[SPEAKER_00]: Hi and welcome to the Working Songwriter.
[SPEAKER_00]: The show where today's best songwriters come to talk shop on your host, Joe Pug.
[SPEAKER_00]: Each episode here, we host a distinguished guest and we ask them to go deep on their inspiration, on their process, on the general ups and downs of making a life in music.
[SPEAKER_00]: So whether you're a grizzled veteran, still thinking that your new single can get some spins on AM radio or else a scrappy app start.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paying money to have AI bots playlists your songs on Spotify.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is your show because ultimately it is what every writer seeks most in iron-clotic skews to put off actually writing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey everyone, it's the last Friday of May, 2026, and I thank you for joining us.
[SPEAKER_00]: This week's show is brought to you by BanzoGo.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The Vault is a private members only section of my website that hosts every single episode of the Working Songletter ever recorded.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I hope that you enjoy this week's episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our guest this week, Hale's originally from Boston, Massachusetts, and now makes his home in Toronto.
[SPEAKER_00]: Joe Pernese got his musical start though in Northampton, Mass.
[SPEAKER_00]: At the time, it was a hotbed of indie music creativity.
[SPEAKER_00]: His band, the Skud Mountain Boys, built a loyal following in the 1990s with a string of critically acclaimed releases.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's recorded for Subpop, One Little Indian, Team Love, and New West Records.
[SPEAKER_00]: Over the years, he's collaborated with a variety of blue chipsong writers including Amy Man, Nico Case, Norman Blake of Teenage Fang Club, Jimmy Webb, Rodney Crow, and Jim White.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's also a man of many talents.
[SPEAKER_00]: His novel, it feels so good when I stop, was published by Penguin Books in 2009.
[SPEAKER_00]: NPR calls him a workhorse of a songwriter who delivers hard truths with the softest of whispers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Brooklyn vegan declared few songwriters today in view frustration and anguish into the sweetest of melodies as Joe Pernese.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got a chance to catch up with him a few months ago to hear about his musical journey so far.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jeff, thanks so much for being a part of the working songwriter podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's so much to get to today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Most people I only have songwriting to talk about, but it seems like you've done every sort of writing under the sun over your career.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you think if you're so first as a songwriter or do you think of yourself as just a writer in general?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because you've written novels, poetry, you have an MFA and creative writing.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you kind of envision your own career?
[SPEAKER_02]: The big songwriter is the way you've got to put your flag somewhere and that's the one to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the one for me that brings the most true and I feel the most connected to writing songs.
[SPEAKER_00]: And was that your first when you were a kid starting creative endeavors?
[SPEAKER_00]: Was that your first creative endeavor?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or were you doing other writing first?
[SPEAKER_02]: I would say other writing first.
[SPEAKER_02]: I went to,
[SPEAKER_02]: even when I was in undergraduate, and then in graduate school, songwriting was kind of a...
[SPEAKER_02]: There's more peripheral as well on the sidelines.
[SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't my main focus.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I hadn't really applied myself to it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I hadn't applied myself to it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the calling hadn't hit me yet.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I would say that fiction writing and poetry were my first loves, the things that brought me into wanting to live a life as an artist.
[SPEAKER_02]: Then music was kind of surfaced.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow, so what was some of the fiction that originally inspired you?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, back in the day, you know, when I started to really read the stuff I read all like the handling short stories, and I read, you know, the the Salinger and all that stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was very inspiring.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that was, at my earliest, you know, it was all very tortured artist teenage tortured kids sitting that by an empty subway station reading like a movable feast and you know, thinking I was an artist at 16 years old.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, those Hemingway books are so great for that because you can take them in on a certain level at that age.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you read them when you're older, you can find different layers in them for sure, but like I don't know that I could have read any Kormack McCarthy when I was 16 that would have been tough for me, but the Hemingway you can really find your way into.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I've read a good chunk of, uh, as a little bit older, but still too young to know, at least for me.
[SPEAKER_02]: things like raining, carber, those stories like I knew there was something powerful to them but I couldn't have lived enough to have them speak of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Same with like I read a lot of the check-offs short stories like check-offs is just unbelievable and I knew something kind of magical is going on I could feel it but you know you just have to at least for me I hadn't lived enough to say ah yeah get it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you're inspiring me to go back to check off because my only experience with it was a very young age, 18, 19, 20, and yes, I could kind of intimate that there was something very important there, but like you said, I just had no life experience to understand what it actually meant.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I need to go back for sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know what's it.
[SPEAKER_02]: and we'll probably get to this.
[SPEAKER_02]: But for me, songwriting grew out of studying the stories of check-off and these other writers.
