Speaker 1: Pushkin. Just a quick note here. You can listen to
Speaker 1: all of the music mentioned in this episode on our playlist,
Speaker 1: which you can find a link to in the show
Speaker 1: notes for licensing reasons, each time a song is referenced
Speaker 1: in this episode, you'll hear this sound effect all right.
Speaker 1: Enjoy the episode. Wilco's Jeff Tweety has written hundreds of
Speaker 1: songs over his thirty year career. For some artists, that
Speaker 1: would be an impossible feat, but Tweet's cracked his own
Speaker 1: songwriting code and he's ready to share it. With Tweety's
Speaker 1: work ethic, it's no surprise that eight months into the Pandemic,
Speaker 1: he has a new solo album to share. This song,
Speaker 1: Guess Again, is from his new project Love Is the King.
Speaker 1: More surprising, though, is that he's found the time to
Speaker 1: document the creative process behind his prodigious output, and a
Speaker 1: book titled How to Write One Song, Tweety lays out
Speaker 1: in his own workman like approach to songwriting. The book
Speaker 1: reveals how he comes up with melodies, lyrics, and chords,
Speaker 1: and even more importantly, how he finds the inspiration and
Speaker 1: the time to write. Jeff Tweety spoke to Malcolm Gladwell
Speaker 1: about his new book, explaining why he believes songwriting isn't
Speaker 1: a mystical endeavor but something that can be honed with practice,
Speaker 1: and at the end of the episode, he plays us
Speaker 1: through the writing of one of his new songs, step
Speaker 1: by step. This is broken record liner notes for the
Speaker 1: digital Age. I'm justin Richmond. Here's Malcolm Gladwell with Jeff Tweety.
Speaker 1: Can I start with this tantalizing little anecdote. You're telling
Speaker 1: your book that when your dad got mad, he would
Speaker 1: go into the basement and write poems. And all I
Speaker 1: could think of is this is the Jeff Tweedy origin story?
Speaker 1: Pretty much? I think so, Yeah, it was your father musical.
Speaker 1: My father was a frustrated entertainer. He got my mom
Speaker 1: pregnant in high school and they dropped out and he
Speaker 1: got a job on the railroad, and I think his
Speaker 1: whole life, I think that he wished that he had
Speaker 1: had an opportunity to be on stage somehow. But he
Speaker 1: was not particularly musical, but he was entertaining, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: But he aspired to be musically always. He liked to sing,
Speaker 1: He drank a lot, and he got up at every
Speaker 1: wedding and embarrassed us, terribly humiliated us in lots of cases.
Speaker 1: But where's poems with any good? Yeah? I know my
Speaker 1: dad was brilliant, you know, they weren't. I don't think
Speaker 1: that they were good and like a Robert Frost way
Speaker 1: or or but they might have been good in a
Speaker 1: Jimmy Stewart kind of way or Ogden Nash maybe at
Speaker 1: the high end of his aspirations. But you know, um,
Speaker 1: he wouldn't have had any of those references other than
Speaker 1: Jimmy Stewart. So but he did. You know, he made
Speaker 1: un requited forays into indulging his musical side many times,
Speaker 1: like he bought an organ from the mall that the
Speaker 1: salesman claimed would teach him how to play, and he
Speaker 1: would just sit there and watch the lights flash as
Speaker 1: it would play itself, and drink a beer. It was.
Speaker 1: I have a lot of memories of that. But the
Speaker 1: poem he wrote, the poems when you said when he
Speaker 1: was angry, Uh, that was my memory of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I sadly, you know, a couple of summers ago
Speaker 1: when he passed away, we you know, we emptied out
Speaker 1: the house, the house that I the only house i'd
Speaker 1: ever lived in when, you know, like my parents bought
Speaker 1: when my mom was pregnant with me, and I found
Speaker 1: a lot of his homework from when he taught himself
Speaker 1: or basically learned computing early on, uh, math homework and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. But I didn't find any of the
Speaker 1: notebooks that had any of the poems. So I suspect
Speaker 1: that he just got it off his chest and then
Speaker 1: threw him away, you know, Yeah, I just I just
Speaker 1: love these kinds of generational parallels. It's almost like, you know,
Speaker 1: if if if you were on the couch, I would say,
Speaker 1: you're like tweety two points. No, you're like the do over,
Speaker 1: the frustrated musician, who's who's writing these essentially lyrics sort,
Speaker 1: and then you're you You You've come along and you've
Speaker 1: turned it into an art. Well, yeah, I mean, there's
Speaker 1: there are tons of parallels that I I mean, I
Speaker 1: mean it's disturbing as you get older how much you
Speaker 1: start to look like your parents, and I look like
Speaker 1: exactly like my dad. And you know, I think he
Speaker 1: suffered from a lot of the same mood disorders that
Speaker 1: I've dealt with in my life. But he clumsily but somehow,
Speaker 1: you know, as far as employment goes, and far as
Speaker 1: far as like not having worsening consequences, which would be
Speaker 1: typical of alcoholism, he managed to medicate himself clumsily for
Speaker 1: his entire life, you know, for anxiety. I'm sure he
Speaker 1: had anxiety and depression. And yet and he did instinctively
Speaker 1: seem to have turned to some of the same things
Speaker 1: that have provided some solace for me that weren't unhealthy,
Speaker 1: you know, like getting things off his chest. And you know,
Speaker 1: I was indulged a lot, perhaps because I was a
Speaker 1: do over. When did you write your first song? Do
Speaker 1: you remember the first song I remember writing? And I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure that there were songs before this, But the
Speaker 1: first song I remember writing was a song called Your
Speaker 1: Little World, and it was about a girl and her
Speaker 1: not having enough room in her world for me. And
Speaker 1: how old you when you write it? It's maybe thirteen fourteen.
