American Songwriter » July/August 2009

TIM EASTON: On the Money

Jewly Hight — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:10:30 +0000

Easton's textured, one-of-a-kind LPs run a low risk of being lost or tossed aside like so much jewel-cased rubbish, which-in addition to a rejuvenated love for painting-is why he made them in the first place.

There are plenty of routes an artist could take to elevate his album to limited edition status. Add a few bonus tracks, maybe a 24-page booklet or DVD. Then again, if uniformity's not an issue, and he doesn't mind a little added labor, he could always, say, hand-paint the cover art on each and every copy. And that's precisely what Joshua Tree-based singer/songwriter Tim Easton did with the Porcupine 500, a special limited edition vinyl series of his new album, Porcupine, which is also available in a standard version. Doing the album jackets in his arid California carport was the furthest thing from regimented mass-production: "Some of them blow away into the desert, blow away down my yard and get covered in sand." Besides that, he made each one slightly different on purpose, varying his application of wood stain, spray paint, and cut-outs of guitars and porcupines. Needless to say, Easton's textured, one-of-a-kind LPs run a low risk of being lost or tossed aside like so much jewel-cased rubbish, which-in addition to a rejuvenated love for painting-is why he made them in the first place. "I did it to have another way to package my music, because there's so much music out there that CDs have become pieces of garbage on the your floor of your car," he explains. "You wouldn't put the White Album on the floor of your car and have someone jump in the car and just step on it and break it." Not that Easton simply plucked the idea from the ether. He cites the vinyl packaging of the Black Swans' album Change! as a conceptual influence (theirs were painted by developmentally disabled adults) and Ohio-based outsider artist Rick Borg's uninhibited renderings as a stylistic one. The Porcupine 500 LPs are being treated as bona fide folk art. Easton isn't just selling them at shows, but in galleries, too, like Yard Dog in Austin. That means they're accessible to show-goers and art collectors alike (of course, the latter pay more, since galleries take a cut). Porcupine's 12 tracks-none of them hidden or bonus-lend themselves to packaging that's meant to be seen and felt. Easton's last three albums were based in folk with a mostly acoustic palette and a lighter touch. This one's got sharper sonic edges: serrated guitar licks, bristly vocals and roiling grooves. It's the closest thing to a rock band he's had behind him in a good long while. "I guess the packaging mirrors the sound as well, because it's a rough sound and falling-off-the-hinges sound," ventures Easton. "I don't get upset when I'm painting and something drips off the side and or there's a splash or something." Easton started on the LP covers with a vague inkling that some in his audience might appreciate the personal touch. "I thought about what maybe I would like to get from an artist," he says. "It's more about putting your heart into the art, and then, as it turns out, when you start thinking about what people might want-you know, consumers, music-lovers-it turns out to be the best idea." But here's a practical question for someone who makes his living as a musician (and who bought the materials out of his own pocket): how are they selling? "I'm really shocked at the amount of people that are buying vinyl from me," Easton confesses. "I wouldn't have thought that my audience was on par with buying vinyl as much as, say, the college-age hipsters are doing it. I'm thinking already to the future, of what I'm going to do with my next record." "The project has paid for itself and has proven to be um well...hot cakes. One word-hotcakes." HOMETOWN: Akron, Ohio AGE: 43 FAVORITE SONGWRITERS: Joni Mitchell, Mark Eitzel, Randy Newman and Neil Young.

DRUG RUG > Paint the Fence Invisible

Dustin Allen — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 14:30:15 +0000

Paint the Fence Invisible" src="http://www.americansongwriter.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/paint-the-fence-cover-282x300.jpg" alt="DRUG RUG > Paint the Fence Invisible" width="188" height="200" />
This album is hardly the tossed-off valentine their reputation might suggest. DRUG RUG Paint the Fence Invisible (BLACK & GREENE) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars Berated unfairly as little more than a cutesy duo harmonizing to death glassy-eyed pop songs about young love on their ‘07 debut, Drug Rug nevertheless seem undaunted on their follow-up Paint the Fence Invisible. Offering much of the same trad-rock touchstones with a psych twist as tour mates Dr. Dog, this Cambridge, Massachusetts, couple may be sweet and drenched in sunshine, but this album is hardly the tossed-off valentine their reputation might suggest.

