[SPEAKER_00]: Hi and welcome to the working songwriter.
[SPEAKER_00]: The show where today's best songwriters come to talk shop.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm 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,
[SPEAKER_00]: using chat GPT to write children's songs and then uploading them to Spotify in batches by the thousands or else a scrappy upstart using your own brain and heart to create music because that is somehow vintage now this is your show because ultimately it is what every writer seeks most an ironclad excuse to put off actually writing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I hope that you enjoy this week's episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our guests this week are Gabe Dixon and Mike Madison of the Tadeshi Trucks Band.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Grammy winning roots ensemble led by Susan Tadeshi and Derek Trucks.
[SPEAKER_00]: Formed in 2010, their debut album Revelator won the Grammy Award for Best Blues Out.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the group has since become one of the country's premier live bands, selling out Madison Square Garden and playing more than 20 shows at Red Rocks.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mike Madison has been working with Derek Trucks for more than two decades.
[SPEAKER_00]: He joined the Derek Trucks band as lead vocalist in the early 2000s and became a founding member of the Tadeshi Trucks band.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is also one of the group's principal lyricists and co-wrote one of its best known songs, Midnight in Harlem.
[SPEAKER_00]: Keyboard is singer and songwriter Gabe Dixon joined the Tideshi Trucks Band in 2019.
[SPEAKER_00]: Before that, he led the Gabe Dixon Band and built a solo career of his own.
[SPEAKER_00]: Within Tideshi Trucks, Dixon has become a key songwriter vocalist and instrumentalist.
[SPEAKER_00]: The band is appeared on Austin City Limits, the late show was Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel Live.
[SPEAKER_00]: NPR called the band a deeply skilled and spirited ensemble, while Rolling Stone has praised its free-wealing, so-ful sound.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got a chance to catch up with Gabe and Mike to hear about their musical journey so far.
[SPEAKER_00]: Gabe Dixon and Mike Madison of the today's She Trucks Band.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks so much for being a part of the working songwriter podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Before we can get to the band that we're here to cover today, there's a lot of ground we've got to cover first because both of you have such rich musical histories before you even reach this project.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mike, you grew up in Minneapolis, which is quietly like a very, very deep music town.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you remember about growing up there?
[SPEAKER_00]: What kind of music were you influenced by at that time?
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, yeah, this is an interesting music town, you know, my dad was a Lutheran minister, and he confirmed All four members of the trashmen who had the first number one Minnesota hit with surf and bird.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that was kind of my intro.
[SPEAKER_01]: We had that 45 footer in the house
[SPEAKER_01]: But growing up, you know, everybody was really listening to Prince and he kind of defined what Minneapolis was about at the time, but there was a great underground scene with the replacements and who should do and stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So for me, my real entree into popular music was kind of funk and punk.
[SPEAKER_00]: funk and punk yeah that's a classic combination right there of course and then you would go east for school you went to Harvard for a while did you study music there at Harvard?
[SPEAKER_01]: No I didn't study the American literature
[SPEAKER_00]: Really, and were you thinking to go in that direction as a career originally?
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was just stuff I was interested in.
[SPEAKER_01]: Music was always part of what I did.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a band's and stuff back in Minneapolis.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I always kept that with me in my pocket.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I wanted to be a writer and a journalist.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was lucky enough to be able to do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I always maintain the music thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: When did that fork in the road happen for you?
[SPEAKER_00]: When did you go from journalist to saying, hey, I might be able to do this for a living on the road playing tunes?
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I moved to New York City when it was still a real music town back at the 90s with my partner Paul Olson and our band.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we were kind of making a go of it there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's when I ran into direct trucks and that kind of took me into music full time.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's funny that you'd say when a New York used to be a real music town because I've definitely noticed in the last decade, maybe decade and a half, pretty much all the polarity has gone to Los Angeles and Nashville and New York just doesn't seem the same the way that it was and let's say 1995 or even 2000.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the music business is kind of leaked out of New York, but the music itself is still here and the venues and the energy and the players, but this was kind of the place to go if you were a heck from Minnesota and you wanted to make it the big city.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fair enough, fair enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you're playing with the band that brought you there to New York was scrap-ematic and you guys were making a real go of it and you were signed to Alligator, I believe, which is one of the foremost blues records record labels in America.