Speaker 1: You don't remember it, do you? Your little World's much
Speaker 1: too small? Oh, I ain't got no room at all.
Speaker 1: It's so yeah, I was. I can remember. I could
Speaker 1: play it. Actually. One of the weird things is is that, uh,
Speaker 1: this local musician who went by the name Joe Cammell
Speaker 1: a band Joe Cammell in the Caucasians. They actually recorded
Speaker 1: that song and and made a single out of it.
Speaker 1: Really it is it exists, Yeah, yeah, is because I
Speaker 1: was I was this kid that hung out with all
Speaker 1: like at the record stores and hung out at the
Speaker 1: you know, with around other musicians when I could get
Speaker 1: near them, and I would always I write songs. And
Speaker 1: this guy in this band, Joe Cambell, said hey, let
Speaker 1: me hear one of your songs. And I went over
Speaker 1: to his house and I played him this song. He said, oh,
Speaker 1: that's great, I'm gonna record it. We're gonna like go
Speaker 1: to record this song, and he did, It's fantastic. When
Speaker 1: do you think you wrote your first good song? Well,
Speaker 1: I honestly don't think that that one was terrible. I
Speaker 1: think it's you know, it's it's not great, but it
Speaker 1: was it was good enough for somebody else to want,
Speaker 1: you know, see some potential in it. Um the first
Speaker 1: song I liked that I wrote was probably screen Door
Speaker 1: on the first um Uncle Tupelou record. You know, that's
Speaker 1: the first one where I felt like I had said
Speaker 1: something that felt true to me and that I didn't
Speaker 1: necessarily have anybody else's song to convey that idea. I
Speaker 1: always look at it like I'm trying to make songs
Speaker 1: and a new song for me to sing that someone
Speaker 1: hasn't already written. So that one was the first one
Speaker 1: that felt like that, How old are you when you
Speaker 1: write that song? Sixteen sixteen seventeen? Yeah, so pretty, it's funny.
Speaker 1: I just I have heard musicians of various kinds answer
Speaker 1: that question over the years, and there's a whole set
Speaker 1: of them who, like, you know, ten years passed between
Speaker 1: the first song they write and the first one they like. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you, you you have a much less um ambivalent
Speaker 1: relationship to your early songwriting. One of the things I
Speaker 1: feel like I've had some shame about in my life
Speaker 1: is how shamelessly I love stuff that I make. And
Speaker 1: I think, over time, I've really made peace with it
Speaker 1: because I think that that's like kind of beautiful and
Speaker 1: it's kind of one of the things that's allowed me
Speaker 1: to grow. I don't I don't tend to keep liking
Speaker 1: things that I've made. I tend to get pretty dissatisfied
Speaker 1: with them over time. But when I initially even when
Speaker 1: I figure out how to play something on the guitar
Speaker 1: that someone else has done, I feel like I invented it.
Speaker 1: I have this like, really you know, sort of delusional
Speaker 1: relationship with the joy that I take from making something,
Speaker 1: and I think that's that that really comes naturally. So
Speaker 1: a lot of times, my favorite song is always the
Speaker 1: one I'm working on. Almost invariably, I was like, Wow,
Speaker 1: this is a this is really great, and it dissipates
Speaker 1: over time. But but I've always felt like that, does
Speaker 1: that make you a bad judge of your own song writing?
Speaker 1: I think it does, and that's that's part of the
Speaker 1: reason that I've had to learn a lot of different
Speaker 1: ways to get out of the get my ego out
Speaker 1: of the way, Like I allow things to just state
Speaker 1: for a lot longer, or put them away and forget them,
Speaker 1: forget about them so that I can come back to
Speaker 1: them with a little bit more objectivity. But in general,
Speaker 1: I think it's just kind of the spirit of it
Speaker 1: is what comes across a lot of times, and that
Speaker 1: that that, in a lot of cases, is enough, because
Speaker 1: you know, not every song has to be the greatest
Speaker 1: song that's ever been written, but it's sure it helps
Speaker 1: if you feel like it is at the moment in
Speaker 1: the moment. You know, you describe in this lovely book
Speaker 1: You've just done, how to write one song. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: describe a series of exercises songwriting exercises, and also describe
Speaker 1: a kind of what a songwriting day should look like.
Speaker 1: And I was curious before we go into that, how
Speaker 1: long did you I mean, if that's the pattern of
Speaker 1: song writing you practice, now, how long have you been
Speaker 1: doing it that way? Did you always have this kind
Speaker 1: of very structured way about writing music. No, I think
Speaker 1: that I've as I've gotten older. I think one of
Speaker 1: the things I've really had to learn how to do
Speaker 1: is provide myself structure because I work in a profession
Speaker 1: that doesn't have a lot of structure outside of touring,
Speaker 1: which is extremely structured and routine. You know, but being
Speaker 1: home has always been a little bit dangerous for me
Speaker 1: in terms of my mental health. Though the routine has
Speaker 1: been something I've had to learn and has helped me
Speaker 1: a quite a bit. That being said, I don't remember
Speaker 1: a time where I haven't felt like a kind of
Speaker 1: a nagging sense all day that I should be making something,
Speaker 1: or that I should be learning something, or I should
Speaker 1: be reading something, or I should be listening to something
Speaker 1: and that tends to provide a lot of momentum to
Speaker 1: my days. This ugly feeling that I'm avoiding almost all
Speaker 1: the time is that I don't want to get to
Speaker 1: the end of the day and feel like I didn't
Speaker 1: learn anything, or didn't didn't make something, or just didn't
Speaker 1: participate in my life in the ways that I've found
Speaker 1: to be the most enjoyable and helpful to me. You
Speaker 1: described this ideal songwriting day. When was the last ideal
Speaker 1: songwriting day you had and what did it look like.
