Songwriters on Process Ben Opipari

Ashton Irwin, drummer for 5 Seconds of Summer, often writes songs out of necessity. While he likes to journal, Irwin finds songwriting a much more effective vehicle for maintaining his mental health. And there's a routine to the songwriting process: from 11a-3p when the caffeine is at its peak, with a Moleskin journal and a black ink pen. Irwin likes to write lyrics during the day; the songs he writes at night are different. "I’m less concerned with being tricky with the wordplay," he explain...

ED NOTE: This is from 2021, before this was a podcast and I was posting the video interviews to YouTube. I've taken the audio from that interview and turned it into podcast form. As you can tell at the beginning, we did this in the middle of the pandemic, hence our discussion about the creative process during COVID.Mike Doughty believes that discipline is a necessary part of the songwriting process. Doughty made his name as the founder of Soul Coughing, but he's had a prolific career as a sol...

The circle is complete. I’ve had recent interviews with Anais Mitchell (together with Charlotte Cornfield) and with Eric D. Johnson, but now that we’ve added Josh Kaufman, this is a full-on Bonny Light Horseman episode. I enjoyed this conversation immensely because we dove into their collective process, not just their individual processes. And listening to them talk for even a few seconds makes one thing immediately clear: the songwriting is great because the chemistry among them is so powerf...

All four members of DIIV (Zachary Cole Smith, Andrew Bailey, Colin Caulfield, Ben Newman) joined me to talk about their individual songwriting processes. This interview could've gone on forever because they are so passionate about creativity. What's interesting is that their individual songwriting processes don't have too much in common, but perhaps how those differences play off each other is why they make such good music. DIIV's new album Frog in Boiling Water is out now on Fantasy Records....

Does the mind of Eric Earley from Blitzen Trapper ever rest? I think not. After all, he told me that he liked to solve math problems in college while he was making breakfast. Earley is a voracious reader who just finished his self-proclaimed "Time of the Tomes," in which he read nothing but, well, tomes. (The longer, the better. Infinite Jest? Please. Kid's stuff).Earley has a family and his other occupation involves working with the homeless population in Portland, so he's not quite as...

Deerlady is Mali Obomsawin and Magdalena Abrego, and their debut album Greatest Hits is my favorite album of the year, and this is also one of my favorite interviews because we had so much fun. I first heard Deerlady while listening to my old college radio station, WTHS at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. They played "Bounty," and it was one of those moments when you hear a song for the first time, stop whatever it is that you're doing, love it immediately, then listen to the ent...