[SPEAKER_02]: Check-off for one got his start.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, he wrote for newspaper.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, his stories were bombed by college, like he literally had a size constraint to the type of writing he could do.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, he was
[SPEAKER_02]: by necessity had to pair the things down to the essence of this stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you want to be, at least for me, as a person who wanted to make things, I learned quite a bit about editing and at least trying to get at the meat of the thing, the necessary parts of the thing, by reading check-off because and trying to imagine him,
[SPEAKER_02]: carrying down a story to fit in two columns of a newspaper.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you learn craft, you can then craft that way.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I definitely took, I just craft from the world of writing prose and poetry into the songwriting world, 100%.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's our very similar constraints, the two columns of newspaper, or the roughly three and a half minutes of a song.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you can do the 11 minutes song if you want to, but you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: You're not going to get paid.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not going to get paid anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I work with the producer years ago who is really good at having me edit stuff down.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I put out a couple of records where everything was two and a half minutes long.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now I'm kind of, I'm kind of bristling against it and the songs are shortened to come out longer again.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a tough balance to strike over the long term.
[SPEAKER_02]: However, I find it to be cyclical, you know, you might get into, I, I was in a phase of writing songs in the last year where I probably wrote 10 or 12 songs that were a minute, a minute, 10 seconds, a minute, 20, under your minute and a half.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was just in that, that was where my head was at, and I,
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I've got over that and now I'm stretching it out a little bit and now probably go back to another thing so I don't think it's a I don't think it's a you've arrived I think it's a rep it repeats itself you do things over and over and you grow and you come back you go this way you go that way so the I mean there's no no rules do you think you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and not to mention, you know, I'm thinking of if you were to button chissongs were a minute and a half long.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no stop.
[SPEAKER_00]: No one's stopping you.
[SPEAKER_00]: The police are not going to break down your door.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you decide you'd like to cannibalize some of that song for a longer one, you know, eventually, do whatever you want.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've done this thing where I've actually re-recorded songs.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've never done that before, but I've revisited and released.
[SPEAKER_02]: We, you know, another interpretation of the song I written and first that's like, I can't do that.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's ridiculous.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I was like, of course, I can do that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I could do whatever I want.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, yes, so cares.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you said that you were there studying in undergrad, your first kind of calling was maybe prose writing or some poetry and you said you hadn't felt the call yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: When did you feel the call towards someone writing?
[SPEAKER_02]: I, well, even if I could back up a little, my first calling was mechanical things.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm a super gear head.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm into motors, bicycle, I'm a crazy gear head and I started university.
[SPEAKER_02]: with the idea of studying engineering.
[SPEAKER_02]: And as a kid, I was always into motorized things.
[SPEAKER_02]: My parents got less than were allowed me to have like mini bikes and go carts and things like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was into bicycle racing.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was always a gear head.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I first went into a university with the idea that I want to make my life that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think I was approaching the idea of mechanical things as an artist.
[SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't for me as a profession, but it's certainly spoke to me from a
[SPEAKER_02]: from a creative standpoint.
[SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, so I switched my major after a couple of years.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then, while I was in undergrad, I had never written, I had dabbled in writing poetry.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I took a poetry class by chance.
[SPEAKER_02]: And there was a writer James Tape who, in the world of poetry, is a type and he's one of the greatest.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was lucky enough to study with him.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, kind of floored me.
[SPEAKER_02]: I wasn't sure what I was going to do with myself.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I definitely was getting into writing poetry.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he said to me one day after class because you should apply to the graduate program here.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he said, I said, well, Jim, I think I missed the deadline and he's like trust me.
[SPEAKER_02]: You should apply to the graduate program because he was in charge of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I was like, oh, okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: I went into writing poetry and I just immersed myself in reading everything I could read, it was so exciting, I was writing constantly and I started to write more songs as an aside to music.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean as an aside to my studies and I fell in with these musicians and it just, you know,
[SPEAKER_02]: You find the right people, you find the right situation, and you find the right timing.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the song's just started flowing out of me, and I realized, oh wait, you can engage in making a song.
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly the same way you would make a story, or a poem, or a cake, or any other thing you want.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was more of a mindset that brought me into songwriting.
[SPEAKER_02]: can't deny hitting an open g-code is immediately pleasing there's no delay on that you don't like
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not like you're editing a story and you have to get to the end.
[SPEAKER_02]: You lack an open g-code and if you have a soul, you're like, damn, and that feels pretty good.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the instant gratification freak in the started realizing, I like how that makes me feel.
[SPEAKER_02]: I like engaging with sound, I like engaging with words, and it was just a kind of natural magnetism from that point to me, just pulled me back in.
[SPEAKER_02]: not to be too long ended.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was living in North Hampton, Massachusetts at the early 90s, and that area was kind of blowing up as an indie rock.
[SPEAKER_02]: As an indie rock place, there was like the next Seattle.