Speaker 1: It's been a while. I think the ideal day, the
Speaker 1: last one I might have had, would have been during
Speaker 1: the process of making the album I just really Loves
Speaker 1: the King, where, you know, around eight o'clock at night
Speaker 1: or something, I would have started working on a song
Speaker 1: that I was thinking about recording. The next day, I
Speaker 1: would have, you know, worked on it and played around
Speaker 1: with it, maybe illuminated a little demo of it on
Speaker 1: my phone until like maybe midnight, gone to sleep, woke up.
Speaker 1: Probably would have finished the lyrics early in the morning
Speaker 1: because that they tend to kind of un tangle themselves
Speaker 1: in my sleep a lot of times, and I like
Speaker 1: to I like to write even before I get out
Speaker 1: of bed, you know, where I feel like I'm still
Speaker 1: sort of you know, the judgment side of me is
Speaker 1: still sleeping or something, you know, And I would have
Speaker 1: gotten up and come to the studio, maybe worked on
Speaker 1: that song for a little while in the studio, head lunch,
Speaker 1: maybe taken a nap, would have gotten up from the nap,
Speaker 1: finished the song, maybe invited my younger son over to
Speaker 1: sing a harmony vocal on it. Common practice in that
Speaker 1: moment when I'm asking someone else like Sammy to sing
Speaker 1: on something would be to really focus on the lyrics
Speaker 1: and make sure they're where I want them to be.
Speaker 1: So I would have done some revisions on that, maybe
Speaker 1: until around five or six, and have a rough mix
Speaker 1: to take home and have some dinner and listen to
Speaker 1: records generally until I get excited about trying to make
Speaker 1: something to beat something I just heard, some sort of
Speaker 1: like trying to activate some competitive side of my brain,
Speaker 1: and then start the whole process over with maybe seeing
Speaker 1: if I could, you know, come up with another song
Speaker 1: for the next day. So, in your ideal world, is
Speaker 1: it a song from start to finish in that one day,
Speaker 1: or is it is it that you have little bits
Speaker 1: and pieces already there that you're going back and finding
Speaker 1: and playing with. I can do a song start to
Speaker 1: finish in one day, but typically there are little pieces
Speaker 1: of raw material that have been accumulated. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: one of the things I might do at eight o'clock, say,
Speaker 1: the beginning of the day I just described, would be
Speaker 1: to go through my phone and find a musical idea
Speaker 1: that I'm excited by that I don't know. It just
Speaker 1: catches me enough, unaware to start dreaming about it and
Speaker 1: start like fantasizing about where it could go or what
Speaker 1: it could sound like. Do you have your phone with
Speaker 1: you right now? Can you play as a musical idea
Speaker 1: of the phone? Sure? Let's see. Well this one sounds
Speaker 1: a little bit maybe a little bit more finished than normal.
Speaker 1: The tunnel at the end of the life, So that
Speaker 1: is that Has that little bit been turned into a
Speaker 1: song yet? Or is it just waiting? It's waiting, it's waiting.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's and then there's stuff that's maybe I
Speaker 1: don't even know what this is, just some chords I
Speaker 1: thought were pretty, but yeah, there there there are dozens
Speaker 1: or not dozens, there's probably literally hundreds of those things
Speaker 1: in my phone. When they stack up a little bit,
Speaker 1: I usually transfer some to the computer here at the loft,
Speaker 1: so they're at least in a couple of places. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I'm vastly by this process. How long might some
Speaker 1: a little bit linger on your phone or in your
Speaker 1: archive before you use it? Is there stuff? And if
Speaker 1: I if we went into that, you said sometimes you
Speaker 1: download them on at the loft, how far back would
Speaker 1: we have stuff there from ten years ago you've never used? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean probably there are. I used to do it
Speaker 1: on cassettes and basically I used to just leave a
Speaker 1: cassette in a dictaphone old style, like what you would
Speaker 1: have Steno would have used, or someone in an all uh,
Speaker 1: you know, secretary pool, and I would just leave it
Speaker 1: on the coffee table and until it filled up, and
Speaker 1: then I'd put another cassette in. And there's there are
Speaker 1: dozens of those cassettes. And like um on the Suki
Speaker 1: ray album that I made under the name Tweetye, there's
Speaker 1: a song on there that I finished after fourteen years.
Speaker 1: I think it's called I'll Sing It. Was there a
Speaker 1: little snippet of it that was the original stippet. It's
Speaker 1: actually in the track I actually just played over the
Speaker 1: cassette version. Yeah, yeah, and then and then I think
Speaker 1: that ended up on the Summer Teeth box set that
Speaker 1: we just put out because it was written around the
Speaker 1: same time as Summer Teeth. Yeah, when you go back
Speaker 1: and find a little snippet like that, do you remember
Speaker 1: when you created the snippet or is that gone? It depends.
Speaker 1: A lot of times I don't remember at all. I
Speaker 1: have no recollection at all of a lot of times
Speaker 1: I don't even remember the tuning, and I have to
Speaker 1: like sit and figure out because I use a lot
Speaker 1: of different tunings, and I really hate it when I
Speaker 1: don't bother to tune the guitar to a standard pitch
Speaker 1: because then it makes it even harder to figure out
Speaker 1: what tuning I'm in and stuff like that. So a
Speaker 1: lot of times it's it's completely gone wherever it happened,
Speaker 1: which is kind of I love it when that happens,
Speaker 1: even though it can be frustrating trying to relearn it.
