Part 2

Do you tend to start writing with what will be the first line of the finished lyrics? The chorus? At a random point? What are the words that set the process in motion?

I write all the time, but rarely in a linear way.

I have at least half a dozen notebooks around the house, as well as a notebook app called Bear and an audio app called Tape It on my phone. Whenever I think of a cool line or melody, I capture it immediately. I must have thousands of lines, stanzas or sometimes even half ready songs that have been written all over the world, sometimes standing in the rain. If I don't write these things down the very moment they appear, they may be gone forever in a minute.

Sometimes a song pushes itself to the world too. For example, the first verse of “The Days We Forget” came to my head almost as it is now when we were in this activity park with my family. The verse just came to me while watching the kids have fun there.



When I'm working on a new song, I go through these notes and see which lines or stanzas would resonate with the feeling I'm working with or the music itself, and start building from there. Then it becomes a kind of a spiralling process where lines and melodies feed off of each other, ultimately leading to a first draft of a fully blown song.

Then the rest of it is a lot of editing, polishing and changing things to make the music and lyrics fit the best way possible. Sometimes the final edits are done while recording the actual vocals.

I'd love to know how you think the meaning or effect of an individual song is enhanced, clarified or possibly contradicted by the EPs, or albums it is part of. Does the song, for example, need to be consistent with the larger whole?

Oh yes. I'm totally an album person and find myself struggling at times with the contemporary trend towards individual songs. I think an album, just like a collection of poems, definitely deepens the experience of the individual tracks or poems, by creating ebbs and flows of music, words and emotions in how the songs follow one another.

A few years ago I went back to listening to a lot of music on vinyl, and while I do appreciate having thousands of songs on my phone, I think the depth of experience with listening to a physical album is an order of magnitude deeper than just punching songs up on Spotify.

I don't think the songs on an album need to be thematically in line, though, at least not in an explicit or "thematic album" sort of way. If music is about connection, juxtaposing given songs with one another can greatly enhance that connection.

When you're writing song lyrics, do you sense or see a connection between your voice and the text? Does it need to feel and sound “good” or “right” to sing certain words? What's your perspective in this regard of singing someone else's songs versus your own?

Absolutely. If the singing doesn't feel good, it seldom also sounds good either. A big part of it is choice of words; sometimes just flipping a single word can make a universe of difference. Also, the technical setup matters a lot, especially choice of mic and preamp.

I used to record a lot of my vocals on a Neumann TLM103, but when I was working on Fair Insight, I really wanted to get this super intimate Leonard Cohen sound. The TLM just wouldn't cut it. Then when I used a Warm Audio WA47 with a Neve preamp, it hit the exact nerve and from the very first lines I knew I could make this song work. That setup actually became the leading setup for most of the other tracks on the album.

As for whether I sing my own work or others', that doesn't really matter as long as the connection is there. We did a while ago, for example, a pretty cool cover of “The Neverending Story” with my daughter, and that was a joy to sing, also bringing back memories of the film and my childhood when recording it.

I would love to know a little about the feedback you've received from listeners or critics about what they thought some of your songs are about. Have there been “misunderstandings” or did you perhaps even gain new “insights?”

The feedback has been so far overwhelmingly positive. I think the interesting thing that some reviewers have pointed out is that while the thematic connection of the songs is about sadness and melancholy, the music itself is actually often quite upbeat.

Like “Typhoon” which is actually a kind of a pep talk I wrote to myself, or the chorus of “The Days We Forget” that has a kind of a sweet or bittersweet vibe to it.



I don't remember that there having been any actual misunderstandings and I don't even really know what they could look like. I think in art, you need to be as candid and genuine as possible when expressing yourself, but then the work is given to the world, for each to do with as they please. So if somebody thinks of a song or a lyric differently from what I did when writing it, that's actually quite cool.

It sometimes happens to me too. For example, for a very long time I was really struggling to understand what I was really trying to say with “Whippoowill.” But eventually, after the song was already recorded and mixed, I came to a realization of what all the subtext was about.



I think that's the magic of music - it's a form of communication, and sometimes you even communicate with yourself.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing song lyrics or poetry is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

There is a wonderful book called The Beauty of Everyday Things by Soetsu Yanagi. I think it expresses very well that beauty can be found in anything you may encounter. Thus art shouldn't be considered some exclusive aspect of being human.

If you can express yourself with a cup of coffee, then that's a wonderful medium of expression. For me, though, music and words are the thing.