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Hi Jared,

As it happens, I recently taped my NINTH episode of Comedy Bang! Bang! - an unlikely tenure for a certified non-comedian.

In 2011, during a short stint in LA, our tour manager forwarded me an itinerary for some press obligations. I’d never heard of “Comedy Bang Bang” but I’d certainly heard of Sarah Silverman.

What followed was puzzling. Sarah and Nick were there, but as Erma and Bobby Bottleservice. They did not break character and very little explanation was given. Periodically, the host Scott Aukerman would ask me to play a song. My offerings were overtly melancholic and non-comedic, but he didn’t seem to mind.

Afterward, when I asked how on earth I was chosen for this engagement, he said my publicist Brendan Bourke had mailed him my latest CD, Oh Fortune.

I was too Canadian to ask for anybody’s contact information, so I presumed I’d never see any of them again. Then, in 2014, Scott responded to a tweet:

I slid into his DMs. We kept in touch loosely, and in 2016, Sarah tagged me in a tweet:

Scott then invited me to join a live taping of Comedy Bang Bang in my hometown, Vancouver. I met many wonderful people that night, but after dinner, Lauren Lapkus’ boyfriend Mike Castle joined me for short detour to a coffee shop. We quickly discovered a love for the same albums and novels, texted nearly every day for months, and he remains one of my best buds.

In 2018, Lauren and Mike asked me to perform the song A.M. AM by at their wedding.

I fell in love with Damien’s song and eventually released my own cover recording in 2024:

In total, I’ve done four episodes as a (not so) surprise guest at CBB live-tapings in Vancouver, and five in-studio episodes while on tour in Los Angeles.

CBB has fostered a fleet of pals in the LA comedy scene, and a whole lot of delight in my life. Frequently, listeners will mention that they discovered my music on CBB.

SIDEBAR:

Some time ago, my friend Coralie gifted me a bundle of REM memorabilia from the 90s (she used to work with the band). I knew Scott was a fan, so I shipped it down to him. He said the tour-crew bomber jacket was too small for him so he passed it along to his buddy Adam Scott. I used this as an ice-breaker when my wife spotted him walking alone in Manhattan.

Taping CBB is also “feet to the fire” panic-inducing mayhem. These people are impossibly quick and experienced improvisers, and though I may have some sense of humour, they are professionally funny. Often, at the end of a session, my abs hurt from laughing.

I have learned some things over the years:

• Don’t try to be funny, just treat it like a playful conversation. Try to be relevant to the flow and let Scott drive the bus.

• Comedians perform as characters, but I’m always a non-character participant. As such, it’s a bit of a tightrope:

  • If I’m overly reserved during the between-song banter, it’s weird.

  • If I take up too much space, it feels thirsty and desperate.

MY PROUDEST CBB MOMENT:

During a taping in 2019, Will Hines’ character Randy Useless had made a big deal about En Vogue’s song My Lovin’ (Never Gonna Get It). He liked how the MC alerted you when it was time for a breakdown.

To close the show, I played my song Peaks & Valleys. I was just about to proceed with the song’s instrumental “breakdown” outro when the heavens opened up and I realized my moment had arrived.

I stopped the song abruptly and pointed at Will. His face contorted for a terrifying moment, and just before my gag fell flat on its face, he jumped into action:

“AND NOW IT’S TIME FOR A BREAKDOWN!”

I played on. Scott lost it. A truly cherished memory.

I’m extremely grateful to Scott for inviting me back so many times and including me in his community. What a whirlwind.

x
Dan

Dear Matt H,

Here is the story of how I got signed.

That is to say, it’s a series of linear events that seem relevant. So much of this business is voodoo, and who knows how much credit I can take for whatever successes (and failures) I’ve endured.

There’s an adage about being in the right place at the right time. Perhaps, to accomplish pretty much anything, you actually need to be in the right places at the right times over and over again. So we must put ourselves in the line of fire and hope for a stray bullet.

MARCH, 2006

I applied to showcase at Canadian Music Week, but was denied. Artists perform (for free) at industry conferences in hopes that somebody from the music industry might be in the room (most likely, they are elsewhere).