[SPEAKER_02]: And like, for instance, one of my friends who was in the writing program, we was David Burman from the Silver Juice.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we were friends in school and like, you know, dinosaur junior lived in this town and Sebedo was from there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And
[SPEAKER_02]: you know at some point the pixies went to UMass where I went to school so there was a real vibrant music scene so it was easy to jump into it because it was there and it grew and from there I just kind of didn't look back.
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, there are a lot of skills that can translate from writing poetry to writing songs.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think in a not intuitive way, they are very different.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, writing songs and writing lyrics is not simply poetry put to music.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a different thing entirely.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you kind of talk about...
[SPEAKER_00]: The different things that you had to learn or the changes that you had to make to go from something that was going to be in a medium, read on a page by someone in their own time, to a medium that is a recorded medium that is happening at the pace that the singer and the songwriter chooses.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what were some of the changes you had to make and what were some of the maybe difficulties?
[SPEAKER_02]: I haven't thought about that too much, but I'm thinking about it right now.
[SPEAKER_02]: If I was reading a poem, I would pour over it, so I said in reading a poem, I'd pour over a line over and over and over to see if you could hit me.
[SPEAKER_02]: A song is kind of, it goes by and I'm guilty of doing this because I'm a little nuts.
[SPEAKER_02]: I listen to a song 30 times in a row, like for instance, I mean
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I'm not joking with you, Joe, I put on way more as blues, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, the way on to it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I might have listened to that 40 times and we'll over and over and over and over and over.
[SPEAKER_02]: It just, it unfolds to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think with writing lyrics, I had to, I had to be aware of the, how quickly it goes by.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think people, I guess I can speak for myself.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't always, with every song, pour over it, over and over and over.
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, and so when I was writing lyrics, I was like, you know, you can't be too oblique if you're trying to say A, B, C. Sometimes you have to just say A, B, C. You don't always have to make it, uh, make it a, uh, a challenging, similarly or metaphor.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes, you know what you say, you're all that, she's really good looking and I'd like her.
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't have to look like it to some, some metaphor or similarly going to use.
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't have to be so lofty sometimes, or so challenging.
[SPEAKER_02]: I remember reading the lyrics to get off of my cloud the first time.
[SPEAKER_02]: The Republicans don't say, wow, really?
[SPEAKER_02]: You can say that, and because it was kind of, it wasn't challenging, it wasn't challenging stuff, but undeniably right on for what this song was.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, yeah, I think, I think,
[SPEAKER_02]: what you what one or me what I was trying to say and saying it in a way that to appropriate for the melody and the passage of time and the tempo it's all that stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a complicated if you really break it down.
[SPEAKER_02]: hopefully it goes by like you wrote it in one second but it's complicated and I had to I had to give that more thought than I would with us just sitting there in all you had with words.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, well and also you know I hear you talking about.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, maybe as long as not a place for like a huge metaphor because it goes by so fast, but I know listening to your work, of course, there's metaphors in there, but I think we learn as songwriters that if you want to have that metaphor or something relatively complex, it kind of has to be sandwiched by things that are very simple and maybe visual.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's only so much information you can give to people.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you want them focused,
[SPEAKER_02]: on that metaphor maybe the two lines leading up to it or just cupcakes that they cannot listen to for a second maybe the two lines afterwards or cupcakes that they cannot listen to is they're ingesting that larger point and I think what you're saying is goes with what I'm about to say sometimes you do want to lofty metaphor that is oblique or is something that's hard to
[SPEAKER_02]: And like you said, I think you have to be judicious and thoughtful about what's in the neighborhood of that lofty moment, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's funny, you mentioned earlier that during your engineering work, you had been approaching engineering as an artist, but hearing you talk about a song like, now I hear an engineer talking about art, like you're, they're like a series of small problems that you're solving in an order, in an ordered way.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I do think, I do think, if I wasn't writing songs, I would do something else with the exact same mindset.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think in I've resisted calling myself an artist because I probably just of who I am and my maybe my upbringing, my environment and the age that I grew up in, I've resisted calling myself that but I know I am because
[SPEAKER_02]: the thing, I try to approach all of the things with the same way, whether I'm working on a bicycle or whether I'm cooking, like it's, it's, I'm not a new age hippie guy, but it's a mindful type of
[SPEAKER_02]: and in the moment.
[SPEAKER_02]: And whatever that thing is.
[SPEAKER_02]: So if I was painting houses, I would go about it the same way as I write songs as I do other things.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's the commitment to art for me.
[SPEAKER_02]: That is a is a choice.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's where the work is is maintaining that that I want to say persistence, but maintaining that approach to all things.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's funny that you mentioned cooking there.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's somewhere along the way in my late 20s.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got really into cooking.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think a lot of songwriters do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not like a fancy cook at all, but I've gotten pretty darn good at cooking.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's several things to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you mentioned, you can approach it in if you want to use the word mindfulness to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you have to be immersed and paying attention to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's also a really good thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: You work all morning on a song.