Speaker 1: But then there are times where I absolutely have a
Speaker 1: distinct memory of where I was and what was happening.
Speaker 1: And a lot of times that's because there are other
Speaker 1: ambient elements that made it made their way onto the recording.
Speaker 1: I like, say, backstage and somebody and Wilco walks through
Speaker 1: and says something, and I can I can viscerally feel
Speaker 1: that that room and I'll know even what city it was.
Speaker 1: In a lot of cases, sometimes when I'm doing it
Speaker 1: in hotel rooms in Europe and you have the windows open.
Speaker 1: Whenever we're fortunate enough to find a hotel that has
Speaker 1: windows that open, you hear like people leading on at
Speaker 1: the cafes or something like that. That's those are always
Speaker 1: really kind of special recordings that a lot of times
Speaker 1: mean a lot to me even without them being finished. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We did an interview with Norah Jones while back now
Speaker 1: and she was talking about how she did her song
Speaker 1: Wintertime with You, and she was talking about this this
Speaker 1: very process that she had some scraps, little bits and pieces,
Speaker 1: and you had bits and pieces and you kind of
Speaker 1: put it together to create a really beautiful song. Can
Speaker 1: you can you because walk us through that that little
Speaker 1: case study of this time with a twist with another
Speaker 1: person involved, but doing seems like both of you were
Speaker 1: doing doing the work of creativity in the same way.
Speaker 1: Is that true? Yeah? I think that well, first of all,
Speaker 1: Norah Jones doesn't need me to help her write a song,
Speaker 1: for sure, But but we admire each other, so there's
Speaker 1: a there's already a kind of a base level of
Speaker 1: camaraderie or something, you know. But I haven't found many
Speaker 1: people that I've worked with to have just wildly different
Speaker 1: approaches to it. Everybody seems to have sort of the
Speaker 1: core process is sort of similar. You basically start with
Speaker 1: something that is nothing, you know, that feels but feels
Speaker 1: like it could be something, and then you basically surrender
Speaker 1: this idea that you can't you can't do that, you
Speaker 1: can't make something out of nothing, and you do it.
Speaker 1: And it's really the most important part is just letting
Speaker 1: go of the idea that it can't happen. I think,
Speaker 1: and with someone else it requires a lot of waiting
Speaker 1: until you both have both people have to feel comfortable
Speaker 1: and supported enough and trusting enough to kind of throw
Speaker 1: out ideas until you know, a light bulb goes off
Speaker 1: in two heads at once. It's a little bit more
Speaker 1: foolproof in a way because you have that consensus of
Speaker 1: universality for two people, as opposed to like just trying
Speaker 1: to imagine that everybody will like something you like. We'll
Speaker 1: be right back with more from Jeff Tweety. After the break,
Speaker 1: We're back with more of Malcolm's conversation with Jeff Tweety.
Speaker 1: You've done an unusual amount of collaboration with other artists
Speaker 1: you write for, maybe Staples. You did those beautiful Mermaid
Speaker 1: Avenue albums with Billy Bragg that I are among my favorites.
Speaker 1: When you're writing with another person in mind, does it
Speaker 1: change the way you write a song? Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it does. I honestly think that that is the thing
Speaker 1: that I am most comfortable doing. I think it's the
Speaker 1: thing I truly aspired to do more than almost any
Speaker 1: other thing that I get to do. I always pictured
Speaker 1: myself being a person that would write songs for other
Speaker 1: people to sing, and Uncle Tupelo. I wanted my songs
Speaker 1: to be sung by Jay because he had this magnificent,
Speaker 1: like rich, authoritative voice, and I had this squeaky, you
Speaker 1: know voice that I didn't feel like was quite my own,
Speaker 1: even at the time I was struggling to find it.
Speaker 1: As much as I felt great when I sang, I
Speaker 1: just loved the idea of writing the song more than
Speaker 1: the idea of singing it. And I still think that
Speaker 1: that's where my most natural abilities lie is in helping
Speaker 1: somebody with another with their song, like working with Nora
Speaker 1: or finding something for someone to sing like Mavis. I
Speaker 1: don't look at it is like I'm putting words in
Speaker 1: her mouth. I feel like I'm just kind of helping
Speaker 1: find something that she feels comfortable singing that makes sense
Speaker 1: for her to sing. Same thing with the Woody Guthrie lyrics.
Speaker 1: That was even more along the lines of what I feel.
Speaker 1: I have the strongest sense about it as being something
Speaker 1: that comes naturally to me because those lyrics were sacrosanct.
Speaker 1: You know, they're They're like you know, you're not gonna
Speaker 1: you're not gonna mess with them. They're there. You don't
Speaker 1: even need to worry about whether or not they're good enough.