Lyric Contest Winners | July/August 2009

americansongwriter — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 17:30:59 +0000

“When The Levee Breaks” | 1st Place Brandon Church St. Joseph, Missouri Lyrics “Rita Sings the Blues” | 2nd Place Gordon Hutchison Cary, North Carolina Lyrics “Riverboat Man” | 3rd Place Gene Hicks Tell City, Indiana Lyrics “Tight Squeeze” | 4th Place Kirk Ridge Rougemont, North Carolina Lyrics “The Ocean and the Guillotine” | Honorable Mention Matt Laszewski Madison, Wisconsin Lyrics “The Three Chord Cowpoke” | Honorable Mention Jake Entrekin Lakeland, Florida “Big Locomotives” | Honorable Mention W.J. (Bill) Hallock Pauls Valley, Oklahoma Lyrics “Needle and Thread” | Honorable Mention Farrel Droke Norman, Oklahoma Lyrics “The Stranger” | Honorable Mention Jerry Yates Newnan, Georgia Lyrics “Sullivan Street” | Honorable Mention Trey Lockerbie Nashville, Tennessee Lyrics “Ridin’ A Railroad Car” | Honorable Mention Richelle Putnam Meridian, Mississippi Lyrics “Elvis Had Already Left the Building” | Honorable Mention Michael McGee Lock Haven, Pennsylvania Lyrics “Lookout Ledge” | Honorable Mention Jenny Goodspeed Ashfield, Massachusetts “Nothing in the Sky” | Honorable Mention Brother Lou Hollywood, Florida Lyrics “Bean Dip Bomb” | Honorable Mention Teel Montague Cook Fairburn, Georgia “Bad News” | Honorable Mention Bruce Hoffman Munhall, Pennsylvania Lyrics “Again and Again” | Honorable Mention Randy Harvey Sycamore, Illinois “One Song Man” | Honorable Mention Berkeley Grimball, Jr. Carrboro, North Carolina Lyrics “Maudlin Man” | Honorable Mention Louise Waronek Regina, Saskatchewan Lyrics “Idaho Jawbone” | Honorable Mention Truman Sparks Centennial, Colorado Lyrics “Unpredictable” | Honorable Mention Graham Sherrill and Read Davis Nashville, Tennessee Lyrics “Little Black Dress” | Honorable Mention Mark Stepakoff Wellesley, Massachusetts Lyrics

Lyric Spotlight | July/August 2009

Kayla Van Zyl — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 17:09:19 +0000

Q & A with Brandon Church July/August 2009 Amateur Lyric Contest Winner "When the Levee Breaks" Ghosts and sacred ground..."When The Levee Breaks" starts out very mysteriously. Did you intend the song to be a mystery? I don't think so. I think it speaks directly from the people it was written about, to the people it was written for. I was just a kind of mediator. The ghosts are generations passed. The indians and old timers that used only what they needed, and lived in harmony with the land. They knew the ground was sacred. It gave them life. They respected it and the forces of nature that came with it. I think this song is just a reminder. This earth doesn't need us. It was here long before us, and it will be long after we're gone. The title "When The Levee Breaks" is also the title of another famous song. Led Zeppelin was known to re-appropriate old blues songs and ideas. Did you write your version of "Levee" to add to the canon? Not at all. I wrote this song for the same reason I write all my songs. Something has to be said, and it seems no one is going to say it but me. The river in your song is pretty powerful stuff. Were there particular experiences you've had with rivers or water you drew on in writing "Levee"? My hometown of Amazonia is actually a river town, and the song is based on true events. During the flood of 1993, I was walking in the timber a few miles from my grandparents farm near an old quarry that overlooks the Missouri river bottoms. I was actually watching when one of the levees blew out. I've never forgot it. "Levee" seems like it would fit into a blues or folk arrangement, although it's hard to classify without music. Did you write music for it as well? Do you often find yourself writing for particular genres? Yes, I write the music for all my songs, but with this particular one I just couldn't get it "right". There are currently three existing versions of this song. One is very folk. Just fingerpicked acoustic with a breathy harmonica. The second is a full bluegrass arrangement.The last is more contemporary. Guitars, bass, drums. I think the bluegrass fits the best, but I'm still working on it. As for writing for a particular genre? No. I write whatever I have to write to get my message across. People hear one of my songs and tell me to go to Nashville. Another and they tell me to go to L.A. Sometimes they hear one and just tell me to leave. Who are some of the songwriters you've been influenced by and what have you learned from their songs? I grew up listening to people like Steve Earle, Bruce Springsteen, The Rolling Stones. I would say they all had a hand in the way I write. I think alot of my songs I get from my grandfather, and his ability to tell any story to anybody and make them believe it. As for lessons learned, there's only one I can think of that has stood true for every great songwriter I've studied. Be honest. If you want someone to feel what you're feeling, you have to tell them exactly how it feels.

