a kid. Gervais f...
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Episode 136
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51:36
I'm With Her
When a band has seven GRAMMY wins and thirty-one GRAMMY nominations among them, they're a supergroup. So let's be clear: I'm With Her is a supergroup. The trio of Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O'Donovan, and Sara W...
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Episode 135
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47:15
Samantha Crain
"I need to have those times of being fully in bloom, then fully hibernating. That's how I get my best, most genuine work," Samantha Crain says. She's a seasonal songwriter who actively takes time not ...
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Episode 134
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38:41
Calum Hood (5 Seconds of Summer)
ED NOTE: here's my episode with Hood's bandmate Ashton Irwin.It's about time a songwriter referenced the movie Lost in Translation, as <...
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Episode 133
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52:57
Suzanne Vega
Suzanne Vega usually heads straight to the compost heap for song ideas. "I have a compost heap of at least 50 notebooks dating back many years, and I pull from those notebooks when writing a new album,"...
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Episode 132
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47:25
Stefan Babcock (PUP)
"I assign too much personal value to my creative output. Too much of my self-worth is wrapped up in that process in a way that is unhealthy," Stefan Babcock of PUP told me. It's natural for a...
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Episode 131
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50:21
Uwade
It's not easy being a songwriter. It's also not easy being a PhD student. I don't know how Uwade is able to do both simultaneously. Uwade is in the first year of her PhD program in Classics at Stanford Univer...
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Episode 130
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42:26
Tennis
Ed note: my new permanent intro and outro music is, in fact, the Tennis song "Need Your Love."Alaina Moore and Pat Riley of Tennis are good friends of mine, which means this episode is more o...
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Episode 129
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1:02:51
Lili Trifilio (Beach Bunny)
“Scribbling into oblivion” is how Lili Trifilio of Beach Bunny describes her editing process. (It's also an amazing song title.) She used this phrase in response to a question I like to ask songwrit...
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Episode 128
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48:29
Mike Campbell (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, The Dirty Knobs)
ED NOTE: Here's my recent episode with Benmont Tench, keyboardist for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
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Episode 127
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44:14
Derek Miller (Sleigh Bells)
I always love having my buddy Derek Miller of Sleigh Bells on the pod! This is Miller's third time as a guest. I don't know how he ever has time to do interviews because the man is either writing music, about...
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Episode 126
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57:23