Speaker 1: They're important for people that don't know. There were all
Speaker 1: these lyrics at Woody Guthrie left behind that the music
Speaker 1: was never documented or he never really made any music
Speaker 1: for There's all these archival lyrics and writing that we
Speaker 1: took and made songs out of, and with those I
Speaker 1: would just sit and read them over and over and
Speaker 1: over again until the meter would emerge. And then next
Speaker 1: there would be a melody that would emerge, and a
Speaker 1: lot of cases with Woody Guthroe lyrics, you read it
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden a Carter Family song emerges,
Speaker 1: because that's what he was actually writing his lyrics to
Speaker 1: was someone else's song. I did the same thing with
Speaker 1: a bunch of lyrics for Bob Dylan that never came
Speaker 1: out because I wasn't able to be a part of
Speaker 1: that process for that record that they did a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago where they had a bunch of lyrics
Speaker 1: that Dylan had written. It's like Elvis Costello was a
Speaker 1: part of it and some of the US mumfordness. But anyway,
Speaker 1: t Bone had asked me if I could do it,
Speaker 1: and I got all these lyrics, and then my wife
Speaker 1: started treatment for cancer, so I couldn't go to LA
Speaker 1: for the amount of time that they wanted me to.
Speaker 1: But I did the same thing with those lyrics I wrote,
Speaker 1: I wrote and recorded a whole record in a weekend. Like,
Speaker 1: did you find it sort of freeing to not have
Speaker 1: to do it in your own with you with your
Speaker 1: own voice in mind? Yeah? I think that I just
Speaker 1: struggle with allowing myself to comment on certain things that
Speaker 1: I don't feel like I have the authoritative weight to
Speaker 1: weigh in on, for for in terms of like Mavis
Speaker 1: or something like that, or the things that I feel
Speaker 1: like Mavis has a voice of righteousness of some you know,
Speaker 1: of some broader scope in a historical importance and place.
Speaker 1: You know, there's just a weight to it that. Um,
Speaker 1: I feel very privileged to have been able to write for.
Speaker 1: But um, a lot of those things are are not
Speaker 1: going to make as much sense coming out of my mouth.
Speaker 1: It just doesn't feel right for what for a lot
Speaker 1: of you know, social reasons. I think what's the right
Speaker 1: word to describe your attitude towards your own voice? Are
Speaker 1: you self conscious about it? No? I mean dot com
Speaker 1: about Tupelo and how you preferred if No. I feel
Speaker 1: like I've gotten way better as a singer, and I've
Speaker 1: worked really hard to get better over a lot of time.
Speaker 1: And I actually I enjoy my voice, my singing voice
Speaker 1: quite a bit. I actually do like listening to myself
Speaker 1: sing now when I find things that I want to
Speaker 1: sing a lot of cases, i feel like I'm the
Speaker 1: only person that could sing it the way I want
Speaker 1: to hear it. But that doesn't mean that I'm oblivious
Speaker 1: to the fact that my voice isn't technically great in
Speaker 1: the you know, by the normal criteria of American idol
Speaker 1: or the voice or you know, whatever, whatever you know.
Speaker 1: But all my favorite singers are like that. Almost all
Speaker 1: my favorite singers have non traditional voices that have become communicative.
Speaker 1: You know. It's like it's like where they they trade
Speaker 1: virtuosity or technique or whatever for sincerity or or or
Speaker 1: sentiment and conviction. And I feel like I found that
Speaker 1: in my voice over time, and I'm very, very proud
Speaker 1: of the idea that I still work at getting better
Speaker 1: and try and sing in tune, you know. But I'm
Speaker 1: more I'm much more concerned with making the words feel
Speaker 1: the way I want them to feel. My speaking voice,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, is awful. I cannot. I will
Speaker 1: never listen to the book that I just read or
Speaker 1: this interview. I might listen to you do another interview
Speaker 1: with someone else. But wait, so on this point in
Speaker 1: the book, you talk about stealing, but you're being you're
Speaker 1: being a little bit mischievous because you don't really mean stealing,
Speaker 1: but you're talking about being open to influence essentially, So
Speaker 1: give me an example of another artist whose work you
Speaker 1: find lots of stuff to borrow from and be inspired by.
Speaker 1: And I'm just curious, does it come from everywhere? Are
Speaker 1: there predictable places where you go to find ideas well?
Speaker 1: The thing I'm describing in the book is just based
Speaker 1: on this belief that you can't really copyright a group
Speaker 1: of chords. What I'm describing in the book is basically
Speaker 1: me saying, well, I'm going to look for a song
Speaker 1: that I think has a bunch of cool chords in it,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to learn how to play it, and
Speaker 1: then I'm going to take it and make it into
Speaker 1: something that no one would hear that song in it anymore.
Speaker 1: But it's basically like just when you're a little bit stuck,
Speaker 1: just realizing that the world is full of these, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of naturally occurring shapes that you can appropriate. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't look at them as being particularly ownable by
Speaker 1: by anybody, and especially if I don't, you know, sing
Speaker 1: the same type of song or put the same type
Speaker 1: of melody over it, or even have the same rhythm
Speaker 1: or you know, there are many many ways to describe it.
Speaker 1: But it's such a it's such a liberating thing to do,
Speaker 1: to just go, oh, I'll just take these chords and
Speaker 1: and and start there because I haven't been able to
Speaker 1: come up with anything all day. That being said, there
Speaker 1: are just tons and tons of artists, new and old,
Speaker 1: every day of my life that I encounter, and to me,
Speaker 1: you have to work to not encounter art that inspires you,
Speaker 1: I think, and I think that that does overwhelm people.
Speaker 1: I think sometimes some people do get to a certain
Speaker 1: point where they want to hide from influence or hide
Speaker 1: from the feeling that they're being challenged by other artists.
Speaker 1: But I look at it like most of the time
Speaker 1: I get that way too. I can, I can feel
Speaker 1: overwhelmed sometimes, but more often than not, I feel really
Speaker 1: invigorated by the fact that if I go looking, it
Speaker 1: won't take me long at all define something that shows
Speaker 1: me where the bar is that I should be aiming for.