It’s a battle of attrition: nobody knows of you or cares, so you must infiltrate their subconscious. Once they’ve read your name on enough posters or pamphlets or showcase lineups, they will have decided one of two things:

a) you are more cool than they are, and they must know you
or
b) your are less cool than they are, and they must avoid you at all cost

I asked my dad for some air-miles so I could fly to Toronto and attend CMW even though I would not be performing. I paid for a badge and attended every keynote speech and industry panel I could find. I took notes. I wrote down the names of speakers who seemed smart or worked with cool bands. In my backpack was a stack of CDs for anybody who happened to have hands.

After a panel about Canadian radio, I approached someone named Jeff Leake who curated the playlist for an XM satellite station called The Verge (pre Sirius/XM merger). During his panel, he mentioned a band called Birds of Wales. Coincidentally, I’d recently supported them in Vancouver - I had an icebreaker. I gave Jeff a copy of Postcards and Daydreaming. We talked for about 30 seconds, then I excused myself.

FALL, 2006

Jeff Leake put So Much For Everyone on heavy rotation on The Verge. For anyone not in the know here, SMFE is a six minute song with no chorus. I was an unsigned artist, charting alongside Sam Roberts and Billy Talent. It was incredible. That winter, he invited me to perform at a taping of Live @ The Verge at The Media Club in Vancouver.

NOVEMBER, 2008

I was staying with family friends in Toronto’s east end, taking the streetcar across town to Parkdale daily to record Nice, Nice, Very Nice with producer John Critchley. I’d told Jeff Leake that I was in Toronto and he invited me to an XM event at The Bovine Sex Club. The headliner was Moneen and the support act was a little known band from Hamilton called The Arkells (who I’d met over tacos at SXSW in Austin, TX earlier that year).

While at the bar, I ran into Todor Kobakov, who had recently written the string arrangement for my song Basket. Todor was the only person I knew in the club so I followed him back to where he was seated, next to someone named David Tysowski, who was a radio tracker. I did not know what a radio tracker was, but David said that he worked for a company called Arts & Crafts.

It’s hard to convey just how cool Arts & Crafts was in 2008. To an upstart indie folk dude, the label was mythical. They helped launch Broken Social Scene, Feist, Stars, The Stills, The Dears, and… had released my very favourite Canadian album of that era: Idols of Exile by Jason Collett.

I made sure not to leave The Bovine Sex Club without David’s email.

DECEMBER, 2009

Nice, Nice, Very Nice had come out in Canada that summer thanks to a local indie label called File Under: Music. Things were starting to happen…

• The album was at #1 on the iTunes Canada singer/songwriter download chart (pre-streaming era)

• I’d won the $25K Verge award (thanks again to The Verge and Jeff Leake’s support. Once nominated, I ran a huge online voting campaign and used the winnings to repay recording debts and put a down payment toward a touring van. We named it “Verge-inia”)

• Robots was at #1 on the CBC R3-30 Countdown. This was a huge deal in Canadian music at that time

• I’d started touring around Australia, the USA and Europe. Even Dubai!

• I was selling/shipping about $500 worth of CDs every month directly from my website, where I’d built a Paypal widget.

Things were moving quickly, but I still didn’t have a manager or distribution outside Canada. I’d learned how to do most things on my own, but I was dropping balls everywhere and needed help.

I’d started talking with a music manager from Montreal named Gillian. She was managing Plants and Animals at the time, and I thought they were rad. We hit it off on the phone, but before committing to anything, I figured I’d ask around the industry for references.

I reached out to David Tysowski at A&C, asking if he knew her. I was on tour in Europe at the time, and had been subtly updating David with every tiny victory along the way (remember the whole infiltrate their subconscious tactic above).

Reading this email, I was floored. Who was Kieran?

I’ll never forget getting on a Skype call from Amsterdam with Kieran. My girlfriend Kirsten was sitting on the bed in our infinitesimal hotel room trying not to make any noise. This was before video-calling was a thing.

We talked for nearly two hours. I told him everything - my whole story. How I’d made separate email lists for every city I’d ever played in. How I’d sent a cold email to The Georgia Straight called “10 Reasons why Dan Mangan should be on a cover of the Straight in August” - and that magically, it had worked. How every time I thought I’d written my best song, I tried to write one a bit better.