[SPEAKER_00]: How did this confluence come with you in Derek Trucks?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I've read before that you guys met by Happen's dance almost.
[SPEAKER_01]: We did, well, Scrapamatic wasn't signed to alligator.
[SPEAKER_01]: We were signed to a smaller label called Landslide, which we still do stuff for.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I ran into Derek on the subway after a couple of people had recommended me to him, and we had a nice chat.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't really know who he was.
[SPEAKER_01]: He recognized me because I had a big hair, and he had seen my picture.
[SPEAKER_01]: But, musically, we happened to hit it off, and we kind of took it from there.
[SPEAKER_00]: When did it become clear that that that that project was going to take kind of precedents over the other work that you've been doing?
[SPEAKER_01]: He offered me a job.
[SPEAKER_01]: So cash on the barrel.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it was a lot less than I was making, but you know, I left my nerd job for the cool job.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fair enough and what did you start to learn what you became I actually know it that that's a question for when we bring the Confluence together for for you and Gabe Gabe you're originally from Shelbyville, Tennessee, is that correct?
[SPEAKER_02]: That's where I was born.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, my parents are from there my grandparents were all there I went back there every year a couple times a year to visit but I really grew up in Nashville Oh fair enough yeah remains five to 18
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow, okay, that your early story starts to make a lot more sense to me here because you really hit the ground running at a fairly young age.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Gabe Dixon band was started in late 90s and you were going at that time and what was the music that you found in Nashville early on that kind of first open your heart?
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, Nashville's an interesting place to grow up for a musician, because it was a rich unity.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was actually even before I started the Gabe Dixon band in college, in Miami.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was in a strangely, I was in a teen country, boy band, when I was 12 years old.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was 12 and I learned how to play great boss of fire and like Elton John and like Beatles stuff to play and sing it and I was also a classical pianist so my mom was like what do I do with this and she called there was an ad for this band that was holding auditions that was going to get signed to curb records and all this stuff and so I won this
[SPEAKER_02]: I got a slot as a keyboard player and singer, so I was exposed to natural media and studio musicians seen early on because some of the musicians played on those records.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I kind of, and we did this sort of weird country thing when I was from about 12 till 17.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that sort of, I didn't love the music, but it kind of gave me the bug for performing and starting to write.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so when I was in college in Miami, I put together my little band.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was a mixture of, you know, a soul and pop and rock and jazz, like my whole band were in the jazz school there.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, there were a lot of influences that came together.
[SPEAKER_02]: When I started that.
[SPEAKER_00]: That sounds like you almost went to graduate school from age 12 to 17 for performing recording music.
[SPEAKER_00]: What were some of the lessons that you learned at that age from those older musicians that were session players?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I watched this guy David Briggs, who was kind of a legend, and he played in, you know, Elvis's band, he played in the Muscle Shoals band back in the 60s, and I just learned how I learned the national number system, like chord charts, and I just learned what I would sit there in the piano booth and watch him.
[SPEAKER_02]: play with all these other Nashville dudes and like just take a song from a crappy little demo to a full fledged Nashville sound kind of recording, you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't know, I think I learned how to sing in the studio too, because because at that time it was in the early 90s and mid 90s,
[SPEAKER_02]: There was no pro tools or anything, so I had to get the motion and the pitch and everything or it wasn't done until I got all that right.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we got a lot of songs pitched to us too, so I kind of saw that process happen early on.
[SPEAKER_02]: I started writing, I wrote my first song about 15 or so, and then I started co-writing with my mom, because I had the, I loved Elton John and there was this lyric, you know, he had Bernie Toppin and as the lyricist and Elton was sort of the piano player.
[SPEAKER_02]: So for a little while I thought, Mel, that'll be all, you know, I'll do that, and so my mom would just write sets of lyrics and I put him a music, you know, and then eventually
[SPEAKER_02]: lyrics and stuff and really started writing a lot when I was about 20.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a beautiful thing, because most people at 15, 16 years old are rebelling against the folks.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm wanting to get the hell out of the house.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you had an Elton John Bernie Toppin kind of relationship instead with your mouth.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, this is a little unusual, I guess.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, good record collection.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, they were listening to great stuff from the late 60s and early 70s that they grew up on.
[SPEAKER_02]: I kind of fell in love with it too.
