Posts in Lost Highway Records
Hayes Carll (2016)
Hayes Carll (2016)

Hayes Carll is not a disciplined person. He’ll be the first one to tell you that. He told me this much when I first interviewed him in 2013 . He said, "To be honest, I'm always looking for something else to do other than write. I wish that wasn't the case." It’s now three years later, and it still hasn’t gotten better. With a short attention span, he gets distracted easily. “If I turn on the TV or find some distraction, I’m done. I won’t come back,” Carll told me.

So while the Austin based singer/songwriter loves to write, he also loves to not write, which is why it’s so difficult for him to write for long stretches: if anything even remotely interesting appears on TV, he’s hooked. According to Carll, it can be a cricket match or even “Martha Stewart boiling an egg.” He tries to keep himself as far away from the TV as possible when he writes. If he does get stuck, he returns to his tried and true method of pushing past that block: “a cleaning bender.” This is no metaphor. He cleans his apartment.

 

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Country, Country Folk, Singer/Songwriter, Dualtone Records, Lost Highway RecordsBen Opipari Comments
Jay Gonzalez, Drive-By Truckers
Jay Gonzalez, Drive-By Truckers

Jay Gonzalez: Drive-By Trucker, Bay City Roller. Sure, Gonzalez is guitarist and keyboard player for the Truckers.  But his solo stuff sounds nothing like his Truckers work.  Gonzalez is an unabashed fan of 70s power pop, bands like The Sweet and The Bay City Rollers. In his own words, "I possess the attention span of a goldfish. I’m a sucker for short pop songs filled with hooks and devoid of filler." The defining element of 70s power pop is the melody.  It reigns supreme. Lyrics exist merely to enhance the melody, not to tell a story. According to Gonzalez, "I think the ideal situation is to have a song that if it were an instrumental or if it were a Muzak song, you would recognize the melody. It’s strong enough to stand on its own without the lyrics."

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Alt Country, Southern Rock, Americana, Pop, ATO Records, New West Records, Lost Highway RecordsBen Opiparibitter suite, cooley, drive by truckers, jay gonzalez, patterson Comment
Ryan Bingham
Ryan Bingham

Before talking to Ryan Bingham, I watched some of his videos on his YouTube channel. Several of the commenters pointed out that his singing voice sounds nothing like his speaking voice.  And it's true.  I couldn't help but think about this when he talked about songwriting as a form of therapy for him, a way for him to get things off his chest. When he pointed out that the lyrics sometimes emerge from his subconscious, that singing/speaking voice dichotomy made sense: perhaps that singing voice is different because it represents something deep inside, a window unto his emotional state. 

Bingham calls writing "a very personal act" for him.  He's protective of the space he creates to write, both emotionally and physically. His best lyrics come out all at once, because a song that takes too long loses the original, raw emotion.  And his writing is cyclical: he soaks in his environment on the road and almost never writes there.  Once he's home, he writes about those experiences in a short, powerful burst, "venting and getting those feelings off [his] chest." Once those songs and feelings are out, he stops, and he feels not one once of guilt for not writing for the next few months while he gathers those experiences on the road again. 

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Country, Americana, Roots Rock, Lost Highway Records, Grammy WinnerBen Opiparicrazy heart, lost highway, ryan bingham, the weary kind, Americana, singer songwriter, CountryComment
Hayes Carll (2013)
Hayes Carll (2013)

Hayes Carll was a writer before he was ever a songwriter. In fact, before he even knew how to play the guitar, he loved to write.  True story: his favorite part of junior high and high school was when his teacher told the students to freewrite for 20 minutes.  Let that sink in for a minute.  He loved to be told to write. And Carll's goal was not just to write a great story in those 20 minutes; instead, he wanted to write more pages than any of his classmates. He still has those junior high and high school writing journals, even mining them for ideas on occasion. 

With that history, it's no wonder he's been called one of the best storytellers in the singer/songwriter and country western world today. If you're a fan of Carll, you'll obviously love this interview.  But if you're not too familiar with his music and just happen to be a songwriter, you'll still love it.  Just as Carll explains that he's a fan of this site because he wants to learn about the creative processes of other songwriters, you'll find this interview to be its own lesson in songwriting.

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Country, Americana, Country Folk, Dualtone Records, Lost Highway Records, Singer/SongwriterBen Opiparihayes carll Comments