Minutes after getting off Skype, Kieran sent me this email:

My mind was blown. I couldn’t begin to muster a response in that moment, so I just closed the laptop. I hugged Kirsten, and we found a delicious tapas restaurant down the street in Amsterdam.

I signed a management deal with Arts & Crafts. Shortly thereafter, I signed a 3 album contract (now 6), and then a publishing deal.

Kieran has been my manager ever since with the help of some wonderful colleagues including Chris Slorach (who quit to pursue his band METZ full time), Stefan Babcock (who quit to pursue his band PUP fill time), and in recent years, uber-mensch Bled Celhyka. Many ups, many downs. Always a dependable homie. He tells the truth and does the right thing. He deeply gets me and believes in me. He really is an amazing cook, and a total baseball nerd. He’s one of my closest friends and I love him dearly.

Best,
Dan

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Dear David,

It’s a great question. Where does creativity come from?

I like this quote from a 1966 CBC interview with Leonard Cohen:

“It’s just a matter of what your hand falls on, and if you can make what your hand falls on sing, then you can just do it.”

Jason Isbell also put it eloquently when he once tweeted:

“Songwriting is like attempting to solve the NYT crossword during a therapy session.”

I’ve always liked puzzles. Songwriting is a puzzle, and just like with any puzzle, doing them regularly forges connective patterns in your brain. In short, just doing it a lot makes you better at it.

Songwriting is, for me, excruciating. It’s the notion that a perfect lyric is somewhere in front of me but it’s too foggy to see it. I wade through the muck until I find it, revel in the subsequent elation, and then free-fall into panic, wondering if it will ever happen again.

There is an ephemeral understanding that it comes from “somewhere else”. A religious person might suggest it comes from their god. In a sense, I don’t disagree, but I do feel the need to unpack that a bit.

My definition of god is pretty loose. Let’s say… a beautiful, ambivalent, cosmic and relative connection between everything perceivable and unperceivable. My god does not have a personality, or an opinion. You cannot displease my god, because my god has no sense of preferred self from which I can deviate. Scripture says that we are made “in god’s image”. I’d say humans have done a pretty good job of making god in our image.

But I do think that creativity comes from that indescribable ethereal space from which we summon meaning and impulse. The swirling sum of our experiences manifests itself in conscious and unconscious ways. We cannot help but regurgitate the reality we’ve been fed.

And sometimes, there is gold in our blindspots. Sometimes I get the feeling that a lyric unlocks an insurmountable truth but I don’t even know why. We don’t know where the smoke comes from, but we send it into the sky as if to say this is how I feel!

As we articulate our semi-digested, half-understood truths, we alleviate some of the existential uncertainty that lies within them. And when someone else sees our smoke signal, they think I feel the same way! I am not alone! - both the sender and the receiver experience relief.

When ChatGPT exploded a few years ago, I remember reading an article that described how the AI bot worked. In essence, when given a query, the AI scrapes through all known and available relevant historical online discourse, and then attempts to drum up something reasonable as a response, one word at a time. That’s how it prescribes a home remedy for an ear infection, and that’s also how it writes an episode of Seinfeld, but in the spirit of Macbeth.

But that’s exactly what we do. All the time. We just don’t have access to as much data as do these burgeoning AI models. ChatGPT knows every lyric, mood and tonal shift of every song on Spotify. I just know some Tom Petty songs.

Usually, I know I’ve got a song brewing when something is bothering me. I lie in bed, unable to sleep, and there are wispy fragments of notions circling my mind. To reference A Christmas Carol, I am haunted by The Ghost Of Songs Yet To Come. It’s always some type of conundrum or perception through which I’m mulling.

Maybe it’s something like:

Why do bullies claim to be the victim?

or…

Nobody is solving our problems because everybody is trying to make enough money that the problems don’t affect them.

or just some stupid pun that somehow articulates more than it ought to, like…

Barf Code
Depress Conference
I Can’t Believe It’s Not Buddha

Anyway, none of this has really answered your question, David. The truth is that I’ve been asked many times to teach courses on songwriting, and I can’t bring myself to face the fact that I actually don’t know how it works. But you just have to do it. Over and over again.