[SPEAKER_00]: one o'clock to five o'clock in the afternoon where you're brain dead from it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you might as well do something that the whole family can use at five o'clock.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, so sorry Joe, you're making me think about something like I'm not creating my mind.
[SPEAKER_02]: It goes, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: People say like I've written a bunch
[SPEAKER_02]: people be like, oh, I love this one, or what's your favorite?
[SPEAKER_02]: And I would think, oh, I like this one.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm wondering, and they're like, wow, that's interesting, I don't think that way.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think it has something to do with the level of engagement I felt in that moment, where I felt most attached.
[SPEAKER_02]: It might not be considered by some people, the best song or even a particularly good song.
[SPEAKER_02]: But in my mind,
[SPEAKER_02]: I think the ones that mean the most to me are the ones where I felt I was there, I was all in on that moment and I did what I wrote them, I was as connected as I could possibly be in those moments and I think those are the real
[SPEAKER_02]: Those are the ones that mean the most to me from our artistic standpoint.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a one set of maybe some decent money where I'm not so happy.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not bummed out about those either.
[SPEAKER_02]: But they're not the signs that if I said, what are you most proud of?
[SPEAKER_02]: Those aren't the ones.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's the ones where I felt like I was in and I kept it up and I saw it from the beginning to the end and I was engaged the whole way or most of the way.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's the goal to be engaged the whole way.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's strange.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel a detachment with most of the songs that I've written in the past because I identify with something that you mentioned earlier about listening to a song 30 times in a row.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know about you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I definitely do that as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I have since I was a kid.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'll do this strange thing where I will listen to a song 30, 40, 50 times in a row and I'll be obsessed with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I'll pretty much never listen to it again.
[SPEAKER_00]: like I don't know it's like I got it you know I might put it on later for my kids or it might be a blue moon wall I want to hear it again but I get all in on it then and when I'm working on a song it's the most important thing in the world to me as I'm working on it that's kind of a version of listening to it 30 or 40 times in a row especially if you're recording or recording at home you do listen to it as you're mixing it and all that and then once it's over it's kind of over for me I don't know I just don't know the writing of a song
[SPEAKER_00]: the writing of the song like I just don't you know it's it really does feel like if I were to go back and listen to it I could listen to it in the same way that I would listen to someone else's song.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's interesting because I have given this tons of thought.
[SPEAKER_02]: I am like that you know this that
[SPEAKER_02]: There's that experiment where they take a rat and they, if he presses a button, he gets a little bump or cocaine every time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, he just keeps bumping the button and he keeps getting a bump.
[SPEAKER_02]: And for me, the process of writing songs, that's where all of the fun is.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's where all of the magic is.
[SPEAKER_02]: When a song to me is done, I don't, I really think about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I haven't listed, I couldn't tell you, Joe, the track listings on my,
[SPEAKER_02]: To save my life tell you which songs are on which albums.
[SPEAKER_02]: I couldn't even tell you all their titles because I don't listen to them when they're done That's it's over for me.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just like to make them.
[SPEAKER_02]: I engage with them.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love recording.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love the process of recording.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love everything about
[SPEAKER_02]: making an album.
[SPEAKER_02]: And when it's over I could care less.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's yours now.
[SPEAKER_02]: Do what you want with it because I'm over here right in 20 other songs because that's what I like to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm on some new stuff and this is my best stuff yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that's you guys just wait.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is it's your only feeling you can have I mean if you don't you know, and I I also can't listen to my music like someone else's it does nothing for me If I do queue up a song of mine I might hear a great piano part played by a friend who's not me and I'm like wow He really delivered there or something, but I can't
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't get any pleasure out of listening to my own records like I would anybody else is like trying to tickle yourself.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can't do it, you know, so it doesn't it doesn't really mean much to me anymore and I that's not to stay don't care about them because I can't hear it with everything I got.
[SPEAKER_02]: But then it's somebody else's after after it's done.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know what you mean.
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you ever encountered one of your songs in the wild and not recognized it at first?
[SPEAKER_02]: I have actually.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's an arresting moment especially.
[SPEAKER_02]: There are songs on that joke and I'm not being funny that I just forgot and I've written.
[SPEAKER_02]: you know like and then you hear it you know you hear it on like I was in a coffee shop and I heard a song I was like oh that sounds really familiar and I don't have that shizam thing or whatever it's called I was like I don't know what this is and then I heard my voice and I was like I just
[SPEAKER_00]: Joe Pernice is a busy man.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not only has he dipped his toe in both the musical and literary endeavors, he's also raised a family along the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Later in the show, he'll describe his son's journey with baseball that really struck a chord with me, and there's a wonderful poem about that kind of sentimentality entitled.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sentimental moment, or why did the baguette cross the road?
[SPEAKER_00]: don't fill up on bread, I said absent-mindedly, the servings here are huge.