[SPEAKER_02]: All the senior songwriters from that era and great bands, Joe Cocker.
[SPEAKER_02]: All in, but there's been, you know, James Taylor, and folks like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it wasn't long before your, your talent was recognized on a very high level, because after you had started the Gabe Dixon band down there, in a belief Miami, you went on the road to play keyboards and sing with with Paul McCartney in 2001, 2002.
[SPEAKER_00]: How did that come together?
[SPEAKER_00]: And what was that experience like?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's such a young age.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was strange, because I was recording my band in this studio in LA with David Con producing and David was producing Paul McCarty's album the next month, so he asked me to be the keyboard player.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, it was when I first met him, it was like meeting a cartoon character, honestly, uh, because it was, I was, I was, I came from the Beatles place, like I was such a huge fan, you know, we were always playing it around the house when I was a kid.
[SPEAKER_02]: My mom, when she was a teenager, got kicked out of a movie theater for screaming too loud at a hard day's night, um, so it's like, that's, it was,
[SPEAKER_02]: But it was a wonderful experience, getting to watch them be creative and make recordings.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was in a studio with him for six weeks in Los Angeles and then did a couple shows with him did the concert for New York City.
[SPEAKER_02]: Once I got past the overwhelm, I really enjoyed working with him and watching how
[SPEAKER_02]: like the simplicity of his process, you know, kind of he seemed to be very in touch with his creative flow, we were working, and I think it was a probably, was eye opening for me at the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, one of the things I find the most interesting, I'm a big baseball fan, and obviously anyone who makes it to the show, to the big leagues, it was the best to the best where they came from.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then within the MLB, there's still stars within that, and they just jump above, they're still an Aaron judge, they're still a Mike trout.
[SPEAKER_00]: a show Hiotani.
[SPEAKER_00]: You had worked with all these very high-level guys in Nashville, so you had been to the show and now you're with Paul McCartney and that strikes me as a similar thing when you worked with him in the studio there, did you notice parts about his creative process that did levitate above even that already high level?
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, he was just very fluid and he could kind of go, he would sometimes play drums, he would sometimes play bass, he would sometimes play guitar, he was playing all the instruments like piano on some tracks.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, I think I liked you as a guy who was just coming straight out of music school, where you're like, oh, you should have a great ear, you should be able to hear everything you want to play before you play it and all this stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: He just was not like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: He just tried stuff out and willing to fall on his face until he found something you like.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, for example, he was once on you played this gives and hollow body guitar on you took guitar solo for like eight bars.
[SPEAKER_02]: probably 12 or 15 takes in a row.
[SPEAKER_02]: And just was like messing up and just like, oh, but.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it was very, it wasn't like, here's a heavy musician guy like he was going to like blow your face off, but he was just creating these melodies and just trying to discover what was cool instead of having any preconceived things.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't, for some reason that stands out to me as his willingness to just be out on the edge and find something, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: to terrifying thing to do at any age, I would imagine.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mike Gabe was saying he started writing songs that are pretty early age.
[SPEAKER_00]: When did you start writing, were you writing literature when you were at Harvard or were you writing songs?
[SPEAKER_00]: When did writing become a part of your process?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I was mostly a creative writer and writing short stories and poetry and stuff like that and I didn't really transfer that over to music and tell us probably in my 20s and I realized I could kind of fuse the two.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fair enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you find it easier to write songs and you did short stories and prose in literature?
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I didn't because I wasn't necessarily super-adept at the music part of it, so it was kind of figuring out how to link those two in myself.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was lucky to have a great songwriting partner in Paul Olson in my band, Scrap of Maddic, and he was just kind of endlessly
[SPEAKER_01]: Creative, and he had a more of a track probably like Gabe.
[SPEAKER_01]: He went to the University of Minnesota in the music performance school there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I was lucky enough to kind of be his Bernie talk in a way.
[SPEAKER_01]: And kind of learned the craft in that manner.
[SPEAKER_00]: Were there aspects of literary writing that you had to unlearn to become a good songwriter?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think so, you know, being super clever and verbose and showing off intellectually and stuff like that doesn't really pan out in music.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you also have to match what you're trying to say to the melody and to the chords.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, it's a whole...
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a very unique way of being creative and it took me a while to kind of rearrange my brain.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've worked with many songwriters.