You have to wake up to that big beautiful sun, understand full well that you’re still an idiot, and proceed.

Oh, and one more thing… You have to tell the truth. Not just something that sounds clever. The actual truth. Your gut knows the difference.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk,

Dan

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Dear Greg,

Oh man - I don’t remember this at all. Not that I don’t believe it could have happened. Trust that if I said those words, it was my own insecurities at play. I was likely deep in the muck of my own head.

It’s hard to nail down when crowd participation became such a crucial part of my show. There were inklings of special spontaneous moments that arrived organically, and I learned to develop them into something repeatable.

By 2011, I’d been badgering people into singing the refrain of Robots for several years. It was a carnival and I was the Ringleader. I’d crowd-surf. Or stand on tables. On more than one occasion, I remember stomping along the bar counter, grabbing a pint glass, pouring myself a beer and trying to drink the entire thing mid-song. Back then, I was on a mission to outdo myself every night. I wanted the show to feel larger than life.

On some level, I’d painted myself into a corner with Robots. It was hard to be larger than life on nights when I felt small. We’d still play Robots, of course, but I wanted to end with something a bit more reverential or emotional. At some point, I encouraged an audience to sing the “ooooh” notes to So Much For Everyone and something just clicked.

I realized quickly how powerful it is to ask a crowd to sing. And not just to “sing along”, but to be the song itself. I’m often right in the middle of the crowd for So Much For Everyone, and when I look around, I see the most magical smiles. People hugging. Tears. Folks who normally feel that they “can’t sing” seizing the moment, belting it out.

There are many elements at play - that the whole can be greater than the sum of the parts; that humans naturally tune to each other; that there is power in numbers; that we can lose our inhibitions when given permission to do so.

We began finishing each show on the floor amongst the crowd, but in order to be visible, we’d have to turn on the house lights, which killed the vibe. All of a sudden you could smell the spilt beer. So we developed various ways of illuminating ourselves in theatrical ways whilst keeping the halls dark.

I’ve said this before, but I think that after experiencing a great show, we should feel like we want to do things. Climb a mountain. Plant a garden. Write a poem. Call your mom. It should feel like despite the evidence otherwise, the pros of existing truly do outweigh the cons. That things are possible. That’s how I hope people feel at the end of my shows. I can’t say for sure that it works all the time, nor for everyone, but these days, it is the intention.

I’m not a legendary vocalist. In professional terms, I’m an adequate guitar player at best. I gave up long ago on trying to perform music perfectly. It’s just not in my wheelhouse. But I’ve developed a different skill that feels good. I’d like to think that, through song and through focused intention, I can make people feel invited. Welcomed. Accepted. At least, when I’m at my best and in my skin.

Music remains the vehicle, but those feelings of unity, as fleeting as they may be, is the intended destination. No doubt, the show will continue to evolve over the coming years, but I predict that crowd participation will remain an important cornerstone of it all.

Love,
Dan

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Dear Rick,

Great question. My wife is from Portland, OR and it’s funny how frequently I’ll drum up a reference from my childhood of which she’ll be completely unaware.

Canada receives most of American culture - we get your TV shows, your music, your films, your news and your politics. For better and for worse, we are just as inundated with it as you are.

By contrast, America is mostly aware only of our superstar exports -

Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, Shania Twain, Celine Dion, Drake, The Weeknd, Justin Bieber, Bryan Adams, Alanis Morissette, Nelly Furtado, Shawn Mendes, Daniel Caesar, Nickelback, Alessia Cara, Sarah McLachlan, RUSH, Arcade Fire, Michael Bublé, Avril Lavigne, Nelly Furtado, KD Lang, etc…

Canadians love nothing more than to publicly claim celebrities that are assumedly American. I joke that our favourite stadium chant is “we’re number #2!”

There is a long list of artists (and television shows) which have always been quintessentially Canadian. And there are many Canadian acts that were crucial for me, both as a kid and as an emerging songwriter in my teens and 20s. I’ll proceed chronologically.