THE FEATURES: On the Horizon

William Hooker — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 21:17:08 +0000

Songs are not always what they seem; never confidently infer meanings of a lyric from a band's bio. . . .

Songs are not always what they seem; never confidently infer meanings of a lyric from a band's bio. For instance, on the sensitively swinging boogie "Off Track," the 12th song on Nashville band The Features' Some Kind of Salvation, vocalist and primary songwriter Matt Pelham sings "we've been told/that we've been close/that all is won/but mostly lost." Salvation is the first release since their abrupt separation with Atlantic Records, and Pelham's words seem mindful of being off-label, but also hopeful, when he sings: "We gotta get back in line/We're off-track again." Explaining the song's significance, Pelham tells us, "It's definitely not about the record label at all... it's more of a relationship thing." Whether or not being with a label can resemble the wavy, peak-trough pattern commonly marked by a romantic relationship, Pelham admits, "I suppose...with any type of relationship, one with a label can be as trying as one with a girlfriend." Pelham validates my question politely and I understand clearly that Some Kind of Salvation is no poison dart aimed at label chiefs. Not that there's no danger in his songs, the menace is just not in one precise direction; "Foundation's Cracked," "G.M.F," and "Temporary Blues" rock diffusely, power pop that neither exploits nor hides their Southern, rural roots. Asked whether or not the band might venture into darker, more experimental directions in the future, Pelham informs me that "most of these songs are five- to six- years old and when making the record we just wanted the songs to fit together... ultimately it comes down to being cohesive."

Another six-year-old track, "Temporary Blues," recalls Pelham's soul-crushing experience as a Pillsbury factory worker; on it he sings, "An occupation... they say it should be something you like/But hard times don't allow a poor boy to choose how he provides." Asked whether or not ex-co-workers might be listening to the new record now, Pelham suspects not: "I highly doubt any of them have ever heard it; when I left I kind of never looked back... although I imagine the feelings on the song were mutual for lots of the workers."

Pelham's focus on how he provides stems from his family. Despite living near Nashville, seeing local shows is not a priority. "I've always kind of wanted to get out more and see a lot of local bands and support the scene but I'm always extremely busy with work [as a printmaker], our band, my wife and two kids. It's always a juggling act to go out and see bands or even a movie for that matter; it's not easy."

Despite the hard work evident on Salvation, it's often light-hearted and summer-appropriate due in part to Pelham's falsetto-prone voice. This style, evident on the sunny chorus of "Lions," Pelham "developed over the years from what I enjoyed listening to; when I was really young I liked John Lennon vocals so much... and he was imitating Little Richard so when I was younger I would overdo it, and do it all the time. Hopefully now I keep control of it."

Another song on Salvation, "Baby's Hammer" is a soft ditty that compares a destructive tool to "a significant other's displeasure... trying to please someone and never quite doing that; the hammer is her temper for not making it to church or not making enough money." Could this hammer possibly contain providence? "I definitely think it's good to have someone to keep you in line, it's not a bad thing."

Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee

Matthew Pelham Age 34 Favorite songwriter albums: John Prine, Sweet Revenge, Bob Dylan, Desire

Rollum Haas, Age 29 Enjoys Randy Newman's songs, particularly "Sail Away" & "Good Old Boys"

Mark Bond, Age 28 Favorite Songwriters: Elvis Costello and Brian Wilson

Roger Dabbs, Age 34 His Favorite Songwriting Duos: Rod Argent/Chris White of The Zombies and Dave Clark/Mike Smith of the Dave Clark 5

MASTERWRITER > Masterwriter 2.0

Luke Skidmore — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 20:25:48 +0000