Speaker 1: What's an example of a song you listened to recently
Speaker 1: that triggered all kinds of reactions and inspirations in you.
Speaker 1: You know, Kate Kate Lebon writes a lot of music
Speaker 1: that makes me feel that way. She's just the first
Speaker 1: person that popped into my mind. She's an artist that
Speaker 1: has this undeniable kate lebon about what she does, you know,
Speaker 1: like we're and that's that's that's hard to find, you know.
Speaker 1: I think there's she has a very specific angle that
Speaker 1: she comes at what she does, and nobody else knows
Speaker 1: that precise angle. I think the song um Meet the Man,
Speaker 1: I wanted to Meet the Man. I think that's the
Speaker 1: name of it's. I think it's the last song on
Speaker 1: her most recent record. It has all of these twists
Speaker 1: and turns that are unpredictable. And I don't know, when
Speaker 1: you listen to that song, can you turn off the
Speaker 1: part of your brain that wants to to kind of
Speaker 1: learn from it, use it, employ it in some way,
Speaker 1: and just enjoy it or do you Is that part
Speaker 1: of the brain always on? Well, that is how I
Speaker 1: enjoy it. I think that I think that is part
Speaker 1: of how I enjoy it. I think I enjoy it
Speaker 1: first and foremost the way I have enjoyed music since
Speaker 1: I was a little kid, before I played any music
Speaker 1: or wrote any music, I am just attracted to sound
Speaker 1: and excited by records. And I don't think that that's
Speaker 1: any different. But I don't feel burdened by the knowledge
Speaker 1: that I have now, and I think it's it's just
Speaker 1: adds this insight, like, oh wow, I can kind of
Speaker 1: tell what Reaver is going on there. But that being said,
Speaker 1: the things that I tend to enjoy the most are
Speaker 1: the things that I have zero idea how they came
Speaker 1: to be. Those are the things I listened to, you know,
Speaker 1: like have more repeated listenings, tend to be like some
Speaker 1: hip hop records and things that are outside of my
Speaker 1: skill set, and and you know, and then there then
Speaker 1: there are times where I crave comfort food, where I
Speaker 1: just want to hear a simple country song played on
Speaker 1: an acoustic guitar. And I have a very very firm
Speaker 1: grasp on how that comes to be, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: diminish its importance in my life. You know, is there
Speaker 1: an artist, a contemporary of yours whose career you would
Speaker 1: have loved to have? No? I honestly, I've thought about
Speaker 1: that a lot. I have moments where I have a
Speaker 1: professional jealousy. I think it'd be impossible not to have
Speaker 1: these moments, especially if you're somewhat competitive like I am.
Speaker 1: I think it's like, whise everybody writing about this guy now,
Speaker 1: I'd like, you know, like that, like I'm not ashamed
Speaker 1: to admit I have, Like you know, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: not the end of the world to admit you have
Speaker 1: petty feelings, you know. But but but honestly, I don't
Speaker 1: think so, because when I take a step back, the
Speaker 1: prevailing emotion is gratitude. I mean, would this is nothing
Speaker 1: like I would have been ever been able to imagine
Speaker 1: for myself, you know, thirty years in from my first
Speaker 1: time probably playing on a stage or you know, getting
Speaker 1: in front of people. We'll be right back with more
Speaker 1: from Jeff Tweety. We're back with the rest of Malcolm's
Speaker 1: conversation with Jeff Tweety. It would be really fun if
Speaker 1: we put together a bunch of the stuff we've been
Speaker 1: talking about in a song, like is there a song
Speaker 1: that you could break down, play and break down for us?
Speaker 1: Will you talk about all the little pieces that brought
Speaker 1: it together, how the song was created, the little bits
Speaker 1: of influence if you remember them, is the one that's
Speaker 1: that fresh in your remember that you could do that
Speaker 1: a little mini masterclass. Let me think, I have a
Speaker 1: guitar here, so that's the g cord I always play
Speaker 1: when I pick up a guitar. It's inadvertence variant gweet,
Speaker 1: it's pretty it's my grounding. Well, there's a song on
Speaker 1: the new record called Opaline where um. I was writing
Speaker 1: it this summer or this spring when there was so
Speaker 1: much going on in the world, and our relationships with
Speaker 1: our police departments were being investigated and talked about a lot.
Speaker 1: So I'm not a person that's ever had that feeling.
Speaker 1: I've never really been a fan of police because I've
Speaker 1: always felt like police had a lot more to do
Speaker 1: with um, their mentality, had a lot more to do
Speaker 1: with the people that made fun of me in school
Speaker 1: and were more jockey, and it's just a general atmosphere
Speaker 1: around police that I've not enjoyed. But I've not had
Speaker 1: this experience that a lot of minorities have had with
Speaker 1: police in this country. And I'm aware of that, but
Speaker 1: I was trying to put myself into that that headspace
Speaker 1: of living with that fear. So those were those were
Speaker 1: the lyrics that I was playing around with. Is like,
Speaker 1: I hear the police outside my window. I can hear
Speaker 1: them talking on their radios and uh yeah, police, that's
Speaker 1: my window. I can hear them talking all the radios.
Speaker 1: I keyed my head my pillow pray that they're gonna
Speaker 1: lea me alone. Um. So that's like just one little
Speaker 1: chunk of the song that was a melody that I
Speaker 1: had without any words. Did you write that chunk first? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I did, And then I had a piece that was like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't really have any lyrics, so I
Speaker 1: was I. Um. We had a golden orb weave spider
Speaker 1: weaver spider in our garden this spring that um I
Speaker 1: named Opaline for some reason, just because it just seemed
Speaker 1: like a cool name. I had an aunt Opal and
Speaker 1: so I just start singing to her, Oh, oh, belief,
Speaker 1: make believe that you still lovely? Oh who believe? It's
Speaker 1: hard to s reality when you got no love it all.