[SPEAKER_00]: My son, whose hair may be receding a bit, says, did you really just say that to me?
[SPEAKER_00]: What he doesn't know is that when we're walking together, when we get to the curb, I sometimes start to reach for his hand.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you mentioned that you were, you really enjoyed the recording process, not all song letters are like that, but I'm certainly like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really not only love recording, but it's become, the writing process has become pretty inexplicable from recording with me, like they happen at the same time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you talk about, obviously, when you were first starting out in that MFA program, writing poetry and then songs, I would have to guess it was not intertwined with recording at that time.
[SPEAKER_02]: He started, really?
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm getting an update from, if I'm losing for a second, my screen got a pop up from Adobe.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know how to shut it off.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think they're trying to put it in.
[SPEAKER_02]: Actually, Joe, when I started playing music,
[SPEAKER_02]: And when I was in the MFA program, when the band I was in was playing a lot, we did four track record because we had no money, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So we were constantly recording stuff on a four track, which was a good baptism into making records, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because it was very little
[SPEAKER_02]: if any overdubbing.
[SPEAKER_02]: So my idea was to craft it to where it was kind of done, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So, and also, my late cousin, he started in owned the Studios Fort Apache Studios in Boston, which was a big in the late 80s, early 90s.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's just a young guy.
[SPEAKER_02]: He was like a mentor and like a brother to me and I was able to go into a 2-inch 24 tracks to work at 19 when I was just playing bass with him and my older brother.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I did have some experience recording multi-traping.
[SPEAKER_02]: But that was, that was for at it.
[SPEAKER_02]: When I got heavily into writing songs, we did do quite a bit of for track record.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this was pre-protein, was pre-digital.
[SPEAKER_02]: I remember when this new fan of A-Dat came out.
[SPEAKER_00]: A-Dat, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I remember going to an A-Dat studio in it, I mean, it was so icy cold.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was, it was soulless sounding music at the time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll probably do real to your question, but I was doing a decino script recording as we were writing songs.
[SPEAKER_00]: So how does that interact with your song?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, where is your process gotten to at this point with the writing in the recording?
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you doing both at the same time or are you?
[SPEAKER_02]: But I found, almost in Calculability, Calculability, helpful is my phone with a microphone.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a shame not endorse, but I love this microphone.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you have an iPhone with a lightning adapter, get one of short MV888 small diaphragm condenser microphones, it's unbelievable.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have thousands of versions of songs on my phone, that because it's so easy to set up and record,
[SPEAKER_02]: You can do it and I will do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't like plugging in cables.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm awful with engineering.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm afraid it and I'm not good at it and I don't want to be.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I would resist that home plugging in all the stuff and getting it all set up with the phone.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's right there.
[SPEAKER_02]: I put in my thing every morning.
[SPEAKER_02]: I get a coffee, plug something in my phone and I work on a song every day.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I have found the phone.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's the best use of telephone, of a cell phone I've ever had to say, I've ever seen, you know, really helpful.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I do have a logic that a friend who's an engineer just set up a template for me.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a YouTube channel interface and some decent mics and stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: and I'm always, always working on that to always.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, yeah, it's so important.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, younger songwriters who are listening to this show right now, they cannot really fathom.
[SPEAKER_00]: You were talking about having access to, you know, a studio with two inch tape and 24 channels in 1988 or whatever it was, they cannot fathom what a rarity that was at that time because, you know, now any MacBook off the shelf is, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: probably more powerful than that studio was in 1989.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's, I just think it's so imperative if people are starting out now to immediately jump into that pool of recording.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so important of how your songs are going to make it across to the vast majority of people that listen to them.
[SPEAKER_00]: The vast majority are not gonna come see your show.
[SPEAKER_00]: No matter how many are, the vast majority are going to be experiencing it
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that I think you're right, it's so much fun too, I mean, it's fun, man, unbelievably fun, yeah, yeah, we recorded on 4 chat much like, you know, I'm in my 50s, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So we're talking about it now.
[SPEAKER_02]: could not afford it like it's hard like a pancake a chip up a one-in-tree of tape even back then was I don't even remember 150 bucks maybe for you 16 minutes of music that's just for the tape when you're young and broke like you someone says oh you got to come up with a thousand dollars for tape you're like this how am I gonna do that so we had Arca one of the guys who my my first
[SPEAKER_02]: two, four, four, like I haven't gotten a machine now.
[SPEAKER_02]: so we would just record on that because you could go to the supermarket and buy a max el cassette tape for a buck 99 or whatever it was and that you could afford and in a way your the sound you came up with if you were creative you were trying to make a four track as set records sound like Boston on a you know analog 48 or whatever they have they use.
[SPEAKER_02]: you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: think about making the limitations of your audio part of your sound and let's work within what we have and try to make something that's evocative within that those compounds because you're not going to make, I mean like, you know, Nebraska, the one kind of outlier of a four track record that becomes a smash hit.
