Speaker 1: Pushkin. Just a quick note here. You can listen to
Speaker 1: all of the music mentioned in this episode on our playlist,
Speaker 1: which you can find a link to in the show
Speaker 1: notes for licensing reasons, each time a song is referenced
Speaker 1: in this episode, you'll hear this sound effect all right,
Speaker 1: and enjoy the episode. This is Wintertime, a song off
Speaker 1: Nora Jones's album that came out this past spring. Begin Again,
Speaker 1: Malcolm Gladwell and Bruce had them of absolutely fallen in
Speaker 1: love with this tune. Wilco's frontman, Jeff Tweety started writing
Speaker 1: it some time ago before discarding it somewhere along the way.
Speaker 1: During a recording session with Nora Jones. The two of
Speaker 1: them picked it back up and brushed it off together
Speaker 1: to make this In case you don't remember, Nora Jones
Speaker 1: had a massive hit seventeen years ago with her debut
Speaker 1: single Don't Know Why, which has basically become a standard
Speaker 1: in the American songbook thanks to her minimalist performance. After that,
Speaker 1: she did a run of solo albums, but also did
Speaker 1: a lot of collaborating a song with Ray Charles, the
Speaker 1: song with Willie Nelson, whole albums with producer Danger Mouse,
Speaker 1: but recently, Nora's discovered a new way of collaborating. She
Speaker 1: talks with Malcolm and Bruce about why this new way
Speaker 1: feels so good. She also takes a seat at the
Speaker 1: piano and plays through some of the new songs on
Speaker 1: her record, and also talks about some of the ways
Speaker 1: she coped with her son and fame in two thousand
Speaker 1: and two. This is Broken Record Season three, liner notes
Speaker 1: for the Digital Age. I'm justin Richmond. Here is Malcolm
Speaker 1: and Bruce's conversation with Nora Jones from Bridge Studio in Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: Bruce and I are mildly obsessed with wintertime, and we
Speaker 1: thought we would start there, not the season, the song,
Speaker 1: not the season. We want to go as deep as
Speaker 1: you want to go on that and where it comes
Speaker 1: from and how you went about writing it, and well,
Speaker 1: I don't want to disappoint you too much on that one.
Speaker 1: But I went to record with Jeff Tweetie in Chicago
Speaker 1: and which was really amazing and fun. We wrote several
Speaker 1: songs together and this was one that he sort of
Speaker 1: had the scraps already, yeah, lying around, so we picked
Speaker 1: it up and dusted it off and tweaked it and
Speaker 1: put some clothes on it and changed it around, and
Speaker 1: then it sort of came even there. I have another questions,
Speaker 1: when did you first meet Jeff Tweetie. It must be
Speaker 1: at least ten or fifteen years ago, probably no more,
Speaker 1: because I think I met him for the first time
Speaker 1: on my first record when I did the Jewels Holland Show,
Speaker 1: so that must have been two thousand and two. Gosh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been a long time. And Wilco did it as well.
Speaker 1: And I was already a fan because that was right
Speaker 1: when Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was out, and over the years,
Speaker 1: I've just sort of seen him around a lot. We
Speaker 1: worked with a lot of the same people and we've
Speaker 1: always been really friendly. Wilco had me and my band
Speaker 1: put some boots come hang out with them when they
Speaker 1: open up for Neil. They let us sit in on
Speaker 1: Jesus et cetera, which was really fine. That must have
Speaker 1: been fun, yeah, which you've done too, which we covered. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So we covered Jesus et Cetera in this band a
Speaker 1: man called Puss and Boots, Sasha top Set and Katherine
Speaker 1: Popper and myself and we did the Bridge School with
Speaker 1: them one year and and Cat and Sasha are pretty saucy,
Speaker 1: and Cat goes up to Tweety and says, hey, dude,
Speaker 1: are you going to do Jesus et cetera in your set?
Speaker 1: And he's like, oh, no, no, we might do that.
Speaker 1: And she's like, well, we're pooting in in our set
Speaker 1: and we're going first. So so we literally just like
Speaker 1: went ahead and play their song before they went on.
Speaker 1: We just enjoyed each other's like kind of rimming each
Speaker 1: other after that. Yeah, no, is that? So there's two
Speaker 1: categories here. There are categories of people that you're fans
Speaker 1: of and categories of people that you want to work with.
Speaker 1: Are they the same or are they different? Well, I
Speaker 1: think in making lists of collaborating with people, because this
Speaker 1: is what I'm trying to do right now is just
Speaker 1: do these singles and work with different people and with
Speaker 1: low pressure stakes, you know, like just one song. It's
Speaker 1: the only goal. And I figured out that, yes, they
Speaker 1: are different. I can be a fan of someone and
Speaker 1: have no idea how to insert myself into their world
Speaker 1: or them into mine. Yeah, that doesn't mean it can't
Speaker 1: happen once you get in the room. It might be
Speaker 1: totally magical, But unless I have some kind of an
Speaker 1: idea of something I want to try. Then I'm not
Speaker 1: going to just reach out somebody and said let's go
Speaker 1: get in a room and just stare at each other.
