Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Podcast. My
Speaker 1: destiny is Dan Wilson, singer, songwriter, producer, you know and
Speaker 1: from Semi Sonic. You know, from the songs he's written
Speaker 1: with a Del Josh Grogan and Dixie Chicks and so
Speaker 1: many more. Dad, good to have you, Thank you, Bob.
Speaker 1: It's good to be here. Okay. So what are you
Speaker 1: up to these days in the COVID ever? Dare uh
Speaker 1: making a lot of music and currently moving house, putting
Speaker 1: books into boxes and getting ready to move. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you're moving from where to where? From Sherman Oaks to
Speaker 1: loose Felis stand in l a. Okay, and what's that about? Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's the usual thing. It's uh school kids,
Speaker 1: proximity to school, um, parenthood. You know, it's nice to
Speaker 1: be up in the hills far from everything, but you're
Speaker 1: also very far from the kid's friends. That kind of thing. Okay.
Speaker 1: So your kids go to public school or private school?
Speaker 1: They private school and one is is graduated from high
Speaker 1: school and lives with us. How many kids you have
Speaker 1: just to graduate from high school? What's the plans there? Oh?
Speaker 1: Our older daughter is um cognitively disabled and the plan
Speaker 1: is for her to just hang with us for us
Speaker 1: as long as we all shall live, and she takes
Speaker 1: music classes and various things. She's musically quite talented, but
Speaker 1: essentially nonverbal, which is an interesting combination. So what will
Speaker 1: happen when you and your wife pass away? Lord have mercy? Yes,
Speaker 1: this is the the very very slow, white knuckles question
Speaker 1: of of a parent with a disabled child. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: laugh with our thirteen year old telling her, you know,
Speaker 1: could come a time when the twenty year old lives
Speaker 1: with her, but we don't want to press the issue
Speaker 1: too too hard. Well, I know, I've another friend in
Speaker 1: the identical situation, and he was commenting to me that
Speaker 1: up to twenty one, they're all these services for these kids,
Speaker 1: but once they reached twenty one, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: these governmental services fall away. Yeah, it's up in your experience.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and it also um in a way when
Speaker 1: things are medically stable, which they've been for a while
Speaker 1: for us. Uh, the you know, we've been able to
Speaker 1: figure out ways to make make a life that's um
Speaker 1: interesting and enriching for for the whole family, I guess
Speaker 1: you'd say, but you know, just on our own. So
Speaker 1: we haven't really needed specific services, but I do. I
Speaker 1: see that the same thing. I know what you're talking about. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you're moving. Are you a pack rot? Are you
Speaker 1: guy who has no problem throwing things away? Um? I
Speaker 1: am a pack rat and my um. I'm trying to
Speaker 1: apply uh a metric or whatever, a rule of thumb
Speaker 1: to this, of which is, if it's a book that
Speaker 1: I brought to l A from Minneapolis ten years ago
Speaker 1: and I still haven't read it, then how it goes.
Speaker 1: If it's a guitar pedal that I brought from Minneapolis
Speaker 1: to l A ten years ago and I have never
Speaker 1: plugged it into my guitar, it's going on reverb dot com.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to like, I'm trying to use the you know,
Speaker 1: when you look in your closet, if you warn that
Speaker 1: shirt seriously, even to a wedding, no, I think you've
Speaker 1: got to get rid of it. So that's my little thing. Okay,
Speaker 1: So how many books do you think you'll move like them?
Speaker 1: And how many books? Is that? I'm a big reader,
Speaker 1: so it's not a library full of books, but I
Speaker 1: have a lot of books. I read a lot of books.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I can't really have more books than
Speaker 1: anybody that I know. The reason I mentioned this is
Speaker 1: I moved about a year ago and I was confronted
Speaker 1: with the same problem. And I have a lot of music.
Speaker 1: I kept all my vinyl. I never you know, and
Speaker 1: I'm never going to get rid of my vinyl. And
Speaker 1: that's thousands of records. Terms of CDs, I cleaned those
Speaker 1: out a few times, but a few computers with the
Speaker 1: money I've gotten, and uh, they were you know, these
Speaker 1: promo CDs are worth nothing there. Now they're worth nothing again.
Speaker 1: But for a long time there it was astounding. Um.
Speaker 1: But the books, it was interesting in terms of the
Speaker 1: physical books. I all, I have the stuff I bought,
Speaker 1: and I also have the stuff that sent to me.
Speaker 1: And there was so much stuff that I didn't really
Speaker 1: know what to do. And then I have another friend
Speaker 1: who says, well, you know, once I've read a book,
Speaker 1: what should I do with it? You know, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna read it again. I'm not a rereader, but I
Speaker 1: certainly come from the background where you want to walk
Speaker 1: into someone's house and see all the books. So I
Speaker 1: started to throw things out, and then I said, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna keep all the music books because a lot of
Speaker 1: those were only innted once, and I may have the
Speaker 1: only copy extent, but I literally tossed everything else. And
Speaker 1: I'd like to tell you I miss him, but I don't.
Speaker 1: The other things. I've been reading on a kindle for
Speaker 1: about ten years, and I'm really into it. You know,
Speaker 1: there's some physical books that are sent to me and
Speaker 1: I see this the future. And I have a friend,
Speaker 1: my close friend from college. He was in the book business.
Speaker 1: And I go to his house and every room is
Speaker 1: full of books, and he goes, yeah, my house is
Speaker 1: a monument to dead treat media. I said, you know,
Speaker 1: that's enough for me. But I'm a pack rat too.
Speaker 1: But how much are you saving stuff for legacy reasons? Well,
Speaker 1: I don't you mean, what do you mean by legacy?
Speaker 1: Tell me that? Well, you know, I was talking to
Speaker 1: Pete Wentz, a fallout boy. You know, he literally has
Speaker 1: kept everything because at some point he's gonna die and
Speaker 1: it's gonna be his museum. Bill why Bill Wyman did
Speaker 1: the same thing. He kept one of everything, although he
Speaker 1: recently sold a lot. Are you keeping it? Thinking? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm Dan Wilson, I've had some six says
Speaker 1: the other thing you know. The other big thing now,
Speaker 1: which you may or may not be aware of, is
Speaker 1: you can donate your archive to UH colleges frequently for
Speaker 1: seven figures. WHOA well, um, Bob. I love all this talk.
Speaker 1: I I I my my relationship to all the books
Speaker 1: is actually pretty selfish. At the moment, I'm not thinking
Speaker 1: about my legacy. I'm just thinking I might want to
Speaker 1: I might read that book again. If it's poetry, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna keep it all. I have a lot of poetry books,
Speaker 1: and I do kind of like I do like to
Speaker 1: just randomly pick out a book from the shelf and
Speaker 1: read it, or just be reminded of something and read
Speaker 1: and read some poems. And but I probably I don't
Speaker 1: think I will read most of the novels that I
Speaker 1: that I've read again. I probably won't. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's it's a funny question. If you lend a novel
Speaker 1: to somebody, do you insist to come back. No, I'm
Speaker 1: actually I don't mind when I lend a book to
Speaker 1: somebody unless we make a pact. At that moment, I
Speaker 1: really don't expect it's gonna come back. I'm fine, I'm cool, Okay.
Speaker 1: And if you had to pick two books out of
Speaker 1: your reading experience of fifty odd years. Wow, what would
Speaker 1: you recommend or what are the most important to you?
Speaker 1: I can't really recommend, Like probably the books like um,
Speaker 1: Labyrinths by or Hey Louis Borges is probably the most
Speaker 1: important book, just because it was when I read it,
Speaker 1: I had an idea what books were, and then this
Speaker 1: was one of those books that just completely changes your
Speaker 1: whole idea of what a work of art could be.
Speaker 1: I just love that book Labyrinths, and then from my childhood,
Speaker 1: I don't know what I keep. I was once at
Speaker 1: this conversation with Matt Hale's a friend of mine who's
Speaker 1: a great producer, and he, um, he said, what's the
Speaker 1: most influential book in your life? And I said it's
Speaker 1: probably Lord of the Rings and he said, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's Winnie the Pooh. And I was like, Okay, that's
Speaker 1: a closed call. So I'd probably keep Borges and Winnie
Speaker 1: the Pooh or a load of the Rings. I can't tell. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's jump back. So what are you working on career wise,
Speaker 1: work wise, music wise these days? Yeah? Um, Well, the
Speaker 1: big surprise of the other than everything going to crazy
Speaker 1: hell in a handbasket. Uh is that? Um, Semisnic put
Speaker 1: out My band, Semi Sonic put out an EP, and
Speaker 1: the first single has been sort of floating in the
Speaker 1: teens on the Triple A chart, which is not what
Speaker 1: we expected. Is on the radio and people are hearing
Speaker 1: it and sadly, Um, we had to cancel a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of shows. We had a very fun um maybe
Speaker 1: uh a lazy man's touring year planned and Uh, we're
Speaker 1: gonna go to UK and play a bunch of shows
Speaker 1: there and we're gonna hit as much of the US
Speaker 1: as possible. That's gonna go. Maybe maybe they'll have to
Speaker 1: happen next year. But even the fact that we've been
Speaker 1: doing these ridiculous and great, um, you know, live from
Speaker 1: home performances, and the fact that we've been talking to
Speaker 1: each other aloud and and I'm still writing new songs
Speaker 1: for Semi Sonic, That's like that's been a big focus
Speaker 1: and I'd still write songs with folks like let's stop
Speaker 1: stop with Semi Sonic. Semi Sonic a spense essentially broke
Speaker 1: up or faded away and you put out albums independently.
Speaker 1: What made you decide to work with semi sonic again.
Speaker 1: I had the guys and I have been in touch,
Speaker 1: like you know, close friends all this time. There's never
Speaker 1: been like a fight or a falling out or a problem.
Speaker 1: John and Jacob and I are pals. Okay, just one second.
Speaker 1: Was it an actual agreement to break up twenty years
Speaker 1: ago or suddenly you just didn't get back together to
Speaker 1: make new music. I at that time are older, her
Speaker 1: Coco was kind of emerging into like she was getting
Speaker 1: She had been very medical as a as a as
Speaker 1: a you know, we are our family was very medicalized,
Speaker 1: you know, in from nine to two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: and and yet I was also on tour a ton
Speaker 1: and I found that conflict between having a little baby
Speaker 1: on a ventilator, um, you know, an undersized PREMI toddler
Speaker 1: on a ventilator at home while I was in Birmingham
Speaker 1: or you know, Bristol doing shows. I found it painful,
Speaker 1: and eventually it just seemed insupportable for me to be
Speaker 1: gone so much so I and the guys and I
Speaker 1: had been on the road for like eight years at
Speaker 1: that point. And it's not like we're mad at each other,
Speaker 1: but there weren't a lot of things, and you know,
Speaker 1: you couldn't really put on our plates something that that
Speaker 1: we hadn't already done a bunch of like there was
Speaker 1: it didn't really seem like they were going to be
Speaker 1: like brand new. I'm not, you know, just being bigger,
Speaker 1: like doing the same thing and being bigger. That was
Speaker 1: the only thing that was sort of like on the menu,
Speaker 1: and that wasn't enough of a draw. And I kind
Speaker 1: of felt I needed to be a dad more more
Speaker 1: of a dad in this you know, difficult situation. So
Speaker 1: we just kind of slowed down, and I know the
Speaker 1: guys didn't exactly know what was happening. Jacob started writing
Speaker 1: his book. He wrote this wonderful book called So You
Speaker 1: Want to Be a Rock and Roll Star? During those
Speaker 1: those next like four years or so, um, but then
Speaker 1: as time passed, you know, John bass player from Semi
Speaker 1: Sonic would say to me, like we'd get together on
Speaker 1: Christmas time in Minneapolis, or we'd have a benefits show
Speaker 1: that we would do, and he'd go, have you written
Speaker 1: any new songs? Let's let's come on, let's just do this.