The Tragically Hip

They are/were Canada’s band. They taught me that music could be popular and intelligent at the same time. When I was 11, I could sing every word (and air guitar every lick) of 1992’s Fully Completely and 1994’s Day For Night. That said, I think these two songs from later in their career are a good introduction:

Hayden

He’d been around for some time and had some hits in the 90s, but two albums by Hayden that completely altered my world as a songwriter were 2001’s Skyscraper National Park and 2004’s Elk Lade Serenade. I was in university and listened to these albums on repeat whilst riding the bus across Vancouver to UBC, or studying or writing papers.

He’s since become a dear friend, and we’ve even toured together. And he’s still one of my all time favourite songwriters. He’s put out some amazing records since that era, including last year’s Are We Good which is sublime and masterful - but I’ll link some of my faves from that early 2000s era out of respect to my nostalgia:

The Aughts

I graduated from university at the end of 2005 and my first album came out that fall. I started touring. I drove back and forth across Canada over and over. I met so many amazing people and bands. Many of them remain my dear friends to this day. There were also lots of bands that I loved that I never became close with. Rather than go deep on one act, I’ll just post a bunch of great/influential Canadian songs from the 2000s that may not have been more widely known beyond our borders.

There’s a lot I’ve missed, and a lot of Canadian music SINCE the 2000s that is simply wonderful, but maybe I’ll leave that for another day.

Re travel advice for Canada? Don’t miss the rockies. Spectacular. And I’m biased to the west coast but get yourself on a BC Ferry and spend some time in the Gulf Islands. It’s such a vast country with a lot to offer, and I’ve found magic in every single province and territory. I’m so lucky to have spent so much time in a van, experiencing this magical bit of earth.

x
Dan

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Dear Brendan,

You blessed peach. This question hits me right in the tenders. Here is a diagram of how I can best describe my guitar playing:

Though I’ve often been surrounded by some of the very best musicians, I’ve never considered myself to be much of one. I was entirely street-schooled. I learned by figuring out how to play songs on the radio as a teenager. I’ve scored feature films, but I can’t even really read music. I barely know what chords I’m playing most of the time and my understanding of musical theory is rudimentary at best.

AND…

of course, sometimes not knowing very much about something can allow you to approach it uniquely. I do think that my guitar playing is unique, if perhaps a bit unorthodox. I’d say the same thing about my singing. I’d like to believe that what I lack in talent, I make up for with intuition and grit.

The early days…

I was obsessed with guitar as a teenager in the mid-late 90s. I learned roughly one million Pearl Jam, Nirvana & Foo Fighters songs. Green Day and Weezer. Duh.

Though Radiohead has been my one true love since they released The Bends in 1995, I think that my beginnings as a songwriter were heavily influenced by early 2000s acoustic troubadours like Dave Matthews, Ben Harper, and Damien Rice. In hindsight, I’m a bit embarrassed at how male (and mostly white) these influences are.

I loved how complicated Dave Matthews’ songs were on the guitar, and how accomplished I’d feel when I figured out how to play them. And how people (girls) would look at me when I performed them. I still chuckle at this tweet from 2013:

You can hear an intention to fuse complex guitar riffs with simple vocal melodies in my early songs like Unnatural Progression or Journal of a Narcoleptic:

The middle years…

By the time I was writing songs for Nice, Nice, Very Nice (2009), I’d realized that my intricate guitar noodling was at times getting in the way of the songs. I was never going to be a proper “guitar sensation”, and if I had any hope of making a mark, it would be because of my lyrics and melodies.

My tastes and influences had drifted away from those aforementioned troubadours toward lyric-heavy indie-folk acts like Bright Eyes, M. Ward and Neutral Milk Hotel. And besides - for a song to be truly iconic and have legs, it has to be simple enough for someone to cover it in the corner of a pub.

But something else evolved… as I began to simplify what my left (fret board) hand was doing, my right (strumming) hand began to develop in new ways. I experimented with more complicated picking rhythms - I’d strum down with the edge of my thumb and pluck up with my index finger. You can hear this on songs like Tina’s Glorious Comeback or Et Les Mots Croisés:

Another technique began to develop with my strumming hand in this era… The band had become fairly loud. There was a lot going on, and in order to make sure I could hear my guitar in the monitor wedge, I began strumming REALLY hard.

At some point along the way, I’d stopped using guitar picks. I preferred the sound of a guitar played with bare hands, and I tended to misplace my picks anyhow.