Speaker 1: You know, it's easier. I can imagine. It's not hard
Speaker 1: for me to understand that you would listen to Will
Speaker 1: go and meet Jeff Tweety and say, oh, that makes sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think we should probably do a record
Speaker 1: together at some point. And it was so fun and
Speaker 1: you know, we both play enough of enough instruments to
Speaker 1: sort of just have the two of us with the drummer.
Speaker 1: His son, Spencer Tweety was playing drums, and we did
Speaker 1: all the stuff with just the three of us, and
Speaker 1: that kind of recording is really fun. So you have
Speaker 1: this idea now that you want to do these kind
Speaker 1: of one offs with people that are where did that?
Speaker 1: How did you come to that? It's really it sounds
Speaker 1: like a really really but I'm surprised that more people
Speaker 1: don't do that. But I'm well, I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people do do it, but they don't like call
Speaker 1: it what it is. Maybe, But it was actually my
Speaker 1: husband's idea. He was saying, you have all these resources
Speaker 1: to do something easy like this, why don't you do it?
Speaker 1: It's like, gosh, why don't I that's a great idea
Speaker 1: and what a fun way to just make music. I
Speaker 1: have little kids, you know, I don't want to My
Speaker 1: attention span is very short, just like everybody's nowadays. But
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's really fun to be musical and
Speaker 1: be doing things and have it come out quicker than
Speaker 1: if you do a full album, you know, and that's
Speaker 1: why is sort of the nature of the internet and everything.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's good. But now you've questioned, why
Speaker 1: is it easier to work with someone who you may
Speaker 1: know as a friend but haven't actually worked before than
Speaker 1: it is to work with someone who you've been writing
Speaker 1: songs with the making music with for ten years. Well,
Speaker 1: for me, I mean I don't like to take a
Speaker 1: long time to record music or write songs or I
Speaker 1: mean I'll think about a song if it's not done.
Speaker 1: You know it's not done and you want to tweak it.
Speaker 1: But you know, some people go in and they take
Speaker 1: three years to make an album. That's not how. I
Speaker 1: get bored and I want to move on to something else.
Speaker 1: So for me, I mean, it's fun three days in
Speaker 1: a studio with someone, it's plenty to get one song,
Speaker 1: and in all these cases we've gotten three to seven
Speaker 1: songs each session, which has been great, and maybe not
Speaker 1: all of them are amazing, but it's really fun. It's
Speaker 1: just a fun way to work. It's low pressure to
Speaker 1: get somebody to commit to something, somebody who maybe I
Speaker 1: don't know that well or is very busy, I don't know.
Speaker 1: For me, it's not scary so much as it is
Speaker 1: it has been a little bit stressful because there have
Speaker 1: been many of these sessions where I've gone in and
Speaker 1: I'm so underprepared. I'm like, Okay, I don't really have
Speaker 1: a full song at all in case we can't come
Speaker 1: up with anything, because I try to have something in case,
Speaker 1: you know, we're drawing blanks in there. What is what
Speaker 1: is another day? Dumb question? What is something? I have
Speaker 1: all these voice memos on my phone, you know that
Speaker 1: I make in the batstub because that's the only piece
Speaker 1: in quiet I get. And you know, some of them
Speaker 1: are just like a small snippet of a melody. It's
Speaker 1: like na da da da da da, whatever it is.
Speaker 1: And sometimes those little somethings stick in my head for
Speaker 1: months or years and I'll go back to them. And
Speaker 1: that's like when I worked with Thomas Bartlett, that's all
Speaker 1: I had was I had a few lyrics and I
Speaker 1: had a few melodies, and we just turned them into
Speaker 1: songs in the studio. And I guess my point is, like,
Speaker 1: sometimes I'm a little stressed and underprepared when I'm going
Speaker 1: into these sessions, but I know and I have faith
Speaker 1: in the process and that when I get into the
Speaker 1: studio and I can focus and like all the noise
Speaker 1: isn't surrounding me and I'm with somebody who inspires me
Speaker 1: and hopefully they are the same, then it happens and
Speaker 1: I don't know, we haven't gotten nothing yet. Yeah, I'll
Speaker 1: say that how many how many ideas would you have
Speaker 1: on your phone right now? Right now, I'm pretty dry,
Speaker 1: but I have a lot of old ideas. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: you can't change phones because you're well, yeah, exactly, you're
Speaker 1: locked in. I'm locked in. Yeah, I missed my own
Speaker 1: voice recorder. Sometimes what's the longest time that's a lapse
Speaker 1: between a stippet of an idea and a song It
Speaker 1: actually appeared on an album. There's a song I wrote
Speaker 1: with this friend Ilhan Risanna used to be in a
Speaker 1: band called wax Poetic when I first moved to New
Speaker 1: York in like nineteen ninety nine, and we wrote this
Speaker 1: song together and that band didn't make another album and
Speaker 1: it kind of petered out and it continued without me.