Speaker 1: It could be great. And I had to confess I
Speaker 1: hadn't written any good Semi Sonic sounding songs during those
Speaker 1: I tried, but I didn't have any. It was either
Speaker 1: a bad song that sounded like my band or a
Speaker 1: really good song that didn't sound like my band. And
Speaker 1: I hadn't been able to figure out how to do that,
Speaker 1: to to make a to to make a great song
Speaker 1: that sounded like semi sonic. Again, I needed to have
Speaker 1: a stroke of luck to get to that point. Okay,
Speaker 1: first point, you've continued making a living from music. The
Speaker 1: other two members of the band, what have they been
Speaker 1: doing for the past twenties years? Essentially, Well, John in
Speaker 1: Minneapolis has become kind of uh. First of all, he
Speaker 1: has he has a jazz band called the New Standards,
Speaker 1: and they they do they play pop songs and then
Speaker 1: they shred. It's a trio h vibes piano and upright bass,
Speaker 1: and they have become kind of a uh icon of
Speaker 1: Minneapolis St. Paul Music um. And every year they put
Speaker 1: on a big Christmas show with with all the artists
Speaker 1: that they know, all the all the performers that they know,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of become sort of it's like a
Speaker 1: destination for families and and and fans every year. So
Speaker 1: John kind of slowly turned into an impresario. He puts
Speaker 1: on gigs. He you know, he's produced a few records,
Speaker 1: not a lot, and then the new standards, you know,
Speaker 1: go to Beijing and play shows or Alaska. They do
Speaker 1: fun stuff like that. Jacob has been working on his
Speaker 1: second book for quite some time. He has a punk
Speaker 1: rock band in New York that plays loud and very fast,
Speaker 1: so whenever he gets together with us, it's like our
Speaker 1: tempos are that just the laziest thing, and he's got
Speaker 1: absolutely no trouble, you know what I mean. It's just
Speaker 1: like Semisnic is all this medium speed, you know, Lope
Speaker 1: and Jacobs, you know, much more accustomed to hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty beats per minute these days. Okay, but Jacob have
Speaker 1: a slide gig because being in a drummer and a
Speaker 1: punk band doesn't tend to pay that. You're gonna have
Speaker 1: to get Sakeavon to ask him how he pays the bills.
Speaker 1: But uh, I think the book helps the first book, okay,
Speaker 1: and it was a great book. I certainly read it.
Speaker 1: So you had problems writing semi sonic songs? What changed? Uh?
Speaker 1: It really was a specific event. I had a really fun,
Speaker 1: inspiring meeting with one of my favorite singers, Liam Gallagher.
Speaker 1: We got together um at my place one late morning
Speaker 1: and sat out on my my deck in the backyard,
Speaker 1: and he just basically was a rock star, uh. And
Speaker 1: we laughed and I got to ask him some of
Speaker 1: my Oasis fan questions and not all but not all,
Speaker 1: and we played him a few songs that I'd written, uh,
Speaker 1: and he said, well, I'm going back to you know,
Speaker 1: England tomorrow. Send me anything you have have that you
Speaker 1: think I could do when we could, when we could
Speaker 1: discuss that. And I was like, yeah, sure, no problem.
Speaker 1: So over the next week and a half, I had
Speaker 1: a bunch of ideas and I wrote like five songs,
Speaker 1: thinking these are pretty good Liam Gallagher songs. I like
Speaker 1: these songs. These are cool. So I sent them to
Speaker 1: him and his management and they got back to me
Speaker 1: right away and said, oh my goodness, it's the album's done.
Speaker 1: You know, my mistake or whatever. I don't know if
Speaker 1: they hated them or if they literally were like, oh geez,
Speaker 1: Dan wrote a bunch of songs. So but when I
Speaker 1: listened to them again, they sounded they bore Liam Gallagher songs.
Speaker 1: They were just me. They were my songs. And a
Speaker 1: couple of them sounded like Semi Sonic songs, and even
Speaker 1: though we didn't use them on the EP, they were like, oh,
Speaker 1: wait a minute. I don't know, maybe just meeting I
Speaker 1: had met Liam before at festivals, at gigs, backstage and stuff,
Speaker 1: but maybe seeing him again reminded me of that time
Speaker 1: in a way that other things didn't. And I I
Speaker 1: had told John and Jake, we're not going to update.
Speaker 1: We're not going to upgrade our sound. We're not gonna
Speaker 1: try to sound like you know, Post Malone does Semi Sonic.
Speaker 1: I don't need that personally because I do pop music,
Speaker 1: so I don't need to be updated. And I just
Speaker 1: said to the guys, let's not let's just do what
Speaker 1: we sound like and have it be fine. So we needed,
Speaker 1: I needed to get back in that mood. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you're back in the mood. But needless say, in the
Speaker 1: twenty years since Semi Sonic was on the boards, the
Speaker 1: music business has changed completely. Okay. It used to be
Speaker 1: the big threshold was getting a label deal, and if
Speaker 1: you had one of the label deals, they would give
Speaker 1: you a shot in the marketplace, assuming they believed your
Speaker 1: music was okay. If not they'd either drop you or
Speaker 1: get your some publicity. So what was it like saying Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna enter back into this sphere twenty years later. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean I think one, um, one thing that you
Speaker 1: have to do now is piece together the whole thing,
Speaker 1: like piece together, like as though you all the departments
Speaker 1: that used to be a label and now separate people
Speaker 1: working out of there, you know, home offices or or
Speaker 1: offices or whatever, you know, as as subsidiaries of things.
Speaker 1: We ended up getting distribution and some um uh services
Speaker 1: from the Orchard. We did a bunch of things ourselves.
Speaker 1: We have um, you know, publicists that have worked for
Speaker 1: you know, worked for me, and they ended up also
Speaker 1: working for the Semi Sonic record. We you know, it's like,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm fortunate enough to have these relationships, but
Speaker 1: we we have. You have to sort of almost like
Speaker 1: it's all all a heart. You just find this and
Speaker 1: that and this and that and and then you have
Speaker 1: your own temporary label structure or whatever you wanna call it.
Speaker 1: And you mentioned the record the track is on a
Speaker 1: triple A radio. How did it get there? Because nothing
Speaker 1: happens by accident anymore. Well, um, I think there was
Speaker 1: I think between the Orchard and Jim Grant, my manager,
Speaker 1: I think they and everybody who was involved in like
Speaker 1: the team, I think, um, you know, Mega Forest the label, uh,
Speaker 1: I think they. I think they all thought that that
Speaker 1: was a reasonable hope that we could get some airplay
Speaker 1: on this kind of station. Like I knew. I knew
Speaker 1: we could get played on if we got lucky, we
Speaker 1: could get played on x RT in Chicago, and we
Speaker 1: could get played on k XPN and Philadelphia, and we
Speaker 1: could get played, um, you know here on k c
Speaker 1: S n uh, you know in l A. I mean
Speaker 1: I had this. That's the kind of station I had
Speaker 1: in my mind. And those are all of what's called
Speaker 1: triple A station. So that makes sense to me if
Speaker 1: Mega Forrest and Jim and everybody else, we're going to
Speaker 1: decide where to go. And I honestly though, I thought
Speaker 1: if Casey MP and St. Paul played it a bunch
Speaker 1: of times, a non embarrassing number of times in my
Speaker 1: hometown and then it was over, I was I probably
Speaker 1: would have been like, yeah, high fives, let's do that again.
Speaker 1: So I didn't really think of it as likely to
Speaker 1: be played all around the country like it is okay,
Speaker 1: because you know, there's a lot of people making music,
Speaker 1: however good that gets nowhere to play at all. How
Speaker 1: are you the type of guy who's more of an
Speaker 1: artist or are you also a student of the game.
Speaker 1: If I were to talk about charts distribution, is that
Speaker 1: you have expertise in that area? No, No, I'm I'm not.
Speaker 1: I'm not that guy I had. Um. There was a
Speaker 1: period when I tried to start, to some degree, out
Speaker 1: of a sense of obligation or oldest son duty or something,
Speaker 1: I tried to learn more about the business and try
Speaker 1: to be very involved in like are very up to
Speaker 1: speed on how Semi Sonic was doing, for example, or
Speaker 1: what my what the songs I've co written are you
Speaker 1: know doing? But I I kind of learned pretty early
Speaker 1: that if I did that, I would just write songs
Speaker 1: about money, you know, and like record sales and distribution.
Speaker 1: It becomes it's like whatever you focus on in your
Speaker 1: life is what you end up writing songs about. And
Speaker 1: those are very very boring topics. And I really noticed
Speaker 1: when I was really plugged into the business side how
Speaker 1: much my songs would suck. So I kind of unplugged. Okay,
Speaker 1: when before COVID when uh Semi Sonic was going to
Speaker 1: play live dates. How many live dates was this? Well,
Speaker 1: we would I mean we were going to play. I
Speaker 1: would say the grandiose plan was something like thirty shows.
Speaker 1: I think that's you know, I know that's not a lot,
Speaker 1: but it's it's okay. But yeah, but that's the balance.
Speaker 1: My question being that you've put out this track and
Speaker 1: the track is more successful than you anticipated. We all
Speaker 1: know that the old game doesn't exist. Nothing crosses over
Speaker 1: from triple A to top forty, etcetera. So they are
Speaker 1: not inherently lucrative. They're not inherently large in terms of
Speaker 1: social cultural impact. However, when what it has s sccess,
Speaker 1: it does light a flame or turn the gas up
Speaker 1: a little inside. So now that you've had this success,
Speaker 1: to what degreed? He say, Wow, I'm turned on, I
Speaker 1: want to go further down this path. Well, i'm m.
Speaker 1: We put out the EP, we we made the EP,
Speaker 1: and we were done with that at the end of
Speaker 1: last year. Maybe the last mastering was done in December
Speaker 1: or January maybe, and the it was always a plan
Speaker 1: to just do this EP and then get started to
Speaker 1: make another EP. So I didn't I think we probably
Speaker 1: would have done it, whether we've gotten any airplay at all.
Speaker 1: I just think it feels like the time, you know
Speaker 1: for it, and we've done enough shows where you know
Speaker 1: where we haven't forgotten how to be a band, but
Speaker 1: we're all pretty excited about like kind of hitting it
Speaker 1: a little harder and and also spending that time together.
Speaker 1: There is a big part of this is just that
Speaker 1: we're we cherish each other. It's kind of weird to say,
Speaker 1: but we just because we love each other, we want
Speaker 1: to do this. Okay, let's flip it over. So you
Speaker 1: have this personal situation, you put the band on hiatus.
Speaker 1: How do you become a song writer for hire? Oh man? Well,
Speaker 1: I I had the picture in my mind because of
Speaker 1: Carol King, who was my kind of one of my
Speaker 1: childhood heroes. And she her name was on all these
Speaker 1: records and she had hits of her own. So I
Speaker 1: always thought that was one thing that someone who was
Speaker 1: really cool could do. So I had that picture in
Speaker 1: my mind, and the on the last Semisnic album, I
Speaker 1: ended up writing a song by Crazy good Luck with
Speaker 1: Carol for the Semi Sonic album. So I watched what
Speaker 1: she did with me that was interesting and uh, well,
Speaker 1: well let's slow down a little bit because Carol does
Speaker 1: not write the lyrics. So what was interesting about the experience.
