Little Bit Of Everything #6 (End of 2024)
With 4 (!!!) Oh Brother germinations/early demos
First of all, I’m sorry that it’s been a minute. Between tour ending, the holiday break and our youngest turning 3 months while still chasing around two toddlers, I haven’t had much time to get to this. I told myself that access to the archive of what we’re building over here was still worth it for the paid subscribers while I got my head above water. That’s not an excuse though. I’m not cool with it. I plan on picking up the pace in the new year. Tons to share. Anyway, here’s some answers to some questions…
1 - Taylor, do you ever feel like all the songs have been written? How do you find inspo?
(Nancy.del.mar)
No, I don’t think all the songs have been written. I think they’re as evergreen as a good dinner conversation. That feeling when it seems like you and your cohorts are covering ground in an inspired, new way. Not that I think we’re all arriving at groundbreaking, original thoughts on a regular basis. I just think what gives a good conversation it’s unique quality is not the ideas themselves but rather the people and perspectives they’re coming from. No two people see the world exactly the same, so when someone is sharing some thoughts in an open, honest way, we get insight into who they are, even if the ideas themselves are common or even hackneyed. And I believe the same is true for songwriting. We’ve all heard a million versions of “He/She Is Gone And I Want Him/Her Back” and yet incredible versions that resonate on a deep level are still showing up regularly. So I feel like it has more to do with a writer conveying their essence in a singular way and less to do with with unique concepts for songs (although that’s never a bad thing).
In regards to the second part of your question - I’m always desperate for material. Whether it’s something I’ve lived through, something a family member or a friend has lived through, or a book or just some kind of inversion on a song idea that already exists - I’ll take from anything and try to put it to use. Writers are voyeurs and exploiters. My antennae isn’t always up though. Sometimes I’m too focused on recording or touring that I end up not arriving at anything to write about. It’s not that they’re not crossing my field of vision, I’m just not catching them. But once I can focus and commit my thinking to songs, stuff starts to pop up.
2 - Are there any specific lines or phrases from this album that you are most proud of?
(Colinded22)
If you guys can let me indulge in this question for a second…I’ll give one line a song that I think captures the spirit of what I was going for.
Mr. Los Angeles - Leave your comment underneath the caption
Front Row Seat - As slowly as a yogi stretches at an unsafe park
Still Strangers Sometimes - Even as we cross each other’s borderlines / We’re still strangers sometimes
Surprise! - How many cakes do you have to jump out of before no one yells “surprise!”?
House Parties - Spilled drinks on a baby grand and midnight singalongs (I feel like that’s the whole song right there)
King Of The Never Wills - You used to say that my beers were a bit too expensive / To get to the heart of what drove a true seeker to drink
The Game - Some might look for meaning in the ashes / She just misses standing in the flame
Enough Already - Never been hungry enough to get crackin’ / Haven’t quite fallen enough to atone
Hilarity Ensues - Let’s root root for the home team and buy each other ice cream / Let’s live inside the day dream / That is all it’s ever been
3 - Best guitar you've ever played?
(Froncha11)
If you look up a release of ours called Petty Rips, it’s got a cover of Walls and then it has an early version of our song Mistakes We Should Have Made on there too. That version was produced by Mike Campbell and recorded at his studio (hence its inclusion on this release). It’s the same studio where he and Tom and Jeff Lynne recorded Full Moon Fever along with a lot of other Petty recordings, I’m sure. Lying against a couch was his main blackguard Tele. I picked it up and he said that was the guitar he recorded all of their first record on. It was the only guitar he owned at the time. He obviously went on to amass quite a collection but that guitar clearly never left his main rotation. So that was something to behold. He also brought out his ‘59 burst (I think it was ‘59. It might’ve been ‘60) when we needed a Les Paul tone for a small overdub in the bridge. So that was a very heavy moment as well. But between it being the holy grail of guitars and it belonging to Mike, it felt a little less approachable. That’s why I think the Tele wins out at the end of the day. I wasn’t as terrified to hold it (but definitely still a little terrified), and besides, I’m a tele guy.
4 - How do y'all determine if a friendship/ acquaintance will make a good collaborator?