[SPEAKER_02]: But that's because the riverhead was came up right before
[SPEAKER_02]: So in those days, you just had to start to let the limitations of your, or the parentheses, what your gear was in form your music and be that thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: God, by voice is perfect example.
[SPEAKER_02]: The music.
[SPEAKER_02]: Would it be as amazing on a two-inch analogue?
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: If they had recorded me out of B-thousand on two-inch tape, I don't think it would have had the same immediacy in the same vibe.
[SPEAKER_02]: And vibe is super important, I think, in recording.
[SPEAKER_02]: Great song is a great song, but a great song with a great vibe is upper echelon.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it reminds me of when a football team is playing another one and they're completely outmatched talent-wise and what do they do every time?
[SPEAKER_00]: They slow the game down, big time because they want to be less possessions over time and maybe you'll get lucky and you'll have a puncher's chance and it really reminds me of what you're talking about there, it's like play your game plan for the players that you have on the field right there and don't play like you're the greatest show on turf rams if
[SPEAKER_02]: a change-up picture with a slider, or, you know, you can throw a slider for a strike for get it, or a splitter.
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't have to, you don't have to gas your power hitters who are hitting gas.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, if you throw someone who can throw an effective splitter, you just want, you just want a game.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: You have a good shot at it.
[SPEAKER_00]: you got that puncher's chance and that's what there's kind of records that you're talking about or like you're right not every record is Nebraska the way that blue up but you you do have the puncher's chance at Nebraska that's true so by the time I think it was like around nineteen ninety eight mover come by happiness comes out on sub-pop it kind of seems from the outside looking and looking at your career that that's when things kind of start to take
[SPEAKER_00]: a little bit more.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you remember about that time as things started to take off?
[SPEAKER_02]: For me, I think I hit a different level of songwriting.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think there are times in my trajectory where I really feel like that's where something happened from songwriting and maybe my production ideas where it reached another level.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that was one of those for sure, because my last band had the band prior to it, the Skud Mountain Boys.
[SPEAKER_02]: We made three albums.
[SPEAKER_02]: in really three albums in a year and a half.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, wow, yeah, we released our first album in January, and then our second album was February.
[SPEAKER_02]: We took care of that sophomore slump thing, but I just put into a month apart.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the songs for the third record, I had written pretty close to the release of those two albums, but we had signed to sub-pop in the meantime, so things slow down a little bit.
[SPEAKER_02]: We made those three albums very fast and
[SPEAKER_02]: From my perspective, for me, it felt like that unit at that time had taken the thing we were doing as far as it would go.
[SPEAKER_02]: That would be intriguing to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't personal, wasn't any of that stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I just thought like,
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to do this thing, and I don't think that this unit is the ones for that.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I wanted to expand, and I was so heavily into, like, birthback, and Ryan Wilson and Jimmy Webb, and you've got into, like, Nick Drake heavily at that time, and big star.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I just was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I, I was, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I,
[SPEAKER_02]: things were just so exciting for me and I was just like, it was frenetic.
[SPEAKER_02]: I could not listen to enough music.
[SPEAKER_02]: I could not write enough songs.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I made a decision to go another way.
[SPEAKER_02]: I had written that there was a Scott Montmore's record ready to go, but I had this side
[SPEAKER_02]: He has a different life than a musician, but he's an excellent musician, and I learned a lot from him.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we made, I convinced Subpop to let me do a side project seven inch with my brother, the police brothers, and they said, sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: did that and in a matter of months I realized I was writing more and more songs that fit in that pile than this pile and there were much more engaging to me but it wasn't they just were engaging and I was thinking hang on if I do this God Mount Boys record I know what it's going to be and I felt a commitment to the label that if I take their money and put this record out then I'm going to promote it for a year and I think and I'm looking at another year and a half
[SPEAKER_02]: we're doing this thing when what I really want to be doing is this other thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I just kind of took a leap and said, hey, what do you guys think about this and to their credit?
[SPEAKER_02]: They said, yeah, you can, let's do that thing and I was able to really indulge myself.
[SPEAKER_02]: with the songs and in the production and I had a little bit of a budget that I didn't have before and I had never recorded a real orchestra before and then I did and I had never had real horns on songs and then I did and I'll tell you the first time I heard when we recorded overcome by happiness the charts were the last thing the strings were the last things to go down and I
[SPEAKER_02]: 25 days or something making that record which to me was just like you think 25 days when I got doing 25 days Yeah, I couldn't make three albums anyway We took every second of that 25 days, too.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let me tell you The last thing to go down were the strings and I had been hearing these things in my mind, and I've been hearing these arrangements and the
[SPEAKER_02]: The players came into the studio and recorded on two-inch analog.
[SPEAKER_02]: And when the first song went by, I think it was the song overcome by happiness.