Speaker 1: What did you learn about the experience? Well, I was,
Speaker 1: first of all, I was super nervous to be with Carol.
Speaker 1: I was We sort of imagined that we could be
Speaker 1: writing a a semisonic song and we both were thinking that.
Speaker 1: But but there wasn't It wasn't like this isn't a
Speaker 1: label's idea of what to do when you're desperate, you know,
Speaker 1: even like at that time, Carol wasn't a h you know,
Speaker 1: the matrix or a Top forty you know, uh, one
Speaker 1: of the villains of Top forty production. She she was
Speaker 1: an icon. But we thought we'd write a semi sonic song.
Speaker 1: And yet I had this idea almost like that. I
Speaker 1: was that I didn't know if I was supposed to
Speaker 1: be me or be her during this session. This is
Speaker 1: a very early for me, like co write and she, uh,
Speaker 1: she kind of guided me into a zone where we
Speaker 1: were both having ideas that reminded each other of the
Speaker 1: other one somehow, like I would. At one point, I
Speaker 1: played a piano chord and I was like, uh, oh,
Speaker 1: you know what about this cord. I'll show you what
Speaker 1: the chord I played. Hold on, I played this chord.
Speaker 1: I played that chord and I was like, how about that?
Speaker 1: And she laughed. I said yeah, I said four over five.
Speaker 1: You like that cord, Carol, And she laughed and she
Speaker 1: said yeah, but it's it's not called four over five,
Speaker 1: it's called c over K. And I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: you are a badass. Like I already loved her for that,
Speaker 1: you know. But then at another point, she she had
Speaker 1: an idea that was almost like tweaking closing time, like
Speaker 1: she was sort of it was not satire, but it
Speaker 1: was just her like taking the piss about closing time.
Speaker 1: And uh, but we ended up using it because it
Speaker 1: was awesome and I really learned from that. I learned
Speaker 1: from this kind of like we found a kind of
Speaker 1: a part of the playground where where both of us
Speaker 1: were comfortable with the with the ideas we were having
Speaker 1: and it was truly, uh collaboration. And that was like
Speaker 1: almost like a masterclass. You know. That was like an
Speaker 1: early moment when I really thought, oh, I could totally
Speaker 1: do this. This is great because my hero knows. It
Speaker 1: just showed me partly how to do it? Okay? So
Speaker 1: then what happened after that? Then? Um, oh, I wrote,
Speaker 1: I wrote a song that got I wrote a song
Speaker 1: with Beck Runga, who's a New Zealander and she uh,
Speaker 1: and I wrote a song that was in this movie
Speaker 1: called American Pie that was pretty great. And then Semi
Speaker 1: Sognic you were you were working with Semi Sonic. How
Speaker 1: did you even get hooked up with this New Zealand? Uh?
Speaker 1: Beck was signed to the same publishing company that Semi
Speaker 1: Sonic was with, Warner Chapel, and Kenny McPherson, who has
Speaker 1: been my publisher ever since, said, Hey, you know, I
Speaker 1: have an artist who's like having a little trouble um
Speaker 1: getting inspired and kind of stuck, and you wanted to
Speaker 1: try to do a session with her. So we ended up.
Speaker 1: We ended up. We got together and wrote a song.
Speaker 1: And it's not like I knew how to do that
Speaker 1: to like to help someone not be stuck, but we
Speaker 1: wrote a real nice song. Okay, so keep going okay.
Speaker 1: So then then Semi Sonic, Um, then I kind of
Speaker 1: like somewhat cleared the decks and we stopped touring, and
Speaker 1: I was putting out the word to lots of people
Speaker 1: like in the Twin Cities, and you know where I
Speaker 1: was from and where I lived, and you know locals
Speaker 1: and other people. I'd like to write songs with people.
Speaker 1: I want to I want to do collaborations. And I
Speaker 1: just put the word out I want to write with people,
Speaker 1: and um, the Minneapolis people didn't want to do it.
Speaker 1: They were all very uncomfortable. They thought they're weird. Songwriting
Speaker 1: method was unsuitable to show other people, which was already
Speaker 1: interesting for me too to hear that, because it almost
Speaker 1: becomes a universal like people are like, I can't write
Speaker 1: a song with someone else because then I'd have to
Speaker 1: show them the stupid way that I write songs. And
Speaker 1: that that was kind of an insight for me, even
Speaker 1: even to be refused on those grounds. And then um,
Speaker 1: friend of mine who was an A and R guy
Speaker 1: for Trip Shakespeare, my previous band, Steve Robowski uh contacted
Speaker 1: me and said, I have an artist, Rachel Yamagata. I
Speaker 1: think you would really get along great with her. She's
Speaker 1: a she's a touring you know, rock musician, and she's
Speaker 1: going to make a h a contemplative piano record and
Speaker 1: and you guys need to write a song together. So
Speaker 1: I wrote a song with Rachel. We had a great
Speaker 1: We had a great time. She played it for Jason
Speaker 1: Mraz and then a few months later Jason was at
Speaker 1: my house in Minneapolis and we were writing songs, and
Speaker 1: two of those songs we worked and ended up on Mr.
Speaker 1: A to Z his the album that he was working
Speaker 1: on and did did did it just likes it just
Speaker 1: happened like that, like Pearson first and the person to person. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of musicians. I know people musicians
Speaker 1: who are dicks in real life, but they're unbelievable networkers
Speaker 1: in music. They know how to relate to musicians. Are
Speaker 1: you more the isolated type or are you heavily network
Speaker 1: to begin with? And do you have any anxiety about
Speaker 1: reaching out to people? Oh? I'm ah man, okay, Like
Speaker 1: I'm I have a real hard time asking anyone for
Speaker 1: a favor of any kind. I have a very Norwegian
Speaker 1: American shyness and like bashfulness. I guess about about getting ahead.
Speaker 1: And I I'm not a great networker in that sense
Speaker 1: of once I have someone in my network, I don't
Speaker 1: go all right now I'm gonna call Bob and ask
Speaker 1: him for this, you know. But I do, but I
Speaker 1: do keep in touch with people, and I do, and
Speaker 1: I cold call people, but I cold call people because
Speaker 1: I'm like, I love what you do. Let's hang out.
Speaker 1: Like I like, A couple of my happiest musical relationships
Speaker 1: are people that I just got in touch with randomly.
Speaker 1: Somebody find me this person's email or phone number, I'm
Speaker 1: just going to contact them. But once they're in my network,
Speaker 1: I just it's not like they're there to be exploited.
Speaker 1: I just I just love musicians. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm do you know what do you stay in touch
Speaker 1: with people on the regular Banks you say I heard
Speaker 1: from that person in a month, I say like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: so I'm not a month. I'm like six months. I've
Speaker 1: never been a month. But I've always been like, oh
Speaker 1: I haven't yeah, I haven't heard from them for a while,
Speaker 1: or just like how you're doing, or I heard I
Speaker 1: heard some news about you or whatever. I've always been
Speaker 1: that kind of person, and I think there was a
Speaker 1: time there was a sort of a turning point in
Speaker 1: my life when I was doing a lot of painting
Speaker 1: and I was selling a lot of paintings, and I
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, I know I'm not cool enough to
Speaker 1: be New York gallery artist, but I could probably figure
Speaker 1: out how. So I was definitely thinking in those terms,
Speaker 1: like what what do I need to do to be
Speaker 1: able to just be a a painter and do that
Speaker 1: as as my life, because I really love art and
Speaker 1: I loved making art, and I was I was thinking too,
Speaker 1: you know, how do I crack that code and still
Speaker 1: be myself? And I was sort of thinking maybe a
Speaker 1: little bit like if if I have to transform myself
Speaker 1: too much, I'm not going to do it. But I
Speaker 1: was definitely thinking, like, what is it about my work?
Speaker 1: This is not cool? I don't know so. And then
Speaker 1: in music, it was an interesting time because I was
Speaker 1: also like the only two choices were to like try
Speaker 1: to adapt and but that's never gonna work, or just
Speaker 1: be yourself and see what happens. So I couldn't really
Speaker 1: decide between art of music on on the basis of, well,
Speaker 1: this one is obviously working better than that one. I was.
Speaker 1: I was still puzzled what it meant to be an artist.
Speaker 1: But once I had done music and art at the
Speaker 1: same time for like two years, it was really obvious
Speaker 1: that being a painter is like super lonely. It's just
Speaker 1: really lonely work, and you can't have people come in
Speaker 1: and bug you. You've gotta be alone. Like they could
Speaker 1: come in for a little while, but you know, in
Speaker 1: your studio, if you're if you're in a building, but
Speaker 1: you bas you mainly have to keep them out. And
Speaker 1: I realized, I'm just not that guy. I just I'm
Speaker 1: not built for that. Okay. But when you write for
Speaker 1: Semi Sonic, you write the songs alone. Uh, what's the
Speaker 1: difference between doing that and inherently starting as a collaboration. Well,
Speaker 1: I wrote Um a d of You're Not Alone from
Speaker 1: the New Semi Sonic EP. But I wrote UM Basement Tapes,
Speaker 1: which is very autobiographical. I wrote that with Mike Viola
Speaker 1: and Jenny Owen Young's two friends of mine who we've
Speaker 1: written a whole bunch of songs together over time, and
Speaker 1: they they just played the part of the co writer
Speaker 1: in that session. If we go back to the Trip
Speaker 1: Shakespeare in initial Semi Sonic, Yeah, era, were you mostly
Speaker 1: writing the songs alone? Yeah? Most like a Trip Shakespeare.
Speaker 1: I was the finisher for for my brother Matt's unfinished songs,
Speaker 1: so he would finish, he would do most like half
Speaker 1: the songs all alone, and maybe a quarter of them
Speaker 1: I would finish, and some small proportion we would just
Speaker 1: write together as a collaboration. But when Semisnic came along,
Speaker 1: I just knew what I wanted and I knew what
Speaker 1: it needed to sound like, and I knew songwriting wise,
Speaker 1: like what had to happen and also what I had
Speaker 1: to access. And so I end up writing those songs
Speaker 1: alone because I just knew what was necessary and I
Speaker 1: wanted to a lot of times I was writing for
Speaker 1: our shows, like we don't have anything for them. It's
Speaker 1: like there's always this dead period in the middle of
Speaker 1: the set. You know, what is wrong with those three
Speaker 1: songs that we keep We're switching out all these songs
Speaker 1: into that middle section of the set, and it's always boring.
Speaker 1: Why what can I do? And I would write songs
Speaker 1: for that purpose, or I'd write a song to close
Speaker 1: the show, you know, very practical when you were not touring.
Speaker 1: Uh did you miss it? Yeah? I did, I did.