Speaker 1: I wasn't in it anymore. But then I kind of
Speaker 1: dug up that song and put it on my third
Speaker 1: out about So that's how many years I have you beat?
Speaker 1: Because I just did that podcast episode that was inspired
Speaker 1: by an interview that I did in nineteen ninety two. Wow,
Speaker 1: And I thought about it for that long, For twenty
Speaker 1: five years, I always wanted to do something and finally
Speaker 1: did it. So I love other words. My point is,
Speaker 1: you know you can revisit the stuff when you're as
Speaker 1: old as I am. Yeah, these ideas don't really leave
Speaker 1: your sort of being until they become something. But I
Speaker 1: think for a lot of people listening to old ideas,
Speaker 1: it would make them intensely uncomfortable because they would hear
Speaker 1: the mistakes, the things that aren't so good. Are you
Speaker 1: like that at all? Can you can you turn off
Speaker 1: whatever critical voice you have that? Yeah, I'm not too
Speaker 1: critical of myself because I learned when I. When I
Speaker 1: first my first record came out, I had just started
Speaker 1: writing songs because that voice I could not turn off
Speaker 1: until then. I wrote songs in high school and they
Speaker 1: were so horrible. I was so embarrassed and I never
Speaker 1: wanted to do it again. Did you perform them? Well, Like,
Speaker 1: I went to this performing arts high school, which was amazing,
Speaker 1: and so we were all very encouraged. So like it
Speaker 1: ended up on the you know, the high school tape.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I you know, it was out there and
Speaker 1: I was like, I want to put it back in.
Speaker 1: I don't like it, but yeah, when you're young, that
Speaker 1: stuff can be a little embarrassing, and so I definitely
Speaker 1: shut down. And then I got into songwriting. When I
Speaker 1: moved to New York. I only had two two and
Speaker 1: a half songs on my first album because I was
Speaker 1: really new at it. And then after that, after a
Speaker 1: couple of albums, I got more and more into it.
Speaker 1: And then I got really kind of down on myself
Speaker 1: and frustrated. And then I had this whole thing with songwriting,
Speaker 1: and I finally realized I don't have to show anybody anything.
Speaker 1: Just finish the damn song, do as much as you
Speaker 1: want to and make it as cheesy as it is
Speaker 1: or whatever, and then in the end you can discard it.
Speaker 1: You don't have to show the world if you don't
Speaker 1: like it, but see it through. That's a good lesson
Speaker 1: for It's a good lesson for a lot of things,
Speaker 1: but especial. But that's what kind of freed you up to,
Speaker 1: kind of freed me up. Yeah, because you did start
Speaker 1: writing after you became famous. I started writing more, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And you learned the guitar yeah, after you became famous.
Speaker 1: So that takes a nerve. I mean for me, I
Speaker 1: was just trying to stay inspired. The fame and the
Speaker 1: kind of crazy whirlwind that was my first record. It
Speaker 1: took a lot of took a lot away from like
Speaker 1: the point, which was staying inspired and making music I
Speaker 1: really loved. You know, were you working with somebody in
Speaker 1: the kind of pairings that you're describing now, how often
Speaker 1: do they make you realize you may have been wrong
Speaker 1: about something, like you're talking about how you have these
Speaker 1: old things and sometimes they don't work. How often does
Speaker 1: the second voice in a room say, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: that does work. I love it when that happens. That's
Speaker 1: my favorite thing. It does happen. Yeah, it happens sometimes.
Speaker 1: You know, when you get in a room with somebody
Speaker 1: you're like, well, I have this idea. It might be stupid,
Speaker 1: or like it's your nature to be self mine anyway,
Speaker 1: to be self deprecating, and I be like checking out
Speaker 1: this awesome idea. But you know, like, oh, I don't know,
Speaker 1: is this dumb? Check this out? No, that's not dumb.
Speaker 1: That's like what you want to hear for sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or their particular collaborators who are just good at that,
Speaker 1: at hearing things that you don't hear. Brian Burton, I
Speaker 1: mean Danger Mouse is he's really good at that. He's
Speaker 1: amazing at it. And not only musically he has hooks
Speaker 1: for days, but also lyrically, he's really good at it.
Speaker 1: He was someone I was really self conscious, Like, I
Speaker 1: wasn't nervous about the project, but when it came down
Speaker 1: to lyrics sometimes I was sort of nervous to show
Speaker 1: him my lyrics sometimes because it was very it was
Speaker 1: all very personal. Lyrics are very different than showing a
Speaker 1: musical idea. They're way more exposed, I think, and naked,
Speaker 1: especially for some one who's a little late to the
Speaker 1: lyric party. You know, so I was definitely more self
Speaker 1: conscious showing him my lyrics, and I don't know that
Speaker 1: he was, but his lyrics were really great. The more
Speaker 1: we wrote together, the more self conscious like out because
Speaker 1: I realized his lyrics were so great. But I was
Speaker 1: also very comfortable with him, so I thought, well, he's
Speaker 1: like my big brother. Let's let's just do this. But
Speaker 1: he's really good at that. Is there a song that
Speaker 1: comes to mind from your collaboration with him that you
Speaker 1: think is so the best example of the two of
Speaker 1: you rook and you get. The whole album was super collaborative. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there wasn't a lot of like scraps that were brought
Speaker 1: to the table as much as you know some other things,
Speaker 1: but lyrically, like, I've been going back and I love
Speaker 1: playing songs from that album. Sometimes there's songs from old
Speaker 1: albums that I just that I still like but I
Speaker 1: don't really connect with at this moment in time. Doesn't
Speaker 1: mean I won't again, it doesn't mean I never have.