Masterwriter 2.0" src="http://www.americansongwriter.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/masterwriter-219x300.jpg" alt="MASTERWRITER > Masterwriter 2.0" width="146" height="200" />
It's designed to either help you get over that creative hump or during the nitty-gritty of writing the first verse. LIST PRICE: $299.00 WEBSITE: WWW.MASTERWRITER.COM "This is a business that only rewards the exceptional, and good is rarely good enough." This concluding thought is from the online demo for MasterWriter 2.0, a software program for your Mac or PC that is an exhaustive writing database for any kind of songwriter. It's designed to either help you get over that creative hump or during the nitty-gritty of writing the first verse. Once downloading the free 30-day trial, you're introduced to a myriad of options that any songwriter will benefit from. A song list page serves as a platform in which to name and create your lyrics. Once you've begun a new song, the categories MasterWriter contain are presented at the top of the window for you to begin to paint your lyrical landscape. You'll find rhyming dictionaries with pages of suggestions-many of which are surprisingly decent. Word Families is an extensive list of common adjectives, adverbs, nouns and verbs for any word you need to spice up. Parts of Speech continue that idea with filters that allow you to choose the perfect word or phrase. Pop Culture is a wide library of famous people, events, products, culture, and everything in between to add cultural relevance to your composition. You are able to record audio into this program-but don't expect to be too impressed if you're using MasterWriter for that reason. More importantly, the audio can be used to records ideas or even rough, rough demos that you can later export. Where this program shines the most is the sheer volume of content and ease of use. Whatever mood you're in, if you're riding the creative wave or just passing time, MasterWriter will consistently impress.

AMERICAN SONGWRITER AMATEUR LYRIC CONTEST 2008 GRAND PRIZE WINNER

americansongwriter — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 22:42:23 +0000

Within a two-week span, Abbie Gardner recently found out she won both the John Lennon Songwriting Contest (in the Folk category) and also the Grand Prize in the American Songwriter Lyric Contest. ABBIE GARDNER CO-WRITES WITH CHRIS STAPLETON Within a two-week span, Abbie Gardner recently found out she won both the John Lennon Songwriting Contest (in the Folk category) and also the Grand Prize in the American Songwriter Lyric Contest. No stranger to success, Abbie’s been a professional musician for two years, playing dobro and singing in bar bands, with friends on the road and in the studio, and with her band Red Molly. Originally from upstate New York, she now lives in Jersey City. While Lennon’s printing her 1,000 CDs, we set up a co-writing session with hit writer and recording artist Chris Stapleton (The SteelDrivers) and an all-day studio session orchestrated by the pros at Music City Music Productions. We sat down with Abbie to discuss how the co-write with a rising Nashville legend went down and what she learned. How did you and Chris get started during the co-write? Chris is really great. He’s so relaxed, which is what I needed. He’s so cool. I’d never talked to him before, but I saw him perform at Grey Fox last year. And when American Songwriter set this up, I was thinking about how I don’t co-write that often. That I might get a little shy or hold back a little bit, but I know Chris is so cool. I know that he’s not gonna make me feel weird. So we just started playing a little bit. I had my dobro out, he had a guitar. He switched to mandolin for a while. He’s good [at mandolin]! He says he’s not, but I like it. I brought out some lyrics that I liked a lot, but they weren’t going anywhere with the progression I had. [The song] just wasn’t coming together, really, for what I had. So I let him see the notebook. It’s a little scary for a songwriter—just giving somebody your notebook and like, “I think this is crap, but here it is.” And he started picking out things that he liked in it and kind of switching things around. He just started singing. And we were kind of working on it together from there and the song ended up being called “Bad Leaver.” We didn’t really wanna rhyme anything with “leaver” ...cleaver, believer, dreamer. What’s the song about? It’s just about that. You know something’s not right, but you’re sticking around because you’re just not good at leaving. So it’s not even about being a leaver. It’s like you’re a good “stayer”… Exactly. You’re good at staying, but probably should go. The idea first came from a friend of mine. I was at a concert in New York; it was the Subdudes. And they had finished their encore, and she and I were standing in the back, and I had to go to another gig after that concert. I was backing somebody up at a bar for an all-night kind of jam. And I was like, “I don’t really feel like leaving yet. I don’t wanna go.” And she turns to me and she’s like, “Yeah, I’m a bad leaver.” I was like “Oooh! I gotta write that down!” So she’ll be happy that we finally finished a song with it. What are the lyrics like? It starts out, “The chairs on the table are turned upside down/ the bartender glares as I milk my last round." That sounds like a song Chris could just dive right into. Yeah, he seemed to. [Especially] the idea that the bartender is really trying to get you out of there. So it is all these different instances of being a bad leaver? Not really. It’s not so organized. It’s more emotional. About leaving the bar, and then going home because it’s the right thing to do, but you’re not really feelin’ it. Don’t have the courage to leave. And then the question becomes: Are you talking about the bar or are you talking about home? So now would you like to co-write with Chris again? Yeah, of course. And in a way, I almost don’t care if we got anything today. I just want to get better at co-writing, hopefully with him again. I think his style really matches mine. I like the blues-y thing. He’s got a little edge to him and mixing that with bluegrass is really up my alley. That’s what he’s so great at. The SteelDrivers play bluegrass, but it’s very sophisticated. I love that they’re not just strict country, strict bluegrass. I think that he really thinks out of the box. I’m very glad I didn’t go there and he was like, “Well, first chorus…bridge…” He wasn’t like that at all. There was one point where I was like, “Oh, we gotta find something to rhyme with that.” And he was like, “Nah.” And I was like, “Wow! I thought I was in Nashville. That’s awesome.”