Speaker 1: I missed it when when you know there's something about
Speaker 1: being on tour is like really really tiring. You gotta
Speaker 1: get you get to a certain point of like what
Speaker 1: a friend of mine calls maximum tiredness, and then you
Speaker 1: just like cruise. You're just that tired all the time,
Speaker 1: but you're also irresponsible and taken care of even your
Speaker 1: food shows up in front of your face, and you
Speaker 1: can party until someone comes through with a scowling face
Speaker 1: and says, you know, hey, come on, we gotta go
Speaker 1: back to the hotel. You need to get sleep. You
Speaker 1: you you gotta get up early. Like that level of
Speaker 1: like care free irresponsibility is amazing as an adult. Okay,
Speaker 1: back in the day, did you take advantage of some
Speaker 1: of the so called perks of being on the road, Uh, well,
Speaker 1: in some ways, But I was. I got married before
Speaker 1: any of this happened. Really like I like I I
Speaker 1: my girlfriend and I who now my wife. You know,
Speaker 1: we got together when we were in nineteen and twenty
Speaker 1: or something like that, and we've been very uh deeply
Speaker 1: intertwined ever since. So I didn't have like a phase
Speaker 1: of like, uh, you know, sexual wildlife, you know, abandoned
Speaker 1: and I I would have The road didn't offer me
Speaker 1: any more drugs than my friends at home did, So
Speaker 1: I don't I don't think I did more drugs than
Speaker 1: I would have done if I had just been a
Speaker 1: dude staying in Minneapolis all the time, I would have
Speaker 1: done it either way. I think this is gonna sound
Speaker 1: super dorky, but like when I look at pictures of
Speaker 1: me and John and Jacob on tour, it's like it's
Speaker 1: us in front of the Eiffel Tower, and it's us
Speaker 1: on you know, Bondai Beach, and it's us, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: like slowly walking through um Westminster Abbey, you know stuff
Speaker 1: that's like we really really wanted to see the world
Speaker 1: and and and uh you know. Um It's almost like
Speaker 1: tourism was for us. That was the drugs we we
Speaker 1: could we could have just been on the bar circuit
Speaker 1: and then all the drugs wanted. So okay, let's go back.
Speaker 1: You work with Mr aid On, Mr a to Z.
Speaker 1: What is your first breakthrough success as a songwriter, collaborator,
Speaker 1: writer for a hire? Wow, okay, let's see. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's not ready to make Nice with the
Speaker 1: Dixie Chicks. I think I was working on an album
Speaker 1: that eventually was called Free Life with Rick Rubin. He
Speaker 1: signed me to his label American and we were working
Speaker 1: on that and he played a bunch of the songs
Speaker 1: that we were working on for the Dixie Chicks when
Speaker 1: he was producing them, and they they got excited about
Speaker 1: a couple of the songs, but then also they got
Speaker 1: excited about the possibility of writing us writing together. So
Speaker 1: eventually Rick Rick put us together in in a in
Speaker 1: a room after a lot of false starts. It was
Speaker 1: like a lot of reasons why things got canceled, but yeah,
Speaker 1: that was the first one. Okay, let's go back to
Speaker 1: one of my personal favorites. How did you end up
Speaker 1: working with Gabe Dixon? Oh? Gabe a friend of mine,
Speaker 1: Ah who worked at m c A as an international
Speaker 1: promo guy and had traveled with Semisnic around Europe. Um
Speaker 1: Uh introduced me to Gabe and basically they were It
Speaker 1: was before anything like really had happened commercially from my
Speaker 1: form my co writing. But Gabe and I had a
Speaker 1: very magical um a couple of weekends in Minneapolis writing
Speaker 1: songs and we wrote UM five more hours and we
Speaker 1: wrote all Will Be Well, and we wrote we wrote
Speaker 1: five or six songs that I think of as like,
Speaker 1: you know, possibly like lifetime type songs for for an artist. Together,
Speaker 1: we really clicked. It was and that was before the
Speaker 1: Chicks before I met Rick. It was early on. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: I'm a huge fan of that initial work and then
Speaker 1: the live rendition of that work, and Gabe has never
Speaker 1: been able to equal that since artistically or commercially, and
Speaker 1: he's sort of a hired hand piano player. Uh. That
Speaker 1: demonstrated to me that you had a huge effect. Why
Speaker 1: have you not worked with him again? Well? We did.
Speaker 1: We wrote another song called My Favorite that came out
Speaker 1: on a record of his like ten years ago. But
Speaker 1: I think, like I think sometimes, first of all, when
Speaker 1: Gabe and I wrote All Will Be Well, he never
Speaker 1: he didn't think it was all that it was, you
Speaker 1: know he was he didn't think it was special, and
Speaker 1: everyone else thought it was special, um except for him.
Speaker 1: So it's possible that he and I just didn't make
Speaker 1: I think I think we made things that were sort
Speaker 1: of I was supposed to make the difference, and I
Speaker 1: think we made things that were closer to home for
Speaker 1: him than, you know, than farther away. And I think
Speaker 1: sometimes when people are on the co Wright train, they're
Speaker 1: trying to find someone that's going to take them farther
Speaker 1: from home so they can be different and then finally
Speaker 1: get some kind of recognition because that maybe they're not
Speaker 1: doing the right maybe just being themselves isn't enough, you know.
Speaker 1: I think somehow that's possibly in the back of a
Speaker 1: lot of people's minds. And labels are that way too,
Speaker 1: Like if I if you writes, If I write a
Speaker 1: song with somebody and it's it's the quintessential them song,
Speaker 1: labels are like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, But we
Speaker 1: need something that's got that spark of difference to you know,
Speaker 1: really like there's a mental block against just being essentially
Speaker 1: truly yourself. Can you give us any examples where you
Speaker 1: took someone further away out of their comfort zone and
Speaker 1: it worked. Well, let's see, I mean it's got to
Speaker 1: be uncomfortable to work. Uh adult kind of jokes that
Speaker 1: I would, you know, make her weep. When we wrote together,
Speaker 1: I wasn't mean I was never unkind or impolite, but
Speaker 1: like it just was we had some very raw conversations
Speaker 1: about difficult things. That was not easy. That was you know,
Speaker 1: that was outside the comfort zone. But the songs are
Speaker 1: they feel very very authentically adele, you know, and even
Speaker 1: those chick songs to right, um not ready to make nice.
Speaker 1: I kind of had to convince them that that they
Speaker 1: needed a song like that, and that they felt like
Speaker 1: they just didn't want to beat a dead horse and
Speaker 1: be talking about the same thing again and again. And
Speaker 1: I was like, no, you need we need at least
Speaker 1: one song where you just go head on into it,
Speaker 1: like just walk through the fire in one song so
Speaker 1: obviously that no one will mistake what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: That's got to happen. How did you get hooked up
Speaker 1: with a Dell to begin with? Same thing? Rick Rubin?
Speaker 1: That was like, that was incredible bit of matchmaking. He
Speaker 1: kept saying, you gotta do this, and like and and yeah,
Speaker 1: I kept getting postponed. I'm canceled. And he would call
Speaker 1: him and say, I really think, I really think you
Speaker 1: need to write a song with this with Adele, she's
Speaker 1: so amazing, and like he just you know, and he
Speaker 1: did the same to her until we finally like hooked
Speaker 1: it up. Okay, So tell me about that experience where
Speaker 1: it was raw? Was that something conscious? What did you
Speaker 1: inject into that songwriting session that resulted in that. I
Speaker 1: don't think I injected anything. I think she I think
Speaker 1: she wanted to talk about this raw emotion she wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about she wanted to make a breakup song
Speaker 1: that sort of reflected what she the story she was
Speaker 1: telling about her feelings. I I don't think I um,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think I'm a good listener. I
Speaker 1: don't think I did anything like I like when we
Speaker 1: were the next day we got together. At the first day,
Speaker 1: we wrote two thirds of someone Like You, and it
Speaker 1: sounded pretty great. The second verse was terrible. There was
Speaker 1: a bridge that was kind of tangled up in the
Speaker 1: second verse. You know, there were problems. The vocal was
Speaker 1: not as cool as we probably I would have wanted it.
Speaker 1: But the second day, when we got together, I said
Speaker 1: to her, so, do you want to keep working on
Speaker 1: that thing we started yesterday or do you want to
Speaker 1: work on a new song? And she was like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, of course we have to finish that song
Speaker 1: from yesterday. Like I was very happy to be like, well,
Speaker 1: I guess, let's work on something else, and and she
Speaker 1: was like no, no, no no, no, no, no no, we
Speaker 1: gotta finish that song. So it wasn't like I was
Speaker 1: a Spengali guiding her to success. I was actually being
Speaker 1: very loose and goosey about you know what to do? Okay,
Speaker 1: So she reveals herself and you're listening, what was the
Speaker 1: next step in writing that song? Well, I mean it's
Speaker 1: almost more like yeah, it's almost like she had a
Speaker 1: she had a bass riff. She has this very interesting
Speaker 1: one finger way of playing the bass. She doesn't I
Speaker 1: don't think she's ever maybe she performs it once in
Speaker 1: a while. She's just interesting way of playing the bass.
Speaker 1: And she does that on on the low strings of
Speaker 1: a guitar too. So she had this kind of bass
Speaker 1: or low string guitar riff and a couple of lines
Speaker 1: of of someone like you no title, I don't think,
Speaker 1: or no chorus. But she had that beginning and that
Speaker 1: that low BASSI riff on the guitar, and at one
Speaker 1: point she was like, I don't know, this is just
Speaker 1: you wan't Why don't you play it while I sing?
Speaker 1: So I played that same riff on the guitar while
Speaker 1: she sang, and she and she was like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe it would be more inspiring if
Speaker 1: you played it on the piano. So I played it
Speaker 1: on the piano and we immediately just like, Okay, that's
Speaker 1: exactly how the song needs. Like it was really clear.
Speaker 1: Now we're onto it like now we you know, once
Speaker 1: you feel like you're onto something, it becomes very easy
Speaker 1: to like get become very dogged and intense about it.
Speaker 1: And so I think that once we heard that similar
Speaker 1: pattern on the piano that she had been playing on
Speaker 1: the guitar, it we could imagine the record and then
Speaker 1: then it gets easier. And did you have any idea
Speaker 1: that the record would be as successful as it was? No?
Speaker 1: I mean we played it for my wife when I
Speaker 1: came home. We were staying in l a in Las VELAs,
Speaker 1: uh for a month, and I was doing I was
Speaker 1: writing with people and doing stuff, and I came home
Speaker 1: and played it for my wife and she said, oh,
Speaker 1: that's a beautiful song. And then, um, we never listened
Speaker 1: to that, you know, didn't listen to it again. And uh,
Speaker 1: then like a week later, I got a text from
Speaker 1: the head of her label, Columbia saying, you know, basically like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, Dan, this is a copyright. You know,
Speaker 1: It's like okay, great, uh wow, Okay, let's go back
Speaker 1: really way to the beginning. Okay, so you're from from
Speaker 1: Minneapolis area. Did you literally were born there and grew
Speaker 1: up there? Yes? I was born. Um, and when when
Speaker 1: my parents were moving from the East Coast, where my
Speaker 1: dad was going to medical school. My parents, my mom
Speaker 1: moved back early to Minnesota. She had grown up in Appleton,
Speaker 1: a very very small town in the western part of Minnesota.
Speaker 1: My dad grew up in South Minneapolis, and his folks
Speaker 1: were also from the western kind of small town Prairie
Speaker 1: um area of Minnesota. So she my mom went back early,
Speaker 1: and and I was born before my dad finished medical school.
Speaker 1: We grew up in um you know, medical student housing,
Speaker 1: my brother and I and then later my sister and
Speaker 1: UM eventually ended up in a in a near suburb
Speaker 1: of Minneapolis called Saint Louis Park. Okay, how many? So
Speaker 1: there are three kids in the field. How does a hierarchy?
Speaker 1: I'm the oldest, my brother's second, and my sister three.