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe since then, or do you notice that there's parts of your literary writing that you did take with you that that make you different from your average songwriter that you may?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think so.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, this ability to be economical and to kind of trust the process, not overthink it in a way, also a real allegiance to image and, you know, as they say in all the writing classes, show, don't tell that that's been very helpful.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, Gabe, it sounded like Mike almost through happenstance on the subway, met Derek Trucks and became part of his world, like he said, he offered him a gig.
[SPEAKER_00]: When did you become a part of that orbit and how did it happen?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I was kind of a fan of the band for a while, you know, Derek Trucks band and then Susan.
[SPEAKER_02]: I actually just coincidentally, my band ended up opening for Derek's band back in like 2002 on probably just three to four or five shows.
[SPEAKER_02]: Then, you know, I think I met him briefly and then I was just kind of watching from afar and I bought a couple records and I think around 2016, people started telling me they were like if you ever worked with their trucks and choosing to rescue in that band,
[SPEAKER_02]: No, that would be amazing, you know, my friend David Ryan Harris, who I was on tour with in 2016, he was like, you gotta do something with them and Oliver Wood said the same thing around that time and my base player friend Ted Peckio, I played one of my trio gigs with him one time and he was like, hey man, you really should meet Derek and Susan, and then not long after that, I got a call from Tyler Greenwell, Falcon, who's the drummer in the band.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he said, hey, our keyboard player, Colby Burbridge, is sick.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we need somebody to suffer him for a couple months, until he gets better.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we've got to recommend it by a bunch of people.
[SPEAKER_02]: So would you be willing to learn 45 songs?
[SPEAKER_02]: in a couple weeks and and split start playing with us for a minute and I was like yeah this will be the best this will be the most fun two months you know you know fan of the band and you know so that's kind of how I got involved and then you know sadly Kofi passed away a couple months after I started doing that and you know I thought
[SPEAKER_02]: I thought, okay, well, I'll finish out this year and then go back to doing what I was doing as artist and writer and everything.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it just became clear that after a while they didn't just want like a coffee or a bridge clone, they wanted whatever was that I was bringing to the bands, though.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's why I'm still here, I love it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I love the music.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Tadeshi Trucks Band are one of our nation's foremost pervellers of blues music in the 21st century.
[SPEAKER_00]: They routinely play sold out arenas.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a poem that speaks to the humble beginnings of that legendary art form, though, by Michael Miller entitled Blues Band.
[SPEAKER_00]: One century, which time let go, lives on stubbornly in this room.
[SPEAKER_00]: The speaker's home with tales of Sunday gospel, police dogs on the shelves, bootleg whiskey at the back of a bus in Chicago after the war.
[SPEAKER_00]: 30 chairs and a light-turned-low give shelter from the cold outside where the word legend is scrolled in black by the photograph on the window.
[SPEAKER_00]: Horse, white-haired, he squints at the figures who watch him back from the crooked tables.
[SPEAKER_00]: His fingers conjuring the notes from childhood, his foot on the case tapping rhymes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your healed now says the thin girl's eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm out of change, says the man with the jar.
[SPEAKER_00]: A couple of ways in the dark by the counter.
[SPEAKER_00]: The boy sits up front, eager, taking notes down.
[SPEAKER_00]: their pens sustained him.
[SPEAKER_00]: At ten alone he walks by the ghosts of a college town.
[SPEAKER_00]: The bootleggers painted solemn on the gallery walls.
[SPEAKER_00]: Chicago beamed in the multiplex.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Nash of police dogs pantomind through a flickering reel.
[SPEAKER_00]: the bus stopping by the curb to take him to his next one night stand.
[SPEAKER_00]: The headlights go old as the waitress shuts out the light, unscard, and heads for the dead of home.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now a question for both of you, both of you came from your own projects where you're kind of the captain of this ship creatively and the tone, the voice, the style of the project.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now you're both contributing to a project where you're contributing to a larger tone style.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you navigate that as a creative?
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you, is there a mental framework you have for
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I'll say this to take it back one notch, when Gabe came into the band, I was deeply and forever impressed by his ability not only to come in knowing all the material, but kind of seamlessly put himself in there in a coffee-like way.