BEN HARPER: Role Models

Holly Gleason — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 01:00:47 +0000

With White Lies for Dark Times, Ben Harper finds his genre-defying hybrid taking root in rockier plains—and that musical immediacy creates a tension that ratchets up his always on-point lyrics. Working with Relentless7—the latest incarnation of a Cinderella moment with a promoter’s runner Harper met in Austin, Texas—the impact isn’t just immediate in terms of attack, but also in grounding his always far-flung folk/Hendrix/world/jazz/beat-box songs.

"Keep It Together (So I Can Fall Apart)," “Lay There and Hate Me” and “Why Must You Always Dress In Black” bristle with an urgency that captures the ear with their razor-wire electricity, while the halting “The Word Suicide” is a meditation stretched taut over doubt and minimalism. It’s that how-now arranging, the leanness and the thrust that gives this far-flung collection a new kind of cohesion from the man who seems comfortable so many places he defies categories. Can you quantify music’s role in your life? My life without a soundtrack is stripped bare. To me, music’s not to be trivialized. Do not try to minimize or commoditize it. How does that give you a [creative] foundation? It’s never about anyone or anything… it’s really more a psychological or emotional necessity. [As a songwriter] you work from instinct, intuition and reaction. The songs will tell you: “Burn To Shine” has to be a rock song. So you let the songs tell you… What’s unique is the diversity of the songs, but it can also be my Achilles’ heel. You know, you’re not handing the record company 10 of one kind of song that they could market. So I’ll see mohawks, piercings, tattoos and yuppies… I’ll see the gentleman who signed me’s 80-something-year-old father, who’s a real old school Santa Monica nonconformist. Sounds tricky. Going hand-to-hand, ticket-by-ticket, show-to-show has given me a real appreciation of how you find your fans… I am loyal to my creative process, and you realize the music we love, when we put it on, something else enters the room. How does that reflect your working with Relentless7 and the evolution from the Innocent Criminals? In some ways, it’s a reckless abandonment of my past… but I’ve never landed in my past, as my fans know, I toured Both Sides of the Gun with the Innocent Criminals, we wrote Lifeline; but Relentless7 represent something I’ve been trying to do my whole life. It’s a scary place to be, and yet… how can I not [go there]? In those times when I’ve not done that—and tried to chase commercial connection—the business has always given me such a consistent smackdown, I can’t help but notice. Lessons like that, it doesn’t take an ass-whupping to figure out. Can you explain the change? Well, it feels like I’ve been trying to write these songs my whole life, and the evolution of a lot of it is connecting with Relentless7. I’ve never been satisfied with my own work, never felt comfortable with a creative arrival… What do I do with an exterior reality that gets me there? And you heard the previous band’s demo tape on a ride from a hotel to the gig in 1998? Yeah, I didn’t want to be the guy who says “No, I won’t listen,” even though to get onstage in front of 5,000, you need to be in a certain place. But when he puts it in, I’m floored: it’s the best rock record I’ve heard—and it stuck with me. I kept thinking back to ?uestlove and John Paul Jones… that experience kept coming back to Serve Your Soul. So I trusted it. We just played Austin City Limits and the fact they heard this record and wanted us the day they heard it was such a musical high. The things they get, the way they put it together—I knew we’d connected. More concretely, what about lyrics? I’m really trimming the fat now. You don’t do that unless someone’s over your shoulder at a younger age. You grow into it. I can feel the change aesthetically, genetically. If our species changes over time, it’s happening while we’re alive and making music. For me, it’s sparer. Can you explain? When John Prine writes “bowl of oatmeal tried to stare me down… and won,” it’s simple. It is. Or it is not. You can’t negotiate a color, a moment, a feeling. John Prine is so good at that. He’s my Leonard Cohen. How do you apply it? We start breaking it down: like autobiography or journalism. It gets tricky, because it’s not always about something that happened, but the moment you sing it, you have to own it. Take it on. Are there things you always use as you make this kaleidoscopic music? Fearlessness, absolutely. Discipline. You also need open-minded creativeness that lets everything in. You never want to lose a word or a phrase, yet every one should count. Always the best language possible. And, finally, knowing when to leave it alone. Stop when it’s done. Ben Harper and Relentless7’s White Lies for Dark Times is out now on Virgin Records.