Speaker 1: Okay not traditionally all the hopes and dreams and pressure
Speaker 1: around the oldest kid. Did you feel that? Yeah? Probably,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Uh. I was like when I was little, Um,
Speaker 1: I I can't I. I I tested as very very
Speaker 1: very bright, Like I tested off the charts. And my
Speaker 1: mom used to joke that every year they would, you know,
Speaker 1: we'd get some somebody would come in with the school
Speaker 1: and they'd assess me or whatever, and every year I
Speaker 1: was slightly closer to normal and and uh, but there
Speaker 1: was still a sense like I I was really bored
Speaker 1: in school like many bright kids, I was bored in school,
Speaker 1: and I distracted people, and I made remarks and I
Speaker 1: talked while the teacher was trying to talk, and I
Speaker 1: was very I was not only entitled, but I would
Speaker 1: make the t your laugh while they were trying to teach.
Speaker 1: And and eventually, like there was certain kind of compensatory
Speaker 1: things that the school's tried with me, like an elementary school,
Speaker 1: I had this. I had this. I went for part
Speaker 1: of the afternoon to another teacher that taught me higher
Speaker 1: level stuff and it's like having a tutor for being smart.
Speaker 1: And also during that time, I developed a lot of
Speaker 1: nervous ticks, like I just so maybe maybe I was
Speaker 1: feeling the pressure to be sort of a bright kid
Speaker 1: or like to be a successful, you know, fourth grader
Speaker 1: or whatever. And my parents got very alarmed that I
Speaker 1: started developed developing all these physical ticks, and um, they
Speaker 1: they phased out some of that special treatment. So I
Speaker 1: just got more and more normal as time went on.
Speaker 1: But I think there was always a sense that my
Speaker 1: parents had were like of that age where they were
Speaker 1: both kind of artsy, but they're The step their generation
Speaker 1: had to take was to was to do something like
Speaker 1: measurably successful. So they you know, my dad became a
Speaker 1: doctor because that was a logical next step for the
Speaker 1: family to have a kid who was a doctor. And
Speaker 1: then I came along, and my siblings and I came
Speaker 1: along basically in the whatever makes you happy, you can
Speaker 1: do whatever you're like, we still love you no matter
Speaker 1: if you have a professional or not. That was our
Speaker 1: next step. Okay, prior to the billionaire tech e's in
Speaker 1: Wall Street. You know, doctors made a good living. Was
Speaker 1: your father did he support your desires and whims or
Speaker 1: it was like, go if you want that app go
Speaker 1: out and make the money yourself. He Uh. My parents
Speaker 1: were um, like they didn't have any toys. They they
Speaker 1: they we had we built my my my my grandfather
Speaker 1: other on one side was a carpenter and my grandfather
Speaker 1: on the other side, um had done plumbing for a
Speaker 1: while when he was younger. My mom's brother was an electrician,
Speaker 1: and my dad was willing to carry heavy things. And
Speaker 1: between the four of those dudes. They built this small
Speaker 1: house in northern Minnesota, and that was the family's toy
Speaker 1: that was like the one like what we had on
Speaker 1: that on the lake that that we that the that
Speaker 1: the house was next to. We had a canoe and
Speaker 1: a you know, a fourteen ft h rowboat with an
Speaker 1: upboard motor, and that was our toys. And and my
Speaker 1: parents had this kind of very prairie Norwegian, anti um flash,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, anti toy kind of attitude. And so
Speaker 1: I kind of grew up with that too. But they
Speaker 1: they they supported us in the sense like when when
Speaker 1: I was in like eighth grade and I was doing
Speaker 1: a paper out in the morning early mornings and I
Speaker 1: was slinging ice cream at an ice cream shop and
Speaker 1: the in the evenings. My dad offered to half pay
Speaker 1: for a guitar and an amplifier for me if I
Speaker 1: saved up. So I saved up, and I bought a
Speaker 1: guitar in an amp in eighth grade. And okay, so
Speaker 1: you were going to public school. Yeah, and what kind
Speaker 1: of kid were you? Remember? The group and outsider, a
Speaker 1: nerd someone? What what were you? I was? Um? I
Speaker 1: was smart kid. Most of my close friends were really
Speaker 1: smart nerdy kids. I also made really really wicked caricatures
Speaker 1: of people. Uh. I had a I could get a
Speaker 1: likeness with pen and ink, and so I would make
Speaker 1: caricatures of the teachers and they would confiscate them, but
Speaker 1: they secretly liked them. And I I would make caricatures
Speaker 1: of of mean kids and kind of court disaster, but
Speaker 1: you know, like making caricatures of bullies and and uh
Speaker 1: So I was thought of as a smart kid. But
Speaker 1: I had this sort of weird superpower of being artistic.
Speaker 1: So I was I was given a pass to some degree. Okay,
Speaker 1: what inspired you to buy that guitar? In the amph
Speaker 1: My brother and I when I was summer before eighth grade,
Speaker 1: I think my no, maybe before seventh My parents gave
Speaker 1: my brother Matt and I one super cheap acoustic guitar
Speaker 1: to own together. And we we co owned this acoustic
Speaker 1: guitar for years, and we loved the Beatles. And the
Speaker 1: summer we got that guitar, we got some books mel
Speaker 1: Bay or whatever those books are that show you the
Speaker 1: chord shapes, and we learned a bunch of chords, and
Speaker 1: then we started to try to write songs of our own,
Speaker 1: and I all my songs from that time. It's really interesting.
Speaker 1: My songs were really I was really trying to sound
Speaker 1: like George Harrison, like I was trying like I wasn't
Speaker 1: trying to sound like McCartney, maybe because I didn't know
Speaker 1: enough chords. It's possible. But my brother Um had a
Speaker 1: little more unique musical style from the get go. Uh.
Speaker 1: But we were both like trading back up. But we'd
Speaker 1: have the guitar for an afternoon and we'd each try
Speaker 1: to write a song the next day. Okay, but you
Speaker 1: got the guitar, the electric guitar in the app then
Speaker 1: was the goal to go out and play in bands?
Speaker 1: And did you do that? The goal was to go
Speaker 1: out and playing bands. I wasn't um. I wasn't good
Speaker 1: at the guitar, but I was taking lessons and I
Speaker 1: kind of um. I quickly abandoned. I sold that guitar
Speaker 1: and I got um a bass because I had noted
Speaker 1: that UM bands always needed bass players, so I got weirdly.
Speaker 1: I also at the time was listening to weather Report,
Speaker 1: so this is probably seventies seven. I was probably sixteen
Speaker 1: or seventeen now when I switched from guitar to bass
Speaker 1: and I got a fretless bass, so I could be
Speaker 1: like Jacko Pastoria. So I learned how to play fretless bass,
Speaker 1: and then I played this odd choice of instrument in
Speaker 1: in whatever rock bands my brother was in. Essentially he
Speaker 1: was a drummer. Okay, now you end up going to Harvard.
Speaker 1: How does that happen? My grades were great. I was UM.
Speaker 1: I used to go around to the magazine offices in
Speaker 1: Minneapolis and show them my cartoons, and I would try
Speaker 1: to see if they would buy my cartoons. And there
Speaker 1: were a couple of magazines that were kind of youth
Speaker 1: oriented magazines around Minneapolis that ended up starting to use
Speaker 1: the drawings that I made. And so so when I
Speaker 1: applied to Harvard, I had good grades and and not
Speaker 1: insanely good grades, but really really good grades. And and
Speaker 1: then also I just killed the s A T S.
Speaker 1: I killed him. Okay, so what was your experience at Harvard?
Speaker 1: I I loved it, I really did. I loved UM.
Speaker 1: I studied stuff because I was interested, Like I took
Speaker 1: a history of science classes because I I wanted to
Speaker 1: know what This is going to sound so lofty, but
Speaker 1: I wanted to know what knowledge is and how humanity
Speaker 1: has gathered it and organized it and revered it or
Speaker 1: or despised it, whatever the response. I wanted to know
Speaker 1: about the meta of scientific knowledge. So I took sciences
Speaker 1: history of science classes. I took some. I took a
Speaker 1: couple of music classes, but I didn't like them. I
Speaker 1: played in bands. I had a couple of bands that
Speaker 1: played that basically took me out in Massachusetts on the weekends.
Speaker 1: So I didn't party at Harvard in the on the weekends.
Speaker 1: I drove out with the band too, two clubs in
Speaker 1: various places, Peabody and hang Him and I know all
Speaker 1: those places. My mother's from Peabody. Okay, But you know
Speaker 1: you end up as a fine arts major. How does
Speaker 1: that happen? I just think that was the most interesting
Speaker 1: thing to me. And there was a big brief period,
Speaker 1: or maybe a two year period, where I started thinking, well,
Speaker 1: maybe I ought to become an architect. Maybe that's what
Speaker 1: an artistic young person ends up doing when they want
Speaker 1: to have a proper job. And so I got some jobs.
Speaker 1: I got some jobs with architects offices. I studied for
Speaker 1: a year or so at Harvard the History of Architecture,
Speaker 1: and I took I took one applied architecture class, and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, I could do this, and my parents. Um.
Speaker 1: The summer between my junior and senior year, my parents
Speaker 1: kind of gathered me up and do you know what
Speaker 1: we really want to know? Are you trying to become
Speaker 1: an architect because it's a profession that would make us happier?
Speaker 1: Are you trying to be a professional when you really
Speaker 1: just want to be an artist? And I was like,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe architecture feels like a professionalized way to be
Speaker 1: an artist. And they said, well, don't do that for us,
Speaker 1: because we don't need you to be a professional. You
Speaker 1: don't have to have it, you don't need to go
Speaker 1: get a graduate degree or do anything for us. If
Speaker 1: you want to be an artist, you need to start
Speaker 1: now and just do it. I wish I had your parents.
Speaker 1: What wait, right, at what point does the music thing
Speaker 1: become serious? I got UM. I went out to I
Speaker 1: went out to San Francisco with my girlfriend and we
Speaker 1: we went UM. Jacob Slicktor whom uh drummer and Semi
Speaker 1: Sonic was our friend in college and he went out
Speaker 1: there with us and lived with me and and so
Speaker 1: the three of us were out there like trying to
Speaker 1: make our way. Um, Jake and I wrote songs together.
Speaker 1: We were thinking about being in being in bands. I
Speaker 1: gotta I got a job at a graphic design company.
Speaker 1: I made signage for for a law lawsuits. Okay, you're
Speaker 1: now graduated from Yeah, we're out of college. We're out
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, and my brother in Minneapolis is putting
Speaker 1: together this band took Shakespeare and they made a record
Speaker 1: there a trio and they made a record with bass, drums,
Speaker 1: guitar and the left speaker and guitar and the right speaker,
Speaker 1: and but they're only a trio. And my brother and
Speaker 1: in this band had stopped playing the drums and he
Speaker 1: was singing and playing guitar, so he he played both
Speaker 1: guitars on the record. But they needed a guitar player.
Speaker 1: And he asked me, when I was San Francisco, would
Speaker 1: I consider moving back to Minneapolis and playing the right
Speaker 1: speaker guitar uh for this band Shakespeare and I thought
Speaker 1: about it. Um my girlfriend was heading to New York.
Speaker 1: We said we decided to live separately, and I went
Speaker 1: to Minneapolis to be in this band with my brother Matt.
Speaker 1: And what were you doing for money? What are we
Speaker 1: doing for money? Like in in San Francisco, I was,
Speaker 1: I was doing graphic design. In coming back to Minneapolis,
Speaker 1: I lived in a big house with lots of other
Speaker 1: people in a dangerous neighborhood, and my aunt had my
Speaker 1: great aunt had died and left left me a couple
Speaker 1: of thousand dollars around. Then it goes a long way
Speaker 1: when you're nothing to spend it on. It wasn't like
Speaker 1: I was getting any and see dinners or yeah, so
Speaker 1: I just basically had rent and food. So how do
Speaker 1: you end up getting a deal with A and M
Speaker 1: with crypt Shakespeare. My brother was really really smart about
Speaker 1: the the hustle of music. He did a lot of things,
Speaker 1: like he he made a zine that was devoted to
Speaker 1: the band, but basically had a whole bunch of different
Speaker 1: articles about different things related to trips Shakespeare in this zne.