Speaker 1: But that's how playing live, that's kind of how it goes.
Speaker 1: Pick songs that you're connecting with in the moment, and
Speaker 1: some of the songs when I throw them into the
Speaker 1: set from that record. It's like, whoa, these lyrics are
Speaker 1: so great. I'm so happy, you know. Yeah, We've been
Speaker 1: doing a song called stay Goodbye and the lyrics are
Speaker 1: really good. I think, do you try and do it
Speaker 1: in thee because I had that album had such a
Speaker 1: great sounds. It's his sound, that's him, Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: don't mean that like he makes the same sound over. No,
Speaker 1: he's a little like Brian Eno. He's sort of it's
Speaker 1: like he's created a little universe somewhere that you kind
Speaker 1: of flowed into. Do you try and kind of reproduce
Speaker 1: that on stage or do you do it in a
Speaker 1: different setting? I did more and when we toured that album,
Speaker 1: and we had a great band who could do it
Speaker 1: without it being contrived, you know, like we only had
Speaker 1: it was a five piece band. It was me, a keyboard,
Speaker 1: organ player, guitar, bass, and drums. It wasn't like it
Speaker 1: wasn't like we were obsessed with recreating the album sound,
Speaker 1: but we did a good job of doing it. Now, however,
Speaker 1: I'm really into stripping it back a little bit and
Speaker 1: not trying to recreate it. And I'm into rearranging some things,
Speaker 1: and especially with that album because the soundscape was so specific.
Speaker 1: Unless it's a natural thing for me to recreate live,
Speaker 1: I'd rather not try to be married to the sounds
Speaker 1: and just serve the song, because they're great songs even
Speaker 1: without all that. And that's the great thing about that album.
Speaker 1: When we come back, Malcolm and Bruce picked back up
Speaker 1: with their obsession with the song winter Time that Noah
Speaker 1: wrote with Wilco's Jeff Tweety. We're back with more from
Speaker 1: Nora Jones. So, Jeff Tweety, do you call him upet
Speaker 1: hey tweet? Calm tweet? No, you're just kidding. How did you? Who?
Speaker 1: How did you? I want to? I want, I want,
Speaker 1: I want the absolute details on this. You just call
Speaker 1: him out of the blue and said, hey, let's work together. Well,
Speaker 1: Jeff Tweety, I used to have his phone number, but
Speaker 1: he stopped returning my my text and then I got
Speaker 1: this text once from him, like I hadn't heard from
Speaker 1: him in two years. He's like, hey, I just got
Speaker 1: all your texts. I'm sorry. I didn't really check my
Speaker 1: phone much. I was like, dude, that's fine, but that
Speaker 1: was like a long time ago. But so I didn't
Speaker 1: know if I had his inphone anymore. But yeah, Tom
Speaker 1: Shick is a great engineer who I used to work
Speaker 1: with in New York a lot, and he moved to
Speaker 1: Chicago to be Jeff's house engineer at his studio and
Speaker 1: he so Tom's an old friend of mine. So I
Speaker 1: had just told Tom, I said, Hey, here's what I'm
Speaker 1: trying to do. See if Tweety's into it. I would
Speaker 1: love to do this with you and him, because that
Speaker 1: would be a dream to go to Chicago, check out
Speaker 1: the studio, finally work with Tom again and work with Jeff.
Speaker 1: Let's keep going on this narrative. Show up, you're you
Speaker 1: walk in? Do you what do you have with you
Speaker 1: when you enter the studio to work with Jeff Tweety.
Speaker 1: I had a couple of scraps. I was very underprepared,
Speaker 1: but I had I had a couple little tiny ideas.
Speaker 1: One of them was completely written santaneously on the couch,
Speaker 1: and that's the version that's recorded pretty much. It's called
Speaker 1: song with No Name, and we were just sitting I
Speaker 1: think that's the first thing we did the first day.
Speaker 1: We were both kind of shy, even though we knew
Speaker 1: we shouldn't be. I think he was a little shy
Speaker 1: and I was a little shy about just jumping in
Speaker 1: and giving all our ideas. You know, we're sensitive people,
Speaker 1: we're artists, right, So we're just sitting on the couch.