JOHN VANDERSLICE: On Track

Matt Fink — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 21:04:41 +0000

Though it had a good run-from the whimsy of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band to the harsh isolation of Pink Floyd's The Wall and the rock opera reprisal of Green Day's American Idiot-the concept album has largely faded out of usage, left as a punch line to be hung around moribund musicians who are too pretentious to realize that they've run out of ideas. But while few songwriters are eager to join the list of artists who have tried and failed to carry out a project with such weighty ambitions, the concept album lives on in the less grandiose visions of indie rock auteurs Colin Meloy (The Decemberists), John Darnielle (Mountain Goats) and John Vanderslice. The last of those, the restlessly imaginative and analog-equipment obsessed Vanderslice, has written no fewer than five conceptually-themed narrative albums, proving his mastery at sustained album-length drama by stranding his imaginary brother on an icebound observation station on 2002's Time Travel is Lonely and crafting post-911 vignettes on 2005's Pixel Revolt. But on Romanian Names, Vanderslice's latest and most inward-looking release, he has narrowed his focus considerably. "I set out wanting to write songs that were definitely not connected and definitely not in any way narrative or with an arched storyline," he explains, having just finished ordering parts for his vintage Neve console. "I love telling stories, and I love third and first person narratives, but I wanted to write a different album. Every song that I did, with only a couple of exceptions, was much faster than what I'd usually default to, and it actually made me write different lyrics," he says excitedly. "So in some ways, I think it allowed me to write shorter verses and write less lyrics. I think that it led to more impressionistic content, because I didn't have these really long verse forms to fill up with a story, and it ended up making the record more abstract. In some ways, there is a refreshing lack of specific information, which is against my judgment," he laughs. "I like to be really specific." That's not to say that Vanderslice paints only in broad strokes. There's a track about being stalked by a snow leopard ("Tremble and Tear"), and another about an Eastern Bloc gymnast escaping the control of her minders and falling in love at the Olympics ("Romanian Names"). There's a story about cross-dressing at summer camp ("Summer Stock"), and one about a self-absorbed man who only cares about how his lover's selflessly altruistic deeds reflect on him ("C&O Canal"). Long influenced by the storytelling methods of his favorite filmmakers, Vanderslice remains the director behind the actors in his songs, even if he's increasingly comfortable letting the listener imagine the scenes. "If you're going to be a songwriter, you have to believe that every minuscule slight has importance," he says. "You have to believe that every little loss that you've had is meaningful and can, therefore, be broadcast out in the world and be exaggerated and amplified into a song. There's a trick there at work, and once you recognize it, you can either use it or it can also end your writing career. I've seen people lose their ego. They've become much more mature and developed as humans and are unable to write from a first-person perspective. For me, I've long realized that any individual is about as important as an ant colony on a hill in West Texas," he laughs. "I didn't have a problem with my ego dissolving over time, as it naturally should," he says with a comic pause, "unless you're a sociopath or a megalomaniac." HOMETOWN: San Francisco, California AGE: 42 HIS FAVORITE FILM OF THE MOMENT: Synecdoche, New York, It really helped me to see it over and over. I think I saw it four times in about a week, so I really got to dig into it. I'm getting into the same kind of movies, what I call "puzzle movies." I don't think they work if you casually watch them. I think you have to believe in them and believe that it's important to dig into them. I think that in all art, there has to be a level of sympathy, no matter what it is.

JEFF TWEEDY

americansongwriter — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 19:48:08 +0000

(Photo by Jonathan Purvis) "Music seems to have an ability, beyond any other art forms, to stir up emotional memories." -Jeff Tweedy