Speaker 1: And for a while he just um stapled the zine
Speaker 1: to uh telephone poles around the city. And then eventually
Speaker 1: it got to the point where he would as they
Speaker 1: would also like fans would take them at shows and stuff.
Speaker 1: But at first it was literally just a zne that
Speaker 1: appeared on telephone poles, and my brother was I don't
Speaker 1: know sort of in charge of like having a being
Speaker 1: driven and having the idea of having a band that
Speaker 1: did well. When I joined the band, I had a
Speaker 1: very anctional role. I was playing the second guitar and
Speaker 1: singing harmonies, and I got a digital piano and I
Speaker 1: played piano and some songs. But my brother was in
Speaker 1: charge of us being successful. Okay, you get a deal
Speaker 1: with A and M Records and it doesn't ultimately work out,
Speaker 1: why does the band break up or what happens there?
Speaker 1: It was just really frustrating that the the label signed
Speaker 1: us out of enthusiasm. They came to the shows and
Speaker 1: they saw how much people love the band and how
Speaker 1: hilarious my brother's raps were and how um improvisational and
Speaker 1: crazy we were on the musical side. And then you know,
Speaker 1: it's the very familiar thing of how do you capture
Speaker 1: that on a recording? And we never did crack that code.
Speaker 1: You know, who knows why, but we never did figure
Speaker 1: out how to make records that sounded the way are
Speaker 1: spontaneous sometimes you know, overblown shows felt and I we
Speaker 1: got were very Eventually, I got really frustrating, and I
Speaker 1: think that that's why the band stopped and I kept
Speaker 1: I kept writing these songs that my brother Matt would
Speaker 1: teasingly say that I was listening to the radio too much,
Speaker 1: But in my mind, I was like, I want to.
Speaker 1: I want to write things to get played on the radio.
Speaker 1: I want to. I want to write short, concise things
Speaker 1: that that catch your ear and our you know, unforgettable,
Speaker 1: and I want to. I want that to be what
Speaker 1: I do. So how do you form semi sonic? Jacob
Speaker 1: had been in um Minneapolis for a while. He moved
Speaker 1: several years after I left San Francisco. He moved, and
Speaker 1: you know, we continued our friendship and we wrote songs
Speaker 1: on the side together and made recordings. Then when when
Speaker 1: Trip Shakespeare kind of slowed down and like that, uh,
Speaker 1: my brother wanted time away from the band and wanted
Speaker 1: to do something else. We asked John from Trip Shakespeare
Speaker 1: to play bass and start a trio and we called
Speaker 1: it Pleasure and we were like, we were not going
Speaker 1: to work too hard. We're we're I made a manifesto
Speaker 1: which was if a song isn't sounding good after an
Speaker 1: afternoon's effort, then I'm going to throw it away and
Speaker 1: write a new song. That was one, Uh, if we're
Speaker 1: having a bad time in rehearsal, we have to go
Speaker 1: down to the lowering bar and have a drink. And
Speaker 1: that was too And I think the third I think
Speaker 1: there were three, and the third one was life is
Speaker 1: more important than music. Okay. Having said aled that, how
Speaker 1: do you end up with a deal with m c A. Uh?
Speaker 1: You know, we we had a bunch of true believers
Speaker 1: in the music business by that point. I Karen Glauber
Speaker 1: had been kind of indie rock or alternative rock um
Speaker 1: expert at a m for a little while while we
Speaker 1: were there, and we got to know her there and
Speaker 1: then she went off to I think she was working
Speaker 1: at Hits magazine or something like that at that point.
Speaker 1: And I called her up and I said, I have
Speaker 1: some I have some new songs with John and Jacob.
Speaker 1: I want to send them to you. And she was like, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: please send them. And she goes out they good and
Speaker 1: I said, I said, oh, yeah, I think they're really
Speaker 1: really good, and she goes, do you want to start
Speaker 1: a bidding war? So I guess that was how it
Speaker 1: was done. Wow, And who is the manager at that point?
Speaker 1: Were we without manager? I think we were without a
Speaker 1: manager at that point okay, so you make a deal
Speaker 1: with m c A. Well, we made a deal with Elektra.
Speaker 1: We made half of a record. They dropped us when
Speaker 1: Sylvia Rhne came, Sylvia Rown said, we said, can we
Speaker 1: have these recordings? Will go somewhere else? She said no, no,
Speaker 1: you can't have them, and uh, basically we've completed and
Speaker 1: then um when and her reason for not needing us
Speaker 1: anymore was that they are they the label already had
Speaker 1: Third Eye Blind, so they didn't need Semi Sonic as well.
Speaker 1: So so eventually though, when we organized for m c
Speaker 1: A to buy the record, the half record from Elektra,
Speaker 1: Sylvia Rohne relented and took the money, and then we
Speaker 1: finished the rest of the record on on m c A.
Speaker 1: So they got a free look at what it was
Speaker 1: going to be. And you end up having a couple
Speaker 1: of big success is Closing Time and Secret Smile. Did
Speaker 1: you know those were going to be successful? Was there
Speaker 1: something else you thought would be successful before that? I
Speaker 1: m hm, similar similar to the story I told you
Speaker 1: about someone like you. I I thought that Closing Time
Speaker 1: was a really great song to to wrap up our shows,
Speaker 1: and we had already put out Great Divide the album before,
Speaker 1: the one that was made for two different labels, and uh,
Speaker 1: I had I had this. I sort of had some
Speaker 1: gaps in the set list that I wanted to fill
Speaker 1: and Closing Time was one of them. And and secret
Speaker 1: Smile arrived in a dream I had a dream of
Speaker 1: I would say three quarters of the song. And I
Speaker 1: quickly wrote it down and went back to sleep. And
Speaker 1: then the next morning I got up and played it.
Speaker 1: I had written it down, I played it. I was like,
Speaker 1: this is this is great? Wow, I wonder what this is.
Speaker 1: So I asked a lot of my friends what is
Speaker 1: this and they were like, I've never heard this before.
Speaker 1: So that song was like not part of a master
Speaker 1: plan of any kind. And when we did when we
Speaker 1: finished the record, I asked Nick Lawnay, our producer, what
Speaker 1: do you think the single is. I think it's Closing Time?
Speaker 1: I said, but what I'm curious what you would say?
Speaker 1: And he goes, oh, no, no, no, not closing Time.
Speaker 1: That's that's for the punters. You don't want that, never
Speaker 1: you mind as a as a better song you you
Speaker 1: Closing Time is? I don't. He didn't say it was
Speaker 1: too dumb, but essentially he thought it was too low brow,
Speaker 1: which I didn't under dand I didn't get that. I
Speaker 1: thought it was great and then ore and then are
Speaker 1: um like. I played the record to my wife and
Speaker 1: said what do you think? Like, what do you think
Speaker 1: the single is? And she said, well, it's time to
Speaker 1: go big And I said, okay, but you have to
Speaker 1: tell me what that means. She goes, well, if you're
Speaker 1: going to go big, that means you have it has
Speaker 1: to be secret smile or a closing time. Then we
Speaker 1: sent it to m c A and they were like,
Speaker 1: we're sorry, we don't hear anything. There's no singles. If
Speaker 1: you want more money to record, we'll give you more
Speaker 1: money to record. But now we don't hear it. It's
Speaker 1: not gonna happen. So what happened? So I was like,
Speaker 1: I called up my manager Jim. We talked about this.
Speaker 1: That was it was. You know, they didn't hear it.
Speaker 1: They didn't hear it hit, they didn't hear a single.
Speaker 1: We weren't, but they'd give us more money to record.
Speaker 1: And Jim's like, well, what do you think? And I said, well,
Speaker 1: I love the idea of I could write some more songs.
Speaker 1: That sounds cool, and he goes Okay, wait, wait, let's
Speaker 1: just think about this for a minute. And I'm like okay,
Speaker 1: and he says, all right, they send you fifty dollars
Speaker 1: to go record like four more songs or whatever it's
Speaker 1: going to be, so you have to write them. So
Speaker 1: you're writing that, you know, four new songs, three new songs,
Speaker 1: four new songs. Can you guarantee me that those are
Speaker 1: going to be better than singing in my sleep closing
Speaker 1: time and secret smile? And I'm like, well, no, of
Speaker 1: course not. The three songs you just named are really great.
Speaker 1: How can I guarantee that these new songs are gonna
Speaker 1: be better? And Jim's like, well, well, so you imagine
Speaker 1: you're the person at the label who commissioned the new songs.
Speaker 1: Which ones are you going to choose to be the
Speaker 1: next semi sonic single? One of the songs that you commissioned,
Speaker 1: or one of the songs that you rejected earlier? And
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, I guess if I'm the label, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna select one of the songs that I commissioned and
Speaker 1: not one of the ones that I refused earlier. And
Speaker 1: Jim's like, okay, right, so, but what if you don't
Speaker 1: beat the songs, what do you think they'll do? And
Speaker 1: I said, they're still going to pick one of the
Speaker 1: new ones even if I didn't beat the old songs.
Speaker 1: Jim's like, right, do you want that? And I'm like no,
Speaker 1: and he goes, okay, then just don't answer your phone
Speaker 1: for a couple of weeks. So they called and called
Speaker 1: to get me to relent, and we ignored them and
Speaker 1: ignored them, and then eventually they got a new head
Speaker 1: of radio promo, woman named Nancy Levin, and she's like,
Speaker 1: what are you doing with this? This closing time is
Speaker 1: a smash? What's what's up with this? Like? And they're like,
Speaker 1: oh no, we you know, we we we we rejected
Speaker 1: that already. She's like, wait, give that to me. I'll
Speaker 1: make it huge. So it all worked out. You have, oh,
Speaker 1: just back the secret smile. Tell me about the dream
Speaker 1: and how much of the song came from the dream. Dream.
Speaker 1: The dream was the first verse. Nobody knows it, but
Speaker 1: you've got a secret smile. And the dream was so
Speaker 1: use it, improve it. It was that that was in
Speaker 1: the dream. Uh, there's no no, And then it looped
Speaker 1: back and I it was no second verse, and there
Speaker 1: was no bridge. Okay, so the dream was the actual
Speaker 1: songs or the dream was a woman who had a
Speaker 1: secret smile. No, the dream was the total the song.
Speaker 1: I you should know by now, I'm not dreaming about girls.
Speaker 1: I'm dreaming about songs. Okay, speaking of songs, you had
Speaker 1: a Vine series six seconds of basically information on songwriting.
Speaker 1: How did that come to be? That was? That was?
Speaker 1: That's kind of fun because that's that has continued in
Speaker 1: in the most lovely way. My manager Jim had seen
Speaker 1: um a vine series by a screenwriter named Um Coppelman. Uh,
Speaker 1: Brian Complan. Yes, I was basically on his first name,
Speaker 1: Brian Coppleman, and he had this things to be in
Speaker 1: the music business, right, So he had this thing where
Speaker 1: he was going to do a hundred days of six
Speaker 1: second screenwriting tips and I think he called it like
Speaker 1: writing a screenplay in six seconds or something like that.
Speaker 1: And my manager, Um, Jim, linked me to this on Vine.