Speaker 1: He has a collection in sane collection of guitars, so
Speaker 1: I just picked one up and it was tuned really weird,
Speaker 1: and so we both just started playing. I'm not a
Speaker 1: great guitar player, but like, it's just a little acoustic part,
Speaker 1: and he and I just both started playing this part together.
Speaker 1: And Tom is such an amazing person to work with
Speaker 1: because he just had a mic set up and he
Speaker 1: just breast record and so we just started playing it
Speaker 1: and then I started like and then I started singing,
Speaker 1: and I was just singing gibberish words that were just
Speaker 1: coming to me, and it was cool. And then, you know,
Speaker 1: three days later we went back to listen to that
Speaker 1: because we kind of moved on and started doing the
Speaker 1: real stuff. And then Tom was like, checked this out
Speaker 1: from the first day and it was awesome, and we
Speaker 1: both really loved it, and we added a bunch of
Speaker 1: other instruments to it, and we just kept exactly what
Speaker 1: we had done on the couch. There was one lyric
Speaker 1: I remember thinking I was like, Tom, I wish I
Speaker 1: could change that lyric. He's like, well, you can't really
Speaker 1: change it unless it sounds really similar, and we double
Speaker 1: your vocal and you could kind of flub it. But
Speaker 1: because it was just we were on the cauch, we
Speaker 1: were all singing, and we was singing with the guitars
Speaker 1: and everything, so I just left it. But how much
Speaker 1: when you first start was everything made up in the
Speaker 1: room on the couch of that song? Yes, melody and
Speaker 1: lyrics and the main guitar party, yes, yeah. And when
Speaker 1: you start that process of improvisation the very first iteration,
Speaker 1: how much do you have? Do you have? Like ten seconds?
Speaker 1: Do you have twenty seconds? When you first said it?
Speaker 1: When it first comes to you. Well, we started doing it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know how much he recorded before
Speaker 1: we sort of had the take, but probably we were
Speaker 1: playing like five minutes, maybe you just playing the part
Speaker 1: and I was humming along. And then he's like, all right,
Speaker 1: well let's just try one with what you have. And
Speaker 1: then and then it started and what's he what's Jeff
Speaker 1: Tweedy doing when you're you're humming and playing on the couch.
Speaker 1: So he's playing on the couch thing as well. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a beautiful guitar player. So yeah, well that's the
Speaker 1: thing about these collaborations, like I might have nothing and
Speaker 1: be kind of panic what if we get nothing, But
Speaker 1: then you sit with somebody who's inspiring, and it's just
Speaker 1: it's beautiful. I mean, I guess he's so and he's
Speaker 1: so incredibly prolific and it has been so that way
Speaker 1: for so long that I guess there's no anxieties about
Speaker 1: him drawing up blank No. And it was interesting because
Speaker 1: I had this one idea because the way I work
Speaker 1: in the studio, the way I worked with Brian, and
Speaker 1: the way I have worked recently is sort of just like,
Speaker 1: let's write it all down. Okay, what about this idea?
Speaker 1: What about this? And I had this one idea and
Speaker 1: we started this other song that again has not been released,
Speaker 1: but he really wanted to take it home. He said,
Speaker 1: I do my best lyrics tweaking when I'm like at
Speaker 1: four in the morning. I'll go to bed and then
Speaker 1: he says, he wakes up and he does it and
Speaker 1: then he goes back to bed. Really, and I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: but I'm dying to do it now. I want to
Speaker 1: do it right now, you know, I was kind of like, ah,
Speaker 1: but I was super happy to have him do it.
Speaker 1: I didn't. It wasn't that I needed to be part
Speaker 1: of it or control it. I was just impatient, you know.
Speaker 1: Did he show up the next day, showed up the
Speaker 1: having done that. I think it was on wintertime. He
Speaker 1: tweaked some stuff. But yeah, and then there was this
Speaker 1: other song where I actually did that because I think
Speaker 1: he kind of inspired me a little bit, and so
Speaker 1: and then this other song I had done it. I
Speaker 1: didn't wake up before I am, but I did it
Speaker 1: before I came here. Now do you Typically, once you've
Speaker 1: got a melody, your melody, and then words later, not
Speaker 1: really no, Usually melody words come together, at least some words,
Speaker 1: and then those words are so cemented in the melody
Speaker 1: it's impossible to remove them. It's like really hard to
Speaker 1: change the lyrics. But sometimes there's a melody that has
Speaker 1: no words, and sometimes more recently and not in the
Speaker 1: past for me, but more recently, I've had a lot
Speaker 1: of words with no melodies. But usually it's both and
Speaker 1: then they kind of you kind of I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's easier to kind of morph morph from a lyric
Speaker 1: melody that's already married, is it hard? Once you've got
Speaker 1: the words to come up with a melody, then it's
Speaker 1: really fun to find a melody for like a poem
Speaker 1: or a lyric, because I've done that with other people's
Speaker 1: words before and it is very freeing. It seems more free.
Speaker 1: But when you have a melody and you're trying to
Speaker 1: fit lyrics to those nooks and crannies, that is definitely hard,
Speaker 1: harder unless it's just already kind of inspired with it.