I found that by slamming my four fingers down across the strings and then flicking my thumb back up in quick succession, I could play a bare-handed acoustic guitar at the same volume as if I was using a pick. And, if I really relaxed my wrist, I could strum lightning quick, and the guitar itself would become a kind of drone instrument.

I broke a lot of strings and bled on my guitar during shows, but I didn’t really mind. I began putting crazy glue and nail hardener on my right hand’s fingernails before shows, which would get me through a tour without completely destroying my hand.

My kindred homie and bandmate Mike O’Brien coined this strumming move the “Mangan Chainsaw”. You can hear it on songs like Road Regrets and Mouthpiece:

The modern era…

Back in 2010, Bry Webb supported a short run of our shows. His band The Constantines are one of the very best Canadian bands of all time and I was a huge fan. He mentioned to me at Dawson City Music Festival that he’d planned to release some acoustic songs under the moniker Harbour Coats and I eagerly asked if he wanted to come on tour with us and try them out live. (He eventually released this music under his real name, and the album is called Provider. It’s one of my favourite albums of all time.)

Bry played solo and I was mesmerized with how he played guitar. He didn’t just strum along. He didn’t really finger pick, either. He used well chosen chord voicings to lightly support the song in every little moment. The guitar here was not really a rhythm instrument. It was a dancing partner for his vocal melodies in a delicate but crucial manner. Feist is an absolute master at this also. Check out Bry Webb’s Undertaker or Feist’s Forever Before:

Another influence that really had an affect on me at this time was David Bazan’s record Strange Negotiations. It was playing as I wandered into an HMV in Halifax and I thought it sounded cool so I bought the CD. I listened to it over and over in the van on tour. Not only are his lyrics devastatingly insightful and socially cutting, but the arrangements are beautifully simple and full. I love how he plays and mixes the acoustic guitar. Check out the title track here:

I think all of these more recent influences made my approach to the acoustic guitar more focused, delicate and intentional. In recent years, I’ve also had to re-approach how I sing for a handful of reasons, and it makes sense that my guitar might chill the F out alongside.

Another thing I must mention is my tendency to stick to the lower three strings and write songs with unique chord voicings up the fretboard. I talk a bit about this in my guitar tutorial for Cold In The Summer.

It all began with a song called Leaves, Trees, Forest:

I fell upon this chord progression on a rocky beach in Brighton, UK. I loved how the root note to the chord was the middle note in the voicing, and how each chord had an accenting bass note beneath it. It added a distinctive colour to the progression.

I subsequently wrote Oh Fortune using this newfound voicing structure, but this time with more strummy strum:

and, well.. I’ve used this fallen-upon style of chord voicing for the majority of the songs I’ve written since. I like that it is, to some extent, mine. Again - I’m not exactly great or technically schooled at playing instruments, but I feel like I’ve found ways to be myself in music, and that feels like a legitimate achievement.

HOW’S THAT FOR THE LONGEST ANSWER YOU DIDN’T KNOW YOU ASKED FOR?

Cheers, Brendan!

x
Dan

ps. I’ll leave you with some more examples of this chord structure at work:

Dear Ryan,

You are correct!

Ryan Peake from Nickelback is just about as lovely a human as you will find on this planet. He is calm, kind and generous of spirit. I came to know him and his wife Treana through their work at Obakki Foundation. They do impactful “on the ground” work in some of the most vulnerable and hurting communities on the planet. It was in their backyard that I met (and fell in love with) Michael Bublé.

In terms of OTHER celebrity meets, there have been a few wild ones over the years…

I one time sat on Willie Nelson’s tour bus at Glastonbury with Snoop Dogg. No lie. I was blindsided on the Comedy Bang! Bang! podcast and found myself sitting next to Sarah Silverman and Nick Kroll. I once had dinner with Elijah Wood at SXSW. I visited Dave Grohl in his home and he offered to play drums on my song Vessel (for reasons that seem alien to me now, I said “thanks but no thanks”, and it still hurts).

BUT - the most special and memorable encounter of this nature was with Colin Greenwood of Radiohead…

Anyone who knows me well knows that Radiohead has been my favourite band since I was 14. It’s as if they’re not even playing the same sport as the rest of us.