Speaker 1: So you got to look at these. So I looked
Speaker 1: at them and I was like, this is amazing, and
Speaker 1: Jim goes, you could do this in music and I
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, you think so, and he said, just
Speaker 1: give it a try. So I was very resistant, and
Speaker 1: then I did like six or seven and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is really fun. I really like this, so I
Speaker 1: I started doing that now. Actually, right now, I'm in
Speaker 1: the midst of like, okaying, I've made a deck of
Speaker 1: cards based on this, and it's it's like each one
Speaker 1: has one of these six seconds comments on it and
Speaker 1: it's called words of Music in six seconds. But it's
Speaker 1: a deck of cards. Then what is the plan with
Speaker 1: the cards? Um? To have people give it to their
Speaker 1: niece who's a songwriter as a gift. Okay, how come
Speaker 1: until your manager told me about this, I didn't know
Speaker 1: about it. Not the cards but the six seconds. Um.
Speaker 1: That will have to be a question for people who
Speaker 1: understand the marketing and getting the word out. Well, the
Speaker 1: reason I mentioned this his most sheet is crap and
Speaker 1: I was unaware of this and I checked on it
Speaker 1: and it was brilliant. You know, it's funny you mentioned
Speaker 1: Rick Rubin. Rick Rubin is a Twitter feed You used
Speaker 1: to be very intermittent, now much more active, which is
Speaker 1: essentially this. But he ran out of things. It's you know,
Speaker 1: they don't always say yours is better than his. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's funny because yeah, I've noticed him kind of starting
Speaker 1: to do this, and I'm I'm curious if he's seen mine.
Speaker 1: I'm curious, but his the vibe of his are very different.
Speaker 1: Obviously it's it's very rick, but but I'm what I'm
Speaker 1: trying to do with with mine. I'm thank you for
Speaker 1: saying that you think it's cool, because I love it
Speaker 1: and I think I have a community um on you
Speaker 1: know social media that like I'm often here from people
Speaker 1: that are that will say, you know, when I have
Speaker 1: when I have a session, we we look online to
Speaker 1: see what your latest words of music in six seconds is,
Speaker 1: just to see if it inspires us. And to me,
Speaker 1: that feels like a role that's amazing that I can
Speaker 1: play in my songwriting community. So I hope, I hope
Speaker 1: we can make more of it. But why why didn't
Speaker 1: you know about it until my manager told you? I
Speaker 1: don't know. Let me ask you a different question and
Speaker 1: I'll get back to that. Okay, give us some of
Speaker 1: your greatest hits, you mean, in the in the six seconds? Okay,
Speaker 1: if you like it, then it's good. If it sounds
Speaker 1: good to you, then it sounds good. Okay, how do
Speaker 1: you come up with the since you're doing them on
Speaker 1: a regular basis. It's it's it's like it's like writing
Speaker 1: a song or being a writer. I'm like, oh, it's
Speaker 1: been a while since I've didn't I've done some. I
Speaker 1: could spend an afternoon and write a whole bunch. So
Speaker 1: I'll write like thirty or forty, and then they'll always
Speaker 1: be like three that are good, Okay, so you'll discard Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot a lot of them are because because it
Speaker 1: has to be pithy. It has to be a little
Speaker 1: it can't be just what you expect to hear. It
Speaker 1: can't be preachy. It's got to be um. There's gotta
Speaker 1: be a ray of hope and it. You know, it
Speaker 1: can't just be like never do this, you know, because
Speaker 1: that's just a drag. It's gotta it's gotta be. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of things that there's a needle to thread
Speaker 1: in my mind of how to make how to give
Speaker 1: first of all, how to give good advice. It's not easy.
Speaker 1: You don't want to bump people out. What's a secret
Speaker 1: to good advice? Well, I mean, it has to be actionable.
Speaker 1: It's got to be open ended. It's gotta it's gotta
Speaker 1: leave the person room to solve the problem. You know,
Speaker 1: it can't be the solution to the problems. It can't
Speaker 1: be like an algorithm to a Rubik's cube. It has
Speaker 1: to be it has to be like, you know, a
Speaker 1: guide for finding algorithms to Rubik's cube. You know, it can't.
Speaker 1: You can't just solve the problem for the person it's
Speaker 1: It has to be um. It has to leave open
Speaker 1: ended the possibility that the advisor is wrong. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of things that that you know, people try to
Speaker 1: give advice. It usually sucks, it's usually terrible. Well, I find,
Speaker 1: generally speaking, when people don't listen to the advice anyway,
Speaker 1: so it's great and they do what they want. They
Speaker 1: just wanted you to say that you're that their thing
Speaker 1: was great. I can also spot that if someone's like,
Speaker 1: listen to my song and tell me what you think,
Speaker 1: and I listened and I talked to them for ten seconds,
Speaker 1: I can tell if they really want me to say anything.
Speaker 1: Usually they don't. They just want me to say, you
Speaker 1: are fucking amazing. I love what you've done. I got
Speaker 1: in a couple of bad experiences because I feel bad
Speaker 1: for people. I've literally sat there with a and our
Speaker 1: people say you know, listen, I told this guy's version,
Speaker 1: but I'm never signing his act and I've talked to
Speaker 1: the actual Oh I'm gonna make a deal. Okay. So
Speaker 1: I used to be honest. Okay, and not only do
Speaker 1: people not want to hear it, they go on Vendetta's.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've had some really bad experience on a
Speaker 1: macrobe up okay, you know, and therefore I don't pretty
Speaker 1: much never respond to anybody in the quality of their
Speaker 1: music because the way you know you said it exactly
Speaker 1: nails it. But going back, we talked about Rick. His
Speaker 1: tweets are basically Graham Puba like he produces record. Let
Speaker 1: me get you in the head space so that you
Speaker 1: can be creative. Most of the people who are giving advice,
Speaker 1: especially in the music business, which is a dumb business,
Speaker 1: they're doing it because they want to write a book,
Speaker 1: to make money or to improve their image. Okay, anybody
Speaker 1: who does it out of a genuine care. Okay, they
Speaker 1: don't even see this appen. So as soon as I
Speaker 1: saw them, I really had no idea. It's talking like
Speaker 1: IM blown, smoke up your ass, But I was really stunned.
Speaker 1: I just figured it being you know, some craft but
Speaker 1: not only was it correct, you could get a vibe
Speaker 1: for the person who was doing it. It was quite
Speaker 1: definitely you. That's that's it's like a it's writing. It's
Speaker 1: a piece of writing. It's not just words, and it's
Speaker 1: not just a functional it's a piece of writing because
Speaker 1: that helps. Like if it was poorly written, how could
Speaker 1: the advice have any teeth? It's got to be like
Speaker 1: beautiful because otherwise people would would would understand subconsciously that
Speaker 1: this sucks. I can't listen to this guy. Well, you
Speaker 1: open up a real can of worms there, because most
Speaker 1: stuff does suck, and and most people are playing to
Speaker 1: the audience. So to do it your way and to
Speaker 1: show some identity. This is one of the things you
Speaker 1: know in music forget you know, people say, don't make
Speaker 1: it too general. People relate most when it's specific, when
Speaker 1: you talk about a specific example in your life. So
Speaker 1: there's a whole business of people giving advice, and your
Speaker 1: advice and your six seconds was better than any of
Speaker 1: the advice that uh that I've come across. Now, one
Speaker 1: thing I've learned is people, as I say, end up
Speaker 1: doing what they want to do. But if you know,
Speaker 1: if this songwriting thing didn't work out for you. You
Speaker 1: could create a business with this advice. You can have
Speaker 1: a weekend seminar with this advice. Do it Rick style.
Speaker 1: Give the advice and then don't be too involved until
Speaker 1: the end. Don't be hands on in the middle. Whatever
Speaker 1: you know, try try to get the people inspired. I
Speaker 1: think the fact that you're doing the cards is really good,
Speaker 1: but it's a little still, a little too inside baseball
Speaker 1: and the But the other thing is there needs to
Speaker 1: be stories, like there should be a blurb on this
Speaker 1: in the off duty section of the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 1: It's on Saturdays, because people with money, they're frequently frustrated artists,
Speaker 1: and they buy this for their kids. Okay, you put it.
Speaker 1: You put it in a music magazine that people are
Speaker 1: too cheap to buy it. Wait, I'm gonna write this down, Okay,
Speaker 1: And you know you should also certainly get it and
Speaker 1: if you can with a story and best bets in
Speaker 1: New York magazine, how do you reach a thinking audience,
Speaker 1: because since music gets no risk back from the other
Speaker 1: art forms movies and books, it's certainly books. They think
Speaker 1: they're high falutin when you bring something somewhat intellectual where
Speaker 1: they have to come to you. That's advantageous, but I
Speaker 1: don't want to go too much more down that because
Speaker 1: that's our that's between you and me. How does how
Speaker 1: does someone end up being able to write a song
Speaker 1: with you? Well? People, Um, the way it works is, uh,
Speaker 1: my publisher or Jim or the world will um put
Speaker 1: an idea in front of me, like I might see
Speaker 1: somebody online, or I might I might think I'd love
Speaker 1: to meet that person or whatever, and or um, my
Speaker 1: publisher will say that we've got this you know young artists,
Speaker 1: that's so good and would you have coffee with them? Um,
Speaker 1: or you know, my manager Jim will say, there's a
Speaker 1: there's a in our and our person is going crazy
Speaker 1: about this artist. They really really want you to listen,
Speaker 1: and I'll listen. So I listened to a bunch of music.
Speaker 1: Usually if I have coffee with someone, it's already decided
Speaker 1: because I usually like everybody. So I'll be like, oh,
Speaker 1: that were they were great, that was amazing, Like, for sure,
Speaker 1: I'll write a song with them, But but there's a
Speaker 1: lot of effort that goes into just not like during
Speaker 1: COVID you can write a song on zoom, you know,
Speaker 1: but it's twice as exhausting as it was in person.
Speaker 1: You know, you're you're depleted instead of inflated at the end.
Speaker 1: And it's it's it's a it's got its limits, I
Speaker 1: would say. So I'm doing like two sessions with people
Speaker 1: a week, maybe three, but probably two. I like to
Speaker 1: have two days with a person. I like to sleep
Speaker 1: on it and come back to the same song. That's
Speaker 1: harder to do during COVID, but it's been doable, and
Speaker 1: it's harder for me to do because that means I
Speaker 1: really only would be writing one song a week, but
Speaker 1: I'd rather I'd rather have that second day with a person.
Speaker 1: And uh, the main thing I listened for is like,
Speaker 1: is you know raw songwriting? Like are the words cool?
Speaker 1: Is there something unique being said in the words and
Speaker 1: the and is the melody getting me? It's more like
Speaker 1: the words and the resonance of the person's voice, just
Speaker 1: the shape of the sound of their voice, Like is
Speaker 1: it when they go for a note, is it bigger
Speaker 1: because of their resonance? You know when they say a word,
Speaker 1: does it shine a little extra because of their literally
Speaker 1: just the tone of their head, you know, the way
Speaker 1: they sound. And that's kind of what I'm looking for
Speaker 1: is like that resonance and a person who has something
Speaker 1: to say, okay, is it a slog or you're just
Speaker 1: building to that moment of inspiration and it writes itself
Speaker 1: half half and half like I never find it to
Speaker 1: be well. I find it to be a slog if
Speaker 1: the person is too uncertain, if my collaborator is too unsure,
Speaker 1: if they're so unsure that they're also secondhand smoke unsure
Speaker 1: of my ideas as well. I find that to be
Speaker 1: a slog. And sometimes a person's insecurities or uncertainties or
Speaker 1: wish to be great makes it hard for them to
Speaker 1: recognize a great idea in front of their nose. And
Speaker 1: and that is to me difficult. If I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm like, if I'm like channeling something really good right now,
Speaker 1: and you're like, I don't know, maybe should be working
Speaker 1: on something else, I immediately start thinking, Okay, this is
Speaker 1: a slog because I just saying something really great. And
Speaker 1: I'm not a total egomaniac, so I I know when
Speaker 1: i'm like really on, and I know when I'm okay, okay.