Speaker 1: We did an interview with Linda Perry, who worked with
Speaker 1: Dolly Partner. I don't know who you've worked with Dolly Parton,
Speaker 1: and she told this amazing story. They did I guess
Speaker 1: six songs for the Dumpling soundtrack and they worked all
Speaker 1: these songs then, and Dolly partner the whole time as well.
Speaker 1: I don't write much anymore really, so anyway, she went back.
Speaker 1: She wrote the lyrics to all six songs in one day.
Speaker 1: Who did Linda did, no, No, she just went ahead
Speaker 1: and she's like, all right, I'm Dolly, I got this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And they were I don't know they were. They're fabulous.
Speaker 1: Of course, she's an amazing songwriter writing is a weird thing.
Speaker 1: I used to get freaked out because they didn't have
Speaker 1: any ideas or wasn't inspired, and I didn't have anything happening.
Speaker 1: And I have a lot of really close friends who
Speaker 1: are songwriters, and sometimes I see them go this through
Speaker 1: the same thing. But I've seen myself go in and
Speaker 1: out of it, and it's like something always happens. Eventually.
Speaker 1: You go through phases. You go through phases where you're
Speaker 1: not writing, and then you go through phases where you're
Speaker 1: writing a lot. And sometimes I wasn't in between, but
Speaker 1: it's nice to not freak out when you're not because
Speaker 1: you know it'll eventually come again. Did you listen to
Speaker 1: a lot of country music growing up? Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: my mom is from Oklahoma, so my grandparents and my
Speaker 1: mom absolutely I grew up on Willie Nelson and Bob
Speaker 1: Wills and men, Linda Ronstadt and a lot of great music.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't until I moved to New York when
Speaker 1: I was twenty that I kind of realized, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that music. I didn't really think about myself
Speaker 1: as ever singing that kind of music. And then I
Speaker 1: moved to New York and I was like I'm from Texas.
Speaker 1: People give me some, give me some three chord songs.
Speaker 1: And then when I started writing songs, I started writing
Speaker 1: on guitar because I lived in a tiny shoe box
Speaker 1: in the East Village. I didn't have a piano, and
Speaker 1: all those jazz chords that I had learned in high
Speaker 1: school and college that I love so much, I sure
Speaker 1: didn't know how to play those on guitar. I knew
Speaker 1: like five chords on guitar. So the first song I
Speaker 1: wrote when I moved to New York and I finally
Speaker 1: got out of my head and it was probably four
Speaker 1: in the morning, and I wrote come Away with Me,
Speaker 1: which is really just a few chords, and it's really
Speaker 1: kind of a country song. I mean, that's sort of
Speaker 1: what it is. And I wrote it on guitar and
Speaker 1: I can barely play it. So it would have happened
Speaker 1: if you'd moved to Nashville and not New York. No, right,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I probably would have gone full like
Speaker 1: anti country. I don't know. I don't know, or I
Speaker 1: would have gone full country. You were born in New York, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then your mother moved to We moved to Dallas
Speaker 1: when I was four because she was from Oklahoma and
Speaker 1: her dad sick. I don't know why we moved, actually,
Speaker 1: but I feel very from Texas. But yeah, I was
Speaker 1: born in New York and I moved back here when
Speaker 1: I was twenty. She's something of a character. She was
Speaker 1: in the music business. Did she just have a lot
Speaker 1: of records that you could listen to? She was a
Speaker 1: music fan. I mean, yeah, she did. I grew up
Speaker 1: listening to Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin and old country music,
Speaker 1: Judy Garland and Brazilian music. She lived in Brazil when
Speaker 1: she was in her early twenties, and she had all
Speaker 1: these great Brazilian records. Do you remember a first record
Speaker 1: or two that kind of from her? Whatever got you
Speaker 1: interested in being a musician? Well, she she was always
Speaker 1: playing Aretha Franklin and at Christmas she would always play
Speaker 1: like Luciano Pavarotti. And we went to church. We would
Speaker 1: when we moved to I mean, I don't remember much
Speaker 1: about New York because I was three or four when
Speaker 1: we left. But when we moved to Texas, we started
Speaker 1: going to this Methodist church and I joined the church choir,
Speaker 1: and the choir teacher was a former Catholic so we
Speaker 1: were singing all these Latin hymns, which was very funny
Speaker 1: for this text as a Methodist church. But so that's
Speaker 1: kind of where I got my start, and I think
Speaker 1: she recognized my joy in music, and she got a
Speaker 1: piano and got me piano lessons and stuff. I want
Speaker 1: to go back to Jeff Tweedy into wintertime. I still
Speaker 1: want to know about So you said something at the
Speaker 1: very beginning that he had a few discarded scraps. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you guys brushed them off. So how much of
Speaker 1: a scrap did he have? Do you remember? It was
Speaker 1: a pretty big one. I mean the song was definitely
Speaker 1: sort of a shell of itself. And he played me
Speaker 1: a bunch of we got and got stuck one day,
Speaker 1: like the second day, we were a little stuck, and
Speaker 1: I was like, you know, I showed you mine, now
Speaker 1: show me your scraps. Basically, do you have anything? And
Speaker 1: I mean he is prolific and he records constantly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he has his own studio. So yes, he's got
Speaker 1: a lot of scraps. And they're fully like some of
Speaker 1: them are recorded with a full band, but they're not
Speaker 1: necessarily finished or the way that they end up and
Speaker 1: you play me a bunch of stuff, and it was
Speaker 1: all really cool. But there's this thing that's happened to
Speaker 1: me over the last ten years where it's it's become
Speaker 1: harder and harder for me to cover other people's songs
Speaker 1: because I'm I'm enjoying making my own songs now and
Speaker 1: so for me, you know, to connect with someone else's
Speaker 1: words and music enough to sing them. And it's not
Speaker 1: that I don't want to sing them, but to be
Speaker 1: able to own it, you have to own it. To
Speaker 1: cover a song, I have to basically sing it like
Speaker 1: it's mine. So nothing was completely catching me in that way.