[SPEAKER_02]: When the strings came in, I could not believe it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I guessed.
[SPEAKER_02]: I could not believe what I was hearing.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that sound of orchestra coming off of the analog tape to a song that I had written that I had been thinking of for a couple
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was one of the most thrilling things I was like, this is what I want to do until I was just spectacular.
[SPEAKER_02]: So to get to your answer, that moment there was having the freedom to not write a country song, having the freedom to write any kind of song I wanted.
[SPEAKER_02]: was very, very inspiring to someone who likes to write songs, and it just was one of those things that just kept sending me further and further into things, very, very, very exciting.
[SPEAKER_00]: And people can kind of forget what that feels like at the start of a career where, you know, before you have something going, there is no budget for anything, there is no listeners for anything, there's this sound in your head and getting that sound out of your head and on to two inch tape with an orchestra.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that was just, it sounds like it took about a decade of different work in your life to get from that one place to the other.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a huge
[SPEAKER_02]: And Joe, the thing to think about in that time too, and I was not technically, I mean, the internet was around obviously, and computers were way more advanced in 97 than they were in 92.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I had no way of hearing horns on the song.
[SPEAKER_02]: I might have had a casserole, like for a trombone, and I might have made a four-track demo and played along with a casserole that was the trumpet sound, which sounds like you think a casserole trumpet sounds like.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I didn't have any way to even
[SPEAKER_02]: here in a prox, like a real close facsimile of what it might sound like.
[SPEAKER_02]: My son now, 20 years old, is a whiz on logic, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, whiz, just like he's a tech native, like I ask him advice all the time.
[SPEAKER_02]: The sounds that he pulls up out of a computer are
[SPEAKER_02]: It's extraordinary, you know, it's insane.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's insane and it's wonderful and I love it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if I do I wish I had it that then, maybe, but I'm not lamenting, having recorded on two-inch analog tape with a real heart player, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: No one's saying I wish I didn't do that, but he's making music that, just like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I spent the $40,000.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know I got a buddy of mine who works a regular job in nine to five and we were having some beers recently.
[SPEAKER_00]: He goes, you know, I've been recording a little bit of music as a hobby and I go, okay, let me, let me hear some of it and he puts it on and it just sounds like a record to me because he became a whiz in logic and he became a whiz particularly.
[SPEAKER_00]: with using, I guess, what would be thought of as programmed drums because it's just addictive drums.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the level that they've gotten to with that, if I were to hear it and you didn't you told me it was a regular drummer, I do this for a living and I wouldn't have been able to hear the difference.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's outrageous with you.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, thinking about that, because I was thinking I still have a four track cassette recorded.
[SPEAKER_02]: And
[SPEAKER_02]: and circling back to what you're talking about.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the old days, we did it because we had no choice.
[SPEAKER_02]: Would I have said, let's, I wish I had a, you know, what do you call them?
[SPEAKER_02]: Half-inch, eight-track, or a one-inch, eight-track, back then.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, we didn't.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we had to use a four-track.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, the only reason to use a four-track is because it adds a anesthetic that you want.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, that's a choice.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, we were, as I was saying,
[SPEAKER_02]: exist in the confines of the technology.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now that, do they do that limited technology or is it an aesthetic choice?
[SPEAKER_02]: There's no other reason for me to use a four track cassette player.
[SPEAKER_02]: Unless I'm saying I want that sound and that aesthetic.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because what the computer I'm talking to you on right now can make as good as sounding record as I've ever made.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and it gets even more meta than that though, because if you were to walk in the other room with your son, who's a widget, whiz at logic, and say, I want, like, the for track aesthetic, he could probably be like, wow, there's a couple plug-in things out there.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: even deeper.
[SPEAKER_00]: Talk to me about this most recent record, Sunny, I was wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know when we're going to release this episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the record will just come out.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's coming out on April 3rd.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a ton of heavy hitters on this record, including one of my favorite drummers of all time, Mike from the Sadies.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: What was the making of this record
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I was writing, in the last few years, Joe, I've written more songs than I had in the last 10 years.
[SPEAKER_02]: And possibly because, a little aside my son, I'd won each son who became a bit of a baseball freak.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, he played high level baseball.
[SPEAKER_02]: My wife and I were looking at each other like when you're the health of this country.
[SPEAKER_02]: I like baseball as a fan, but I don't have it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm pretty attention deficit is pretty pronounced.
[SPEAKER_02]: I needed to be on something with a motor that went no slower than 30 miles an hour.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was not happy.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: We are at this conference, so we wanted to nurture his love of it and I got what position did he play?
[SPEAKER_02]: He pitched.
[SPEAKER_02]: He played in field and played up at that age at a young age everyone plays every day.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was in this to help coach and I didn't know anything about coaching, but I went to coaching school and I turned out I'm a good hitting coach.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I spent years on a baseball field like four to six days a week on a baseball field for eight years.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that dented my song and it's one of my son retired from high level ball.