In 2006 or so, I was on tour in the UK and staying with some family friends in Oxford. They mentioned that they were pals with John O’Brien, father to Ed O’Brien (guitarist in Radiohead). I left them with a copy of my first album Postcards & Daydreaming and half-jokingly asked them to pass it along to John or Ed.

Roughly six months later, I received an email from John O’Brien. He had in fact received the CD and given it to Ed, who had listened and responded with some succinct, thoughtful, and candidly critical feedback. He had some tough but sincere (and correct) words about the music and some encouragement for me.

I absolutely could not believe that Ed O’Brien had heard my record. I took every word of that email to heart and did my best to apply his wisdom in the making of my next album (2009’s Nice, Nice, Very Nice).

Some months later, I wrote John and told him I’d be staying with my family friends once again in Oxford. He suggested I keep the morning open after my Oxford show. He came round and picked me up about 8am. He said that Ed was busy with family but that Colin was happy to meet me. It was so plainly clear that he’d known all these lads since they were teenagers. I was giddy.

Colin’s home was a beautifully restored farmhouse just outside of Oxford on a lovely (but entirely un-pretentious) bit of farmland. He greeted us at the door - “Hey mate, I’m Colin”. I knew exactly who he was.

Colin, John and I sat at the kitchen table for about an hour. Colin made a french press of coffee. We spoke of Radiohead, of the industry, of music. Colin mentioned that there was a meeting with “The Head” later that day and that they were to discuss mixes of their new songs they’d been working on, but that he hadn’t had time to really listen yet. HE ASKED IF I WOULD MIND TAKING A MOMENT TO LISTEN TO SOME UNFINISHED RADIOHEAD SONGS.

So, yeah… I heard Weird Fishes and Videotape before you did. Non-final mixes In Colin’s Greenwood’s kitchen.

I’d sold out of CDs the night before and had nothing to leave with him, so I asked if I could play something. He grabbed a parlor-sized Taylor guitar from the next room and I sang a song I’d just written weeks prior called Fair Verona. He said he loved it and he wished his wife Molly had heard it.

He gave me and John a tour of his property. He mentioned that he wanted to throw a BBQ of sorts in this big old barn and have some live music - asked if I’d like to be a part of it. Uh… yes. I did want to be a part of that.

We’d had such a perfect visit. I don’t know whether my Canadian manners got in the way or if my melting brain simply forgot, but - when it was time to leave, I failed to ask for any kind of contact info to keep in touch. So that was it. I haven’t connected Colin since that dewy morning. What a wonderfully kind, gentle genius

I remember calling my mom afterward and telling her that there was grace at the top. I remember seeing The Lives of Others alone that same evening at a cinema in Oxford. It’s one of the best films ever made. As the credits rolled, I just sat and cried. It was a big day.

For some years, John continued to be a benevolent middleman between me and my heroes. He once had me and Kirsten to his home for dinner in Oxford. We drank a lot of wine and stayed over, crashing in Ed’s old bed. He arranged for some after-show passes to Radiohead at Thunderbird Stadium in 2008 - which was without a doubt the most incredible concert I have seen in my entire life. I did get to meet Ed backstage that night for a lovely chat. He sipped English tea like a proper dude.

John didn’t have to be so generous to me, but he chose to be. I still don’t really know why he would go to such lengths for a friend-of-a-friend aspiring guitar dude. I hope I haven’t been a bother to him or to Ed or Colin. I still mail him CDs every time I put an album out.

Thanks for spurring this reminisce, Alex.

Much love,
Dan

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Dear Nick,

I did meet Scott over a decade ago at Glastonbury. It was at the top of a hill in a tiny hut overlooking the very same side stage where I would subsequently watch Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood play an impromptu duo show.

It was also the same weekend I ended up on Willie Nelson’s tour bus with Snoop Dogg.

AND, the same weekend where I enjoyed the best tea of my life courtesy of my pal Sadie. I reference this moment in the song Peaks & Valleys:

But do you remember, the night got late?
Equations were recalculating in my veins
And you saved my life in the final round
Some kind of paper cup tea, some hell-bath festival ground

It was a formative time.