Speaker 1: And then and then Wintertime came on. I was I
Speaker 1: love this. What was it in Wintertime that you did
Speaker 1: react to? Do you know? Was it the lyric or
Speaker 1: the feeling of it? I liked the feeling of it.
Speaker 1: The lyrics were kind of half there, and yeah, I
Speaker 1: just it just felt good. I liked the tempo. I
Speaker 1: liked the vibe. It's funny when you write with somebody else,
Speaker 1: everybody has a chord structure that they tend towards, and
Speaker 1: his is specific to him and it sounds like Jeff,
Speaker 1: you know, And what is that there's like a lot
Speaker 1: of minor twos and instead of four chords, and I
Speaker 1: liked it, but I liked it had a real flavor,
Speaker 1: had a real hymn flavor. You know. When we come back,
Speaker 1: Nora Jones sings, she breaks down her song Wintertime and
Speaker 1: explains how the minor two chord is part of the
Speaker 1: Wilco sound. We're back with Nora Jones breaking down the
Speaker 1: song she co wrote with Jeff Tweedy, Wintertime. So that's
Speaker 1: our favorite song on the album. What's your favorite song?
Speaker 1: I really like, I mean, I like them all, but
Speaker 1: I really like just a little bit. I really liked
Speaker 1: that one because we've been playing it live and it's
Speaker 1: really fun to play live. I also really like My
Speaker 1: Heart is Full because live it's taken on a whole
Speaker 1: new life. And that's sort of like, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying about these songs being alive, staying a lot,
Speaker 1: keeping them alive. It's a whole other things changed when
Speaker 1: you're playing that one live. Well, my Heart is Full
Speaker 1: I did in the in the studio with Thomas Bartlett
Speaker 1: and he's got all these cool electronics and it's amazing,
Speaker 1: but live is just bass, drums, piano and organ, and
Speaker 1: sonically we can take it to an intense place, but
Speaker 1: it's not the same exact sonics, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Can you give us a taste of that one so
Speaker 1: it gets like more primal, you know, than electronic, which
Speaker 1: is sort of how it is on the album. Anyway,
Speaker 1: what's the relationship in your mind between the live version
Speaker 1: and the and the album version? I mean, do you
Speaker 1: do you do you start to favor one over the other? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think I usually start to favor the live version
Speaker 1: because it becomes its own thing and it's hard to
Speaker 1: you know, you can't go back in time and change it.
Speaker 1: But but that doesn't mean that I always do. It's
Speaker 1: just when you're in the middle of a tour and
Speaker 1: you're starting to feel something differently. It's It's a funny
Speaker 1: thing because song's morph and usually they start in the studio.
Speaker 1: You're not playing them live a bunch before you go
Speaker 1: into record, though I've done that before too. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that is a whole other thing. You find an arrangement
Speaker 1: that really works live and then you go in and
Speaker 1: try to capture it, but it never quite has the
Speaker 1: magic of singing a song for the first time. Kind
Speaker 1: of and capturing it for the first time. For me,
Speaker 1: it just depends. So when you're sitting down, is that
Speaker 1: song I don't think? Did that have a lot of
Speaker 1: piano on the No, there's no piano on the recorded version,
Speaker 1: but on live it's instead of doing you know, instead
Speaker 1: of trying to get a delay and repeat my voice,
Speaker 1: it just you know, and then we add an instrumental section.
Speaker 1: It's fun. Don't stop? Is it so much fun? Get
Speaker 1: give me? That's so you did another one? There's another
Speaker 1: one that you really love off the album, which is oh,
Speaker 1: just a little bit, just a little bit, that's right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how did that one? Who's how did that one come about?