[SPEAKER_02]: I kind of got my life back and I was like, oh yeah, I write songs and then I, you know,
[SPEAKER_02]: The more time I spent, the more I was like, oh, yes, and then I just, so I started writing Justin's in dozens of songs and I had this idea of the sound I wanted and there was a
[SPEAKER_02]: piano player.
[SPEAKER_02]: I knew I want to be mostly a piano-based record and there's a Canadian guy who lives in Toronto here.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's from Montreal, guy named Mike Evan who makes records.
[SPEAKER_02]: Who is a spectacular guy and I ran into him years ago through Jim Kriegen, who's the base of the air beer naked ladies, Jim and I friends in the
[SPEAKER_02]: Jim asked me to play this event that is Whiteface Hosting for fundraiser and he said, I know this piano player will do your songs, so we did two or three of my songs.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't even recall which, but I think we rehearsed for like 20 minutes, but yeah, the way this guy played, spoke to me, spoke to me and I was like, I'm going to go back to this person.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, long story short, Jim owns this studio and I said, hey, Jim, I want to put this,
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to make this record with you be interested in playing bass and he offered Jim owns a world-class recording studio that I could never afford on my own and he's on top of being a spectacular player, he's a lovely and generous guy and he said I'll tell you what.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll let you come in here and you pay me this.
[SPEAKER_02]: And as I go, God, so I took him up on it.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a gym play base.
[SPEAKER_02]: My given play piano in Michael, it's deep.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've been friends with one of my closest friends for almost three years now.
[SPEAKER_02]: I wanted him on drums.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I just had the songs already and I demoed them up and we the way this worked.
[SPEAKER_02]: Joe, we went to Jim Studio for so many days and with his house engineer, he's got Kenny Long, who's a excellent engineer.
[SPEAKER_02]: We set up and we sat around a table, they were all pros, they had the demos, the temples were just about right, the shapes were all there, everything was there.
[SPEAKER_02]: We would sit around and I'd say, okay, here's this song and we would practice it two or three times and then we'd go in, we had we played live and separated and we went and recorded it and that was it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we sat back down, learned another song and
[SPEAKER_02]: learned it and then went and recorded it till it was right.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was unquestionably the most easiest, most thrilling recording session I've ever had in my mind was just like I didn't even doubt it got to the point after like the first two songs there was like okay
[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to get this done.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think we recorded 21 songs.
[SPEAKER_02]: We just banged 21 songs with, you know, we did a few overdubbs and someone would punch in here or there or, but a lot of those are single takes, just talked about them, takes until it got the vibe and then we moved on.
[SPEAKER_02]: Engineering was not an issue.
[SPEAKER_02]: The sound was dialed in, so we were, we were battling sound,
[SPEAKER_02]: which is a big deal, you know, you get something like that, but that sound doesn't sound, it was all there.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was all there and it moved very easily.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then they were overdubs that I found out to people all over the world, and this one was a peer and that person would appear.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it just was, I just knew it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just knew these were the people for me and these people fit that song.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I mentioned vibe to you before.
[SPEAKER_02]: has to have a sound, has to have a, you have to get a feeling from the sound, not just that the song has to be right or the take has to be right, but there has to be something bigger than just four people playing.
[SPEAKER_02]: It has to give you something and I got that feeling instantly.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I do believe you can only get that feeling from at least three of the four people playing live together.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can't, you can't, for to my ear,
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't experience a music a song and say that has a real feel to it if it's assembled not saying it has no value, but I don't get the same thing out.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that was total.
[SPEAKER_02]: That was important to me that that we got that kind of thing that we got a feeling from this record.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I felt it in media.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, we're glad you're coaching careers over so that this record could come in.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got a nine-year-old son, I think I'm heading into my coaching career right now.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, I don't regret it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, no, I know.
[SPEAKER_02]: I haven't changed your thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is, I just coach this team in the fall and it was, oh, man, I can't think of anything funer.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I'm enjoying it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, listen, it's been such a pleasure to have you on the show.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm very grateful for your time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for being a part of the working songwriter.
[SPEAKER_00]: this week's show was brought to you by bandsugle.
[SPEAKER_00]: Built by musicians and four musicians, bandsugle is in all in one platform to build a beautiful website for your music.
[SPEAKER_00]: Use promo code TWS, the initials of our podcast, TWS to get 15% off the first year of any new subscription.
[SPEAKER_00]: Joe Pranese's latest album is entitled, Sunny I Was Wrong, available everywhere music is sold or stringed.
[SPEAKER_00]: If before we meet again, you sit down to write, please remember, an expensive drug habit is not a song, a compelling Instagram account is not a song, and most importantly, reverb is not a song.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let all that take care of itself, and for you, just keep your eye on the song.