Speaker 1: So that's just writing a country song that's just trying
Speaker 1: to figure out a way to get to the line.
Speaker 1: Reality is hard to see when you've got no love
Speaker 1: at all. Because one of the things that has been
Speaker 1: on my mind a lot these last few years, or
Speaker 1: you know, for a while now, is how do you
Speaker 1: get to the point where reality doesn't matter? And it
Speaker 1: obviously is very negotiable for a lot of people in
Speaker 1: our information climate that we can shop for a reality
Speaker 1: that we trust and believe, and there isn't a shared
Speaker 1: consensus a lot of times, which is really maddening and
Speaker 1: strange to witness. We don't even have the same agreed
Speaker 1: upon fictions anymore, you know. Like so it's it's really troubling.
Speaker 1: And my theory is that must be a lot easier
Speaker 1: to do when people have been isolated from a lot
Speaker 1: of their feelings of being cared for or having affection
Speaker 1: and warmth in their life. So you have in a song,
Speaker 1: you've got opening image of the kid in bed, head
Speaker 1: under the pillow and hearing the cops outside and worrying,
Speaker 1: and then you have opaline. Yeah, and then you also
Speaker 1: have there's other other interesting element is it's very plainly
Speaker 1: a country song. But we're not in country territory, are
Speaker 1: uh well, I mean country territory is pretty pretty vast
Speaker 1: in my opinion. It's it's it's to me where country
Speaker 1: music fails is when it tries to adhere to the
Speaker 1: tropes of country music and becomes like Civil War reenactment
Speaker 1: or something. It's, you know, it's not it's not about
Speaker 1: what's happening. And this is this is a weird song
Speaker 1: for me to pick, but I'm going to stick with
Speaker 1: it now because we're in it. But you know, this
Speaker 1: is this is like a This is a little bit
Speaker 1: of a pastiche to where I got all of these
Speaker 1: elements to make sense to me and feel good to me.
Speaker 1: There's a story that runs through it that feels apprehendable
Speaker 1: to me, you know. So, so I had that, and
Speaker 1: that's probably what I put in my phone first, aside
Speaker 1: from the initial chord progression that I might have hummed over.
Speaker 1: That was like the first document of this song. And
Speaker 1: then um, I was out driving my car on a
Speaker 1: toll road right after that, and there was a hearse
Speaker 1: on a toll road outside Chicago, and this literally literally happened.
Speaker 1: And I went through a toll next to a to
Speaker 1: a hearse, And as I went through the toll, I
Speaker 1: looked back and the hearse was stuck at the toll
Speaker 1: like it didn't have any money or whatever. But as
Speaker 1: I kept driving, I kept looking in the rear view
Speaker 1: mirror and it was it just kept not being let
Speaker 1: through the toll, and I just felt like I'd been
Speaker 1: hit over the head with one of the most striking
Speaker 1: metaphors I'd ever encountered in the real world. You know,
Speaker 1: like what is you know, what is purgatory? I don't know,
Speaker 1: Like I was just just just one of the craziest things.
Speaker 1: And so I actually wrote this in the car into
Speaker 1: my phone or just voice memoed into my phone. There's
Speaker 1: nothing worse than a hers driving slow, add on the
Speaker 1: toe way, stopping at the tolls, no change, no easy pass,
Speaker 1: what a way to go? There's nothing words than a
Speaker 1: herse driving slow. Oh oh belief? You know? Then you
Speaker 1: get back into the chest do why we don't question,
Speaker 1: but you had the herse experience, and you had these
Speaker 1: two little bits that you've already done. Why do you
Speaker 1: think the herse experience belongs to this song or not
Speaker 1: any number of other things that you have stashed away
Speaker 1: for future reference. How do you know it belongs here?