Speaker 1: My friend Sarah Oda had a song that she gave
Speaker 1: me because I was going in the studio and I
Speaker 1: was completely unprepared. Again, this is completely unprepared, except I
Speaker 1: was so prepared. We got seven songs in that three
Speaker 1: day session, so I actually was super inspired, but more
Speaker 1: scattered maybe. Yeah. I had a lot of snippets. I
Speaker 1: had some finished songs because I was going in with
Speaker 1: Brian Blade and Chris Thomas, who is a little band
Speaker 1: I've been I had been playing with. Anyway, she gave
Speaker 1: me this song in case I needed something, because I've
Speaker 1: recorded her songs before and the song was cool. She
Speaker 1: had a melody and everything. It wasn't unfinished really, it
Speaker 1: just didn't have any instruments on. It was just her
Speaker 1: singing the melody and I had the lyrics sheet and
Speaker 1: we were kind of going in a different direction. That
Speaker 1: song kind of got pushed on the back burner and
Speaker 1: we were kind of in a lull, and so I
Speaker 1: went to the organ instead of the piano, and I
Speaker 1: just started sort of and I started singing her lyrics
Speaker 1: because they were just there, just because I was singing gibberish.
Speaker 1: But then I just saw her lyrics here and I
Speaker 1: started singing her lyrics over what we were playing, which
Speaker 1: was completely separate from the song she had written, and
Speaker 1: I took her lyrics and I accidentally just like put
Speaker 1: them into this new song and then we called it
Speaker 1: space Cham and we never listened to it again, and
Speaker 1: then the engineer sent it to me the next month
Speaker 1: and was like, this was kind of cool. Do you
Speaker 1: remember this? And I asked her, I was like can
Speaker 1: I can? I? You know, is it cool that I
Speaker 1: used the lyrics in this way instead? And She's like yeah,
Speaker 1: that's fine, as long as I can record this song
Speaker 1: and the other way someday. I said, that's fine. But
Speaker 1: what I really like about it is that her i'm structure.
Speaker 1: Her original song was I'm not going to sing you
Speaker 1: the melody, but it was like, I'll sing you the
Speaker 1: rhythm of the way her melody was. It was I'm
Speaker 1: not the one you can ignore. I'm not like those
Speaker 1: you've had before. That was like the rhythm of it,
Speaker 1: And so I feel like the rhythm of the rhyme
Speaker 1: scheme got kind of flipped around, and I don't know,
Speaker 1: I think that's kind of interesting because it was written
Speaker 1: with one intention but then flipped around. It's kind of
Speaker 1: backwards in a cool way. Can you give us so?
Speaker 1: So here's so, you know, I added things here and there,
Speaker 1: and her basic lyric is just the It was kind
Speaker 1: of turned upside down rhythmically, totally unintentionally. It was just
Speaker 1: sitting in front of me, you know. But does that
Speaker 1: happen a lot with music? You get the people things
Speaker 1: people give you. I don't often do that, but I
Speaker 1: did write another song on this EP from a poem
Speaker 1: from a friend called begin Again, And you know, her
Speaker 1: lyric was I feel like the rhythm of the rhyme
Speaker 1: scheme was a little bit more true to what she wrote.
Speaker 1: But yeah, like I said, I don't do it a ton,
Speaker 1: but I do like the idea of lyrics and music
Speaker 1: coming from two different brains and putting them together. It's
Speaker 1: completely not how probably the one person would think. You
Speaker 1: know that you sound like artistically you're you're growing more
Speaker 1: and more open? Yeah, for sure? Is that just? Is
Speaker 1: that just come from increased self con what's the what's
Speaker 1: the reason for that? Is that that's because usually, don't
Speaker 1: you think of people usually go in the opposite direction
Speaker 1: as they get ultimately get more set. Now, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't want to though. I think I've become more
Speaker 1: and more open for sure, and I like it. I've
Speaker 1: I've been more inspired by it. I learn new things
Speaker 1: and I'm better for it. You know. I know what
Speaker 1: I'm good at, I know what people Some people think
Speaker 1: of me as what I do, and that's fine, but
Speaker 1: I like to open it up and sort of try
Speaker 1: different things. Yeah, I don't think I ever go outside
Speaker 1: of myself in a way that's not true to myself.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Noah Jones for talking and playing us through
Speaker 1: some of the tracks on our album Begin Again. If
Speaker 1: you couldn't tell Malcolm and Bruce swiftthrow. You can check
Speaker 1: out more of the album by visiting Broken Record podcast
Speaker 1: dot com and subscribing to our playlist for this episode.
Speaker 1: You can also sign up for a behind the scenes
Speaker 1: newsletter while you're there. Broken Record is produced with help
Speaker 1: from Jason Gambrell and me Lobelle. Our theme music is
Speaker 1: by the great Kenny Beats. Stay tuned for next week's episode,
Speaker 1: our very first live taping of the podcast. It's Malcolm
Speaker 1: Gladwell and conversation will flee from the Red Hot Chili
Speaker 1: Peppers at the Palace the Peter in Los Angeles. So
Speaker 1: thanks for listening and stay tuned for next week. I'm
Speaker 1: justin Richmond, h