Speaker 1: Desmond Child, who's written a lot of very successful records
Speaker 1: the Internet era. He's saying, you know, the economics have changed.
Speaker 1: If it's not gonna be the emphasis track, shall we
Speaker 1: say the single? He doesn't even want to start because
Speaker 1: you know, in terms of you got the fourth song
Speaker 1: on the album is to be carried by the CD.
Speaker 1: Now there's nothing right, So do you make any choices
Speaker 1: based on that? Well, um, I mean yes and no.
Speaker 1: Like often enough, a song that I work on gets
Speaker 1: the emphasis, so I'm not discouraged about that. I also
Speaker 1: don't necessarily at this moment um want to just I mean,
Speaker 1: it sounds like Desmond would be willing to just stop
Speaker 1: making music. If he doesn't isn't getting any emphasis track
Speaker 1: on somebody's record. But for me, that's no. He's you know,
Speaker 1: like many people, he's evolving Broadway shows. It's not like
Speaker 1: he's not busy, but he's not always going to song
Speaker 1: writing sessions with a person. That makes sense to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So you know, I can sometimes tell when you know,
Speaker 1: if an artist and a label, uh want to work
Speaker 1: with me? Oh. This is sort of weird to say,
Speaker 1: but I feel like sometimes a label will think, oh,
Speaker 1: this artist needs to hang out with Dan because then
Speaker 1: they'll get their mojo back. And I'm fine, with that.
Speaker 1: But but I don't want that to be my job
Speaker 1: getting people's mojo back. I want to make I want
Speaker 1: to make great songs. Okay, you talked about secret smile
Speaker 1: coming to you in a dream? Are the best song
Speaker 1: songs like that the come to you in a flash?
Speaker 1: Or can it be a song equally good if it
Speaker 1: had been a slog? Well, it's more like you can.
Speaker 1: You can duke it out with a song. You can
Speaker 1: be like in a session with somebody or alone, and
Speaker 1: you can be trying and trying and trying, and that's
Speaker 1: usually not if you just if you're only doing that
Speaker 1: all the way to the end, it's not going to
Speaker 1: be great. But sometimes you know, during the slog, you
Speaker 1: accidentally take a wrong turn or you you leave the
Speaker 1: path you know, and you're suddenly you're in a wait
Speaker 1: a minute, something is is good? Now, something just happened
Speaker 1: that was good. Then if you have the balls to
Speaker 1: to cut out the previous three hours of work and
Speaker 1: just work on the one line that is it obviously happening,
Speaker 1: that can be the flash of inspiration that comes out
Speaker 1: of a slog. I'm definitely a believer and like I
Speaker 1: had a painting and printmaking instructor who said, um, you know,
Speaker 1: go to the studio every day even if you're not inspired,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, why why should I go to the
Speaker 1: studio if I'm not inspired, I'd rather go to the bar,
Speaker 1: and she goes, yeah, But if you go to the
Speaker 1: bar and the muse visits your studio, you're not gonna
Speaker 1: be there. So I'd rather have the slog because sometimes
Speaker 1: in the middle of the slog, like lightning strikes and
Speaker 1: you're like, oh shit, this is amazing, you know. So
Speaker 1: I find usually the best this is solo work. In
Speaker 1: my case, the best inspiration usually comes in the shower
Speaker 1: or when you know, I'm completely distracted by watching a
Speaker 1: movie or television show, when my head is sold so
Speaker 1: out of it. In terms of the work in the office,
Speaker 1: I find I have to slow down enough well you
Speaker 1: just kind of drift him and then all of a
Speaker 1: sudden something for the muse to me to reach. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I get that. That makes sense to me. And that's
Speaker 1: like that sense of aimlessness is hard. It's hard to
Speaker 1: kind of even the word achieve is the right word.
Speaker 1: It's hard to achieve that kind of aimlessness. It's hard.
Speaker 1: It's hard to fake you cannot get yourself. Okay, how
Speaker 1: did you end up working with Chris Stapleton? Stapleton, I
Speaker 1: can't remember who saw him first. There was this clip
Speaker 1: that I saw online of Stapleton playing, Um, it wasn't
Speaker 1: whiskey and you it was another song of his playing
Speaker 1: a song at like a state fair and he was
Speaker 1: it was with the steel drivers, Oh it was. It
Speaker 1: was if it Hadn't Been for Love? And uh, he
Speaker 1: was singing this song and there's people talking and someone
Speaker 1: holding their phone, and there's people talking, and there's noise
Speaker 1: and he's playing in one of those kind of like
Speaker 1: the the tractor part of a semi trailer with the
Speaker 1: side flipped up that does a temporary stage, you know,
Speaker 1: and uh, he singing this song. It's all this background
Speaker 1: noise and he's singing if it Hadn't Been for Love,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, this is unbelievable. This guy is amazing,
Speaker 1: Like I can hear it through the noise. And so then, um,
Speaker 1: my manager Jim and I, Uh, every once in a
Speaker 1: while he would he would send me, like we'd send
Speaker 1: each other the same clip like you having a bad day,
Speaker 1: you got to hear this, and and we'd send each
Speaker 1: other the same clip, and uh, eventually there was this.
Speaker 1: I was asked to write with the Preservational Jazz Band.
Speaker 1: I was like, something, we gotta someone has to come along,
Speaker 1: who can like bridge the gap between like me and
Speaker 1: the Preservational Jazz band who's good at lyrics? And Stapleton
Speaker 1: was like, maybe maybe he'll come. So basically, oh, and
Speaker 1: I had done and in the round with him where
Speaker 1: I sang after him at an ASCAP show, it was
Speaker 1: like four writers. It was like Ingram Michaelson and Johnny
Speaker 1: Resnick and Chris Stapleton and me. So every time we
Speaker 1: went around, I had to sing after one of Chris's
Speaker 1: crazy amazing like soul full, you know, like what do
Speaker 1: you call this? Like blockbuster, you know, hit songs. So
Speaker 1: I and we had a fun time on that show,
Speaker 1: and we we talked all of that after, right, So
Speaker 1: I called him up. I said, can you come down
Speaker 1: to New Orleans with me and write with the Preservational
Speaker 1: Jazz Band? This is before Traveler And he was like yeah,
Speaker 1: but Dan, you know, I don't know anything about jazz.
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, I know, but I think it's gonna
Speaker 1: be cool. So we had we in the band, the
Speaker 1: you know, the Press Hall band, and and Chris and
Speaker 1: I had an amazing long weekend, like four days of
Speaker 1: songwriting and laughing and fun. And then when Chris would
Speaker 1: come to l A for one thing or another, he'd
Speaker 1: come by my house and we'd write. We'd write a song,
Speaker 1: not really first particularly a purpose. And then that one
Speaker 1: of those songs was when the Stars Come Out and
Speaker 1: he and he put it on Traveler and one of
Speaker 1: the best songs on that album. Okay, in the twenty
Speaker 1: odd years you have left, what do you want to do?
Speaker 1: What do you want to achieve? Oh? Man, I'd like
Speaker 1: to go to Paris again. I want to keep and
Speaker 1: I want to keep making music. I want to um see,
Speaker 1: you know my middle schooler grow up and graduate and
Speaker 1: have a life. I want to keep meeting amazing brilliant
Speaker 1: artists and see if we can't make something incredible together.
Speaker 1: And where does a painting fit in. I don't really
Speaker 1: paint anymore because it takes a lot of like infrastructure,
Speaker 1: you have to have a house that's with an extra
Speaker 1: room where you can be very messy, and I haven't
Speaker 1: had that for a while. And I guess maybe I
Speaker 1: haven't like prioritized it. I always try to do visual things,
Speaker 1: like you know, I'm I did. I did the design
Speaker 1: on this book of cards. It's you know, it was
Speaker 1: a fun exercise for me. I do. I make um
Speaker 1: drawings in my journals and I keep that part of
Speaker 1: myself alive. But it's it isn't really part of my
Speaker 1: vision for the future to like retire from music and
Speaker 1: be a painter. Nothing of the sort. Not like Joni Mitchell.
Speaker 1: Why Paris. I just the couple of times I've been there,
Speaker 1: I've just enjoyed it so much. I just I just
Speaker 1: love that place. I want to go back to. Speaking
Speaker 1: of art, I want to go back to the Louver,
Speaker 1: and I want to see the tweeries and I want
Speaker 1: to see um l Entrelie, you know, I want to
Speaker 1: see those places again. Well, you know, it's twenty I
Speaker 1: hadn't been for a long time, and I went five
Speaker 1: years ago, and the one thing I noticed was the light.
Speaker 1: The light really is different in Paris. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like it's hard to fathom until you're there. You go, okay,
Speaker 1: I can tell why the artwork, etcetera. And certainly you know,
Speaker 1: going to see all the museums. You know, I pretty exhaustively.
Speaker 1: It's pretty astounding. Yeah, yeah, it's definitely that's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not really a do you know, I've had a lot.
Speaker 1: I've had a lot of good fortune, So it's not
Speaker 1: like I it's not like my my list has more
Speaker 1: success on it. And what do you think you moved
Speaker 1: from Minneapolis l A. You're cool with l A or
Speaker 1: I love it? Because I love it. I have It's
Speaker 1: with me about a year and a half to realize
Speaker 1: that when I moved here that I didn't need to
Speaker 1: change who I am. I could just stay being me.
Speaker 1: I already had a circle of friends, I knew the
Speaker 1: people that I wanted to play on the records. I
Speaker 1: didn't have to become some sort of pop version of myself. Um.
Speaker 1: And once I realized that, like, it was almost like
Speaker 1: l A just opened up to me, like, oh no,
Speaker 1: now you can meet some really smart people. Okay, here's
Speaker 1: here's some neuroscientists for you to talk to. Here's you know,
Speaker 1: someone to have lunch and talk about that. Like, I
Speaker 1: just like the It's like l A has so many
Speaker 1: brilliant people and there's a level of even though it's
Speaker 1: got a bad rap on this score, there's a level
Speaker 1: of idealism that I really really resonate with. Okay, and
Speaker 1: going back to the muse, do you create every day? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Pretty much Like even if I have like a crazy
Speaker 1: chocolate block day and there's no room, I've probably played
Speaker 1: piano for like forty minutes that day, or guitar something.
Speaker 1: Try to think of a riff or think of a
Speaker 1: phrase ease. And prior to going this covid era, if
Speaker 1: you went on vacation, would you take a hiatus or
Speaker 1: create then too. I kind of have an agreement with
Speaker 1: my wife that I'm not going to bring a guitar
Speaker 1: and play guitar all day long in a vacation. That's
Speaker 1: not fair, So I actually do take breaks on vacations. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: this has been wonderful, Dan. I think we've gotten a
Speaker 1: lot of insight into your life in your process, and
Speaker 1: I could and I could tell why you're successful. And
Speaker 1: thanks so much for doing this. A total pleasure, really
Speaker 1: it It is a really nice conversation and it's good
Speaker 1: to giving him until next time. This is Bob left
Speaker 1: six