Speaker 1: It's just what was in my mind. So I don't
Speaker 1: really think of things as accidents that I need to
Speaker 1: really investigate. And it just it sang well to these
Speaker 1: this melody before I could even make a decision about
Speaker 1: where it should go, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: It's like that song was already in my mind. I'd
Speaker 1: been working on it, so, um, those are the those
Speaker 1: are the patterns that you walk around with when you
Speaker 1: have a song in your head. And that's one of
Speaker 1: the reasons I enjoy having a song on my head
Speaker 1: because then everything that happens to me is D D D,
Speaker 1: you know, like everything fits in that melody. It makes
Speaker 1: them that makes some order out of the world. I
Speaker 1: suppose you know, So those lyrics that you just sang
Speaker 1: for me, is that exactly as you compose them in
Speaker 1: the car? Would you fiddle with them later? No, that's
Speaker 1: exactly as I composed them in the carner. And did
Speaker 1: you compose them in the car like like off the
Speaker 1: cuff or did you were you playing within your mind
Speaker 1: before you record it? I played with it in my
Speaker 1: mind a little bit before I decided that I should
Speaker 1: document it before I get home. Yeah, you know. And
Speaker 1: again I'm sorry. Now I'm told I can't get over
Speaker 1: the zac is so much fun? Do you pull over
Speaker 1: or do you keep driving and you're singing into your phone? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean not to get too technical, but I pressed
Speaker 1: a button on my phone that allowed me to record
Speaker 1: it without having to take my eyes off the road. No,
Speaker 1: I didn't mean I was suggesting you were an unsafe driver,
Speaker 1: But I was suggesting, like does he. I was imagined
Speaker 1: there was a scenario where you're so caught up in
Speaker 1: this that you're like, I gotta focus, and you're like
Speaker 1: pull it into the you know, the ihop parking lot,
Speaker 1: and but no, no, you're just you're just driving me,
Speaker 1: rolling down the road, singing this into your phone. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love also that you know nine of humanity seize
Speaker 1: the hers. I thought it doesn't see the hers seize
Speaker 1: the hers and doesn't immediately understand that the perfection of
Speaker 1: that metaphor. Well, I feel like you're attuned you. You
Speaker 1: are attuned to these things. Thank you. I think we
Speaker 1: all should be. I mean, we're like we're walking around
Speaker 1: and there's no there's no failed experiment if you're paying
Speaker 1: attention to the world. I think we get tired. I
Speaker 1: think we get overwhelmed, like I was saying before, with
Speaker 1: like inspiration or influence and things like that. And you know,
Speaker 1: we're not always receptive and we're not always we don't
Speaker 1: always have the energy or a lot of us have
Speaker 1: a lot of concerns all the time about a lot
Speaker 1: of other things that would require more mental energy than
Speaker 1: we have, and that tends to crowd out a lot
Speaker 1: of you know, paying attention to the strangeness of the
Speaker 1: world or the you know. I don't feel like I'm
Speaker 1: doing anything super unique in that guard. I just think
Speaker 1: that I am aware that my brain wants to make
Speaker 1: sense of stuff, and I give it an opportunity to
Speaker 1: make sense of stuff, you know, or actively participate in
Speaker 1: the fact that it does that. I think all of
Speaker 1: our brains do that. All of our brains would much
Speaker 1: prefer to find some reason for something to be the
Speaker 1: way it is, then for to try and accept and
Speaker 1: understand ambiguity and randomness and and things like that. So
Speaker 1: we're designed to do that, and then sometimes it hits
Speaker 1: you over the head because it is just too perfect
Speaker 1: and beautiful, like a hearse being stuck at a toll booth. Class. Well,
Speaker 1: you're not done, We're not done. Keep going. Well the thing,
Speaker 1: you know, So there's another verse or verse and the
Speaker 1: chorus versus a chorus. And then by that time I
Speaker 1: think I had already recorded it, and I recorded the
Speaker 1: song without any lyrics. I didn't sing it. I just
Speaker 1: was just and then I envisioned this like um long
Speaker 1: outro guitar solo. So I needed another verse and I
Speaker 1: needed something that was going to set up a long
Speaker 1: guitar solo into a last chorus, And that was actually
Speaker 1: the hardest part because I wanted something that sort of
Speaker 1: tied those two pieces together a little bit, at least
Speaker 1: ambiently somehow. So I came up. I came up with
Speaker 1: a bunch of things that I actually changed over time,
Speaker 1: and I can't remember all the different changes because I
Speaker 1: only know. I only remember what I ended up on.
Speaker 1: But it was i'd like to find out, Well, she
Speaker 1: had to go my heart wants or a heart can't control.
Speaker 1: So I hang in the air. That's the light gets cold,
Speaker 1: and I had in his shadows welcome home, and then
Speaker 1: it goes into the solo there. But to me it
Speaker 1: was kind of like I had become the guy that
Speaker 1: was hiding from the cops. They got killed, they got
Speaker 1: murdered by cops, that ended up on the highway in
Speaker 1: a hearse, not having the change even the money to
Speaker 1: go through a toll, you know, comically dark even in
Speaker 1: in uh my demise, still come completely just devoid of
Speaker 1: any luck whatsoever, you know, which is a country trope
Speaker 1: in a way, you know, just like the beautiful loser
Speaker 1: um but still but still singing this is a theme
Speaker 1: on the record. Actually is still singing from beyond the
Speaker 1: grave to this woman who basically took took everything away
Speaker 1: in his opinion or his feeling, but knowing basically saying,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm still gonna be in that air that you breathe,
Speaker 1: I'm still gonna be. I can't have what I want,
Speaker 1: but I can still imagine that you are going to
Speaker 1: think about me from time to time. And it's a
Speaker 1: it's a sad, pathetic notion that a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of weak men have and I've had in my life.
Speaker 1: And and is that, um, you'll miss me when I'm gone?
Speaker 1: And uh, I think it's more often than not wishful thinking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: where Jeff, you need to finish the song for us?
Speaker 1: Oh well, there's just one more chorus. It's fun, It's
Speaker 1: so beautiful. Thank you. Oh, oh, believe me. Believe that
Speaker 1: she still love me. Oh, belief. It's hard to seriality
Speaker 1: when you've got no love it all. I love that. Hello,
Speaker 1: thank you, well, thank you, Jeff. I think that's a
Speaker 1: lovely way to wrap things up. Well, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Thanks to Jeff Tweedy for breaking
Speaker 1: down a songwriting for us. You can hear all of
Speaker 1: our favorite Jeff Tweety songs on my playlist at broken
Speaker 1: record podcast dot com. Be sure to subscribe to our
Speaker 1: YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken record Podcast.
Speaker 1: There you can find extended cuts of our new and
Speaker 1: old episodes. Broken Record is produced with helpful Leah Rose,
Speaker 1: Jason Gambrel, Martin Gonzalez, Eric Sandler and his executive produced
Speaker 1: by Mia LaBelle. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin
Speaker 1: Industries and if you like Broken Record, please remember to share,
Speaker 1: rate and review our show on your podcast. To have
Speaker 1: our theme musics by Kenny Beats, I'm justin Richmond Pace