Songwriters on Process

Jan 09 2025 116 ep. 45 mins 4
Songwriters on Process Podcast artwork

In-depth interviews with songwriters about their songwriting process. That's it. Nothing else. No talk of band drama, band names, or tour stories. Treating songwriters as writers, plain and simple. By Ben Opipari, English Lit Ph.D.

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Flipturn

Jan 09 2025 44 mins  
Send us a textFlipturn's Tristan Duncan (guitar), Devon VonBalson (drums), and Dillon Basse (vocals) join the pod and go deep into their creative processes. We talk about, among other things, why certain times of day are better for writing, how exercise improves songwriting, and the places they find the most inspiring.Flipturn's latest album Burnout Days is out January 24 on Dualto

Phil and Tim Hanseroth (The Hanseroth Twins)

Dec 05 2024 47 mins  
Send us a textIs Vera, the debut album by Phil and Tim Hanseroth (The Hanseroth Twins), really a debut? After all, they've won three GRAMMYs and have been nominated seven more times for their songwriting collaboration with Brandi Carlile. (They're the twins who flank her in concert live.) The twins' songs have been covered by Adele, Dolly Parton, and the Avett Brothers. So while th

Phantogram

Nov 11 2024 45 mins  
Send us a textThe last time I interviewed Josh Carter of Phantogram was in 2010, before this site was even a podcast. It was one of the first interviews I ever did, and Carter mentioned the author Breece D'J Pancake. The name stood out, of course, but it took a while for me to read about Pancake's tragic backstory. Then more songwriters started mentioning him in interviews, so I fi

Soccer Mommy

Oct 25 2024 45 mins  
Send us a textWhenever Sophie Allison (aka Soccer Mommy) puts something out, I know I'll like it. Her new album Evergreen is no exception. We take a deep dive into her songwriting process on this episode.

Conor Deegan III of Fontaines D.C.

Oct 13 2024 52 mins  
Send us a textEd note: Here's my 2022 podcast episode with Fontaines D.C. singer Grian Chatten. Unfortunately, I stopped recording before Conor Deegan (Deego) and I started reading poetry to each other. But that should give you a sense of how deep I went into the creative process with the Fontaines D.C. bassist. This is less a discussion about the particulars of the songwriting pro

Hello Mary

Oct 01 2024 32 mins  
Send us a textHello Mary on the pod today! Stella Wave, Helena Straight, and Mikaela Oppenheimer released their debut album in 2020, when Wave was 19 and Oppenheimer and Straight were 16. The band talks about their collective and individual writing processes, and we also discussed our shared love for the novelist Jennifer Egan.Hello Mary's latest album Emita Ox is out now on French

Mike Einziger of Incubus

Sep 25 2024 41 mins  
Send us a text"Bravery is underrated when it comes to art," Mike Einziger, guitarist and songwriter for Incbus, told me. In other words, don't be afraid to write the bad stuff. (I'd listen to a guy whose band has sold 23 million records.) As you'll hear on this episode, Einziger's intellectual curiosity runs deep, expanding far beyond music into the world of physics; the overlap of

Jake Duzsik of HEALTH

Sep 16 2024 65 mins  
Send us a textHere's a sampling of the authors and artists that Jake Duzsik of HEALTH mentioned in our conversation: Pascal, T.S. Eliot, William Blake, Vonnegut, Joan Didion, Truman Capote, Oscar Wilde, Thomas Pynchon, Camus, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Cormac McCarthy. And somewhere along the lines, we discussed postmodern prose. To be clear, Duzsik was not name checking. It reflects

Pete Yorn

Sep 09 2024 42 mins  
Send us a textDoes writer's block really exist? Or is it just a reluctance to write the bad stuff? The writer Anthony Doerr once told me that writer's block is just "a failure of courage." Pete Yorn tends to agree. On this episode of the podcast, Yorn and I talk about the myth of writer's block, why you should always say yes to a creative project with your kids, and why he still ke

Jacob Slater of Wunderhorse

Sep 03 2024 38 mins  
Send us a textWunderhorse is why you should always get to the show early to see the support act. I was introduced to Jacob Slater's band when I saw them open for Fontaines D.C. (here's my podcast with Grian Chatten of Fontaines) at a small club in Pittsburgh in 2022. I had never heard of Wunderhorse, but they won everyone, including me, over in the first thirty seconds with their v