[SPEAKER_01]: You could hear coffee elements and he obviously digested
[SPEAKER_01]: to be himself and yet be what was there, what needed to be there, and I think that's kind of what you have to have when you're in a big group like this is you have to think about like, what are we, whether we have those discussions out loud or not, you have to kind of be able to gauge like, well, what's going on, what are we after, what are we trying to be, you know,
[SPEAKER_01]: inhabit the character as you see it, you know, and it's a weird, it's a weird task.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's easier said that done.
[SPEAKER_02]: It felt natural to me to step in because I do have a lot of the same influence this is
[SPEAKER_02]: I was excited to, I was excited to copy that stuff because I actually learned some stuff, learn something, just learn in those parts, but I feel like there was a place where I could kind of add something to it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess your question was sort of,
[SPEAKER_02]: Pointing toward how do we approach each project or how do we think of the band as a whole and I feel like we kind of have what we have, you know, we kind of like, all right, what have we got at our disposal here we've got
[SPEAKER_02]: great playing we've got you know Mike is an amazing songwriter and singer and let's get together in like whole our resources and come up with the best thing we possibly can.
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like Derek and Susan are pretty good at screw off.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know I'm curating and cultivating that.
[SPEAKER_02]: and sort of sourcing from the band members what they do well.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, if that makes any sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: It does.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I would imagine that you would write a song in different ways, if you were writing a song for like a really good power trio, as opposed to writing a song for the 12 members that are in the tissue trucks band.
[SPEAKER_00]: Does writing for such a large band is that an advantage that makes things easier or does that make the writing process a thorny or process?
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it makes it easier in some ways because there's, you know, you know, necessarily going to come up with all the horn parts and everything when you're driving this home.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're not going to come up with all the, like, background vocals, but you can scale it according to according to what the song wants, you know, once you go in.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, and the process is different for every song, you know, sometimes it'll start with just Derek having a guitar idea and then we'll, if it's me and Mike and Susan and Derek, we went to the farm in 2024 down in Georgia and had a camp out there and so we took little ideas and worked through them and then sometimes Michael bring in like a full song or I'll bring
[SPEAKER_02]: we'll take leave it or hats on just you know like the Falcon will do a cool demo and send it in and it's kind of just to me feels out of the field but when we play it out as a group it's like this how does this work so well for this band so I don't know I feel like the process is it's a little
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know what the right word is for it, but kind of haphazard, and it's nice when we put it through the filter of music, music, arranging and stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: You mentioned kind of following the need of each particular song.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you guys navigate the process?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure what you meant by that on a certain level is addition by subtraction.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't have 12 people crashing in.
[SPEAKER_00]: At once, how do you approach that arrangement phase?
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not everyone.
[SPEAKER_00]: is why everyone is giving space for others to play is that something that happens naturally throughout the band or is that something where someone who's kind of an MD or a producer has to carve those things out.
[SPEAKER_01]: you know I think that happens naturally in the band is if the if the initial spark or idea is yours you're kind of a sign the curator of the song so everybody gets input but people kind of tend to defer to you if it's your idea
[SPEAKER_01]: And in that way, everything's not just kind of watered down or by committee, there's a little bit of a guiding force in there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you think that's true, Gabe?
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I mean, you come in with sometimes come in with really specific arranged demos that we just kind of will take and like augment a little bit and add, you know, and soup up with this or that, but like it's pretty.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's got a nice structure to the arrangement.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's actually really helpful, I think, sometimes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I sort of did that with I am the moon, which was from the last record, you know, had a demo that was, like, you know, with the acoustic guitar and, you know, hint, you know, instead of a whole drum set, it was a tambourine, you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: But, but like a general template for the band, I think helps.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I would say that's true.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you strike the balance between not coming in with something that is too that is so produced before the band gets there that no one feels like they have any room?
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you strike that balance?
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I'm not that good of a producer, so
[SPEAKER_00]: in innate limitation.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think a lot of it is a bit of a trust exercise too.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, like you're saying, everybody's so good and for the most part tastesful that you know, you bring something in and it's like, nobody's gonna take a hatchet to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: People will understand where we're coming from because we do have a
[SPEAKER_01]: We do share influences and stuff like that and so if you're throwing around like, you know, I'm thinking this is like an isolation thing or this is like a you know country blues thing people get where you're coming from Don't talk to be about this new album that as we're recording this comes out tomorrow.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's called future soul.