Cool question. Our old pal Mike Viola once told me that his only rule during co-writing was that the collaborators can only say yes to each other. At first it sounded confusing and counterintuitive to me. What if I have a really bad idea and someone needs to tell me before it gets even worse? What if whoever introduced the initial song idea isn’t seeing the results they hoped for? But the more i thought about it, these concerns felt shortsighted. I realized that when you’re working with people you trust and respect, the ideas that are lacking in one way or another won’t bear out and the writers in the room will realize it as a collective. Most likely, it’ll be the person that came up with it themselves that will circle back and suggest an update or improvement. That way no one railroaded anyone else’s creativity or inspiration. A session full of a lot of “no’s” can tend to shut people down eventually and make them unwilling to suggest anything. It’s not dissimilar from the improv acting concept of “Yes, and…” Just rolling with whatever is presented seems more in keeping with the spirit of why you decided to collaborate anyway.
It’s worth repeating: you have to be sure you’re working with people you respect and trust or else none of this works. It doesn’t mean you need to always understand or even immediately like whatever they’re presenting. It just means that you’re willing to see things through.
I also think it’s important to remember that it’s a collaboration. It’s so easy to feel precious and protective over certain ideas. I definitely have. At this point in life I try to be conscious of which ideas I should share and which I should keep to myself. An idea I share with people like Mike or Jason Boesel or Blake Mills will inherently come out different from how it would end up if I kept it to myself. That’s the whole point! So there is an element of letting go when a song is offered up to other creative visions. And anything that you feel like needs a more exacting approach - there’s no shame in writing that one alone!
5 - What's the story behind the blackguard?
(_the_gear_room_)
For anyone already lost, the blackguard is my Telecaster. It’s more or less a ‘53 Tele. I’ll explain…
Brief catchup for anyone that is not a guitar nerd - the earliest fenders were these “blackguards” which is in reference to the black pick guard. They were called different things - Esquires, Nocaster, Broadcaster and finally Telecaster. Look them up - you’ll recognize the look. There are reasons for the name changes but that’s a long story that we don’t need to get into. All that matters for our story is that a tele from the early 50’s is as cool as a guitar could possibly get. That’s my opinion, but also the opinion of most guitar players, I’d wager. Look up live pictures of Bruce Springsteen, Jimmy Page, Keith Richards, Mike Campbell, Jason Isbell, Brad Paisley and so many others…and you’ll eventually see them playing a blackguard.
Speaking of Brad Paisley…as anyone at our recent Ryman shows can attest to, he has become a dear friend over the last few years. And beyond being a masterful writer, singer, guitarist and record maker, he also has decided to do God’s work and revive old blackguards. Basically a lot of bozos bought these back in the day (before anyone knew how special they were destined to become) and they’d swap out pick-ups, repaint them, basically anything to fuck them up and obliterate what is so inherently special about them. So Brad set out to find these Frankenstein monsters, buy them up (for fractions of their values had they not been messed with), find all the original parts they were missing, and put them back together correctly. He’d sand them back down, repaint them, make sure all the correct parts matched, do a little bit of tasteful aging and the final product is what you see me playing these days. It’s truly incredible because if Brad wasn’t saving this these guitars and restoring them, they’d eventually be lost forever.
So that’s what I’m playing. A Paisley restored ‘53 and all that that entails. Definitely couldn’t call it “original.” Besides, if it was, buying an original early 50’s Tele would just be way too expensive for me and bringing it on tour would be downright irresponsible.
Moral of the story - God bless Brad!
And I hope that wasn’t too boring for the non players.
6 - When making an album, do you talk about a specific kind of overall sound you're going for?
(stuff_from_mike)
Just about every time. And yet it’s never quite arrived at what our intentions were in the beginning. I remember wanting Good Luck With Whatever to be aggressively sparse. Like if there was a piano playing with the bass and drums, then we wouldn’t need a guitar. And vice versa. Almost like a Plastic Ono Band approach. Anyway, that obviously didn’t happen. Same with all the albums. I go in with some kind of idea or hope and it’s usually totally thwarted. But I’m actually grateful for it. I trust my “vision” much less than the power of music presenting itself. Holding on too tight to a specific intention seems to feel a little less alive than letting go and staying open to what’s happening in the moment. I know that makes me sound a little bit like a guided meditation app, but it’s true. I’m not claiming that all artists work best this way. It seems like a lot of artists I love have very specific concepts that they can execute and their music seems better for it. I just know that, after getting the song written, it’s not good for me to ascribe too many objectives onto the music.
So there’s 6 longish answers. I could keep going but I’m not trying to take up too much of your day. For the paid subscribers - here are a few more demos/germinations of Oh Brother songs. Some are just sections, before anything else was written, and some are full songs.
Happy holidays to all of you and I look forward to kicking things into a higher gear in the new year.