[SPEAKER_00]: Guys, we're very long and hard on this.
[SPEAKER_00]: You work with the producer Mike Elizondo.
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you guys worked with him before in the today's trucks project?
[SPEAKER_01]: I had met him years ago back in the Derek Drexpan maybe 20 years ago, and there was some talk about him doing some stuff with us, but it never paned out.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so when this came up again, we were all very enthusiastic about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: What was his style as a producer like compared to previous projects you guys had done?
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, a lot more, um, uh, more of a different process, I guess, uh, you know, the previous, I've only been a part of the albums, uh, but the first one was the previous album.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm the moon.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was, uh,
[SPEAKER_02]: very much, we'd show up 11 or 12 to the studio, hang out, play, hang out, play, you know, often on eat dinner, party, until like two or three in the morning, sometimes, instead we're still recording and it's, oh, she'll knock off it, but Mike had a more like, let's start, I can't remember a 10 or 11, I know it's a 10, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: 10 a.m. and we're done by dinner time five or six.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that was it, okay, office hours, and I'd say it works really well.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot more efficient.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, working with him, you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Was it nice just to have a like an official producer who could yes or no an idea or you know if you're trying to make a decision they're there with it with a thought you know and Everyone kind of trusted him and sort of deferred to him.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think made things go quickly and more efficiently.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, streamlines is the word, it was nice.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that end product is a little more streamlined
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, when we're on stage, the nice thing about this band is we can kind of follow where the music goes and take things in provisatory and, but I think we often don't capture what we do on stage on the record and I think but Mike did really well as he just kind of like compressed it a little bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's like, look, here, let's just do some four minute songs.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, you know, all the potential energies in there and you can take it to the stage and do whatever you want
[SPEAKER_00]: Personally, I think that's wise, I think, because recorded music and live music are such strangely different mediums.
[SPEAKER_00]: You would think that they would be more similar than they are, but the way that we experience as listeners a record on our own and our car versus with, you know, whatever, 3500 people at the Beacon Theatre 10 shows in a row, it's just completely different.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I just can't tell you the number of times that with my own band in the past that there's just like, people are like, wow, you just can't capture it on recording, man.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just no different live until it really get it live.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm like, I don't understand why that is.
[SPEAKER_02]: I, I, I, I.
[SPEAKER_00]: uh... maybe it's an energetic thing i don't i don't know uh... uh... physical proximity say i have no idea but it is a strange like cinnamon on i guess with all the work with you guys have done in this project how do you think you're different as a songwriter now what do you think you've improved on as a songwriter working with this project over the years
[SPEAKER_02]: Personally, I'd become more confident in my own songwriting voice from this band, you know, I spent a lot of years, I was like, from about 2013 to 28, 17, 18, I was
[SPEAKER_02]: I was writing on music row with all these, you know, I had somehow developed this idea that I wasn't a good songwriter.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I stopped trusting myself and just kind of was co-writing with everybody, which is great.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love co-writing.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was very deferential at all times to every single writer I ever wrote in a co-writing.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that was, I think in this band,
[SPEAKER_02]: a couple of songs like I never wrote a bomb.
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't even do much writing by myself for a whole 10 years, you know, and the fact that I brought in songs a couple of times that I wrote 100% by myself and this band liked them and put them on the record, you know, I think it's helped my confidence as a writer.
[SPEAKER_02]: And,
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what I had to say about that, which has been great for me because it makes me want to write more.
[SPEAKER_00]: How about you, Mike?
[SPEAKER_00]: What's changed?
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I had to teach myself how to write.
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess, I don't know how I would say it to speck or something like that, like I came from a place where I was writing kind of with myself or my partner Paul and for us in a very specific voice and I had to kind of get out of my own head and really consider where other people were coming from and grow up a little bit that way in terms of a songwriter and take inputs and learn how to collaborate.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, luckily, I'd background in literary fiction probably helps you write for characters.
[SPEAKER_00]: Gentlemen, today's a showday for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to let you go.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to let you go back to the drudgery of playing ten shows at the Beacon Theatre in New York City.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's been an absolute honor and a pleasure to have you on the working songwriter.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for having us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, Joe.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: This week's show was brought to you by Bansugl.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The Tideshi Trucks Band's latest album is entitled Future Soul, available everywhere music is sold or streamed.
[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.