I’d heard the name Frightened Rabbit but wasn’t familiar with the music. My friend Stu recognized singer Scott Hutchison and suggested we go say hello. I introduced myself to the guys and mentioned I was from Canada. We had a pleasant chat about mutual pals in Canadian bands like Wintersleep and Broken Social Scene.

It wasn’t until months (years?) later that I actually got around to listening to Frightened Rabbit, so I have to admit I missed the initial wave of their rise. It was their music video for The Woodpile that grabbed me. The song felt paradoxically patient and urgent. The video so very Scottish but with an M. Night Shyamalanian twist. And the lyrics so direct and relatable:

Bereft of all social charms
I'm struck dumb by the hand of fear
I've fallen into the corner's arms
Same way that I've done for years

I'm trapped in a collapsing building
Come find me now, we'll hideout
We'll speak in our secret tongues

Will you come back to my corner?
Spent too long alone tonight
Would you come and brighten my corner?
A lit torch to the woodpile high

We’ve all felt alone in a room full of people and Scott had an acute ability to communicate the nuance of his anxiety. The “secret tongues” line is specifically brilliant.

I spent some time with albums like The Midnight Organ Fight and Pedestrian Verse. Scott’s writing is excruciatingly transparent. There aren’t many people who can be so expositional about their mental health without leaning on cliché; a pitfall which he avoided deftly.

And so, I admired them from afar for years until seeing these tweets from the band’s Twitter account:

And this image was making its way around the internet. It was so real life. This was not a picture of a famous musician. It was the picture of somebody’s son - somebody’s brother.

It seemed like the entire UK was out scouring the streets with lanterns. And then, on May 11th, it was announced that his body had been found. I was serving my kids cereal when I saw a notification pop up on my phone.

I stepped away to read more about what had happened and eventually found Scott’s personal Twitter page. I read these two tweets and just completely lost it:

The brevity and poetry of his last broadcast. I barely knew him, but the tragedy was too much. I started bawling uncontrollably.

Bowie and Prince had died in recent years but I felt Scott’s death with 100x the intensity. We were about the same age. We had mutual pals. He likely had no memory of meeting me but it didn’t matter - I felt in him a kindred understanding.

How could he provide so much respite and joy for others but not for himself? Could his gift to alleviate other peoples’ existential dread not alleviate some of his own?

That morning was the only time I can remember crying while taking a shower. I won’t lie, it was an annoyingly Hollywood-esque moment, but the face slap of mortality is all-consuming and strikes without warning. The thing was, I had to get on with the day. I had errands to run. And so I imagined fleets of Frightened Rabbit fans all over the globe trying to make their way to work.

These words came:

Now we’re crying in the shower
Crying in the car park
Crying in the office towers

And they repeated in my head throughout the day. By the afternoon, I’d sat at the piano and worked out a clunky rough version of the chord progression.

Then came a line that kind of says it all, but succinctly. I don’t know if I’ve written a better lyric than this:

Why can’t the see-ers see a way out?

If ignorance is bliss, then enlightenment is hell. And Scott had that sage-like insight.

In The Woodpile, he asks for someone to come and “brighten his corner”. It felt as though I was writing a sibling song…

So come find us if you can
We’ll be unified and sad
We’ll be in your corner

Leave a light on when it’s bad
We will congregate and make a plan
We’ll be in your corner

I liked the idea of a “sadness squad” speaking in secret tongues and rising to action when the bat signal hits the sky. That the people who understand us most could congregate at the door and remind us that life is absurd and painful and beautiful and that we’re just tiny specks of space dust endlessly making sense of whatever we have, whenever we have it.

It does occur to me now that when people are at their lowest, the idea of their ongoing struggle becoming a burden to the very people they love - maybe it compounds the suffering. But to love and care is a gift to the lovers and the carers. I wonder if that is some of what gets lost.

I wrote In Your Corner for Scott Hutchison, but as it lives and breathes today, five years on, I think it’s for any of us in the moments where it could help. We all ebb and flow. Rise and fall. And my hope is that the song could speak in secret tongues to anybody feeling the momentum of an existential decline.

Scott’s family created an organization called Tiny Changes (a reference from Scott’s song Head Rolls Off). They do amazing work raising awareness and providing mental health support, particularly in the UK.

If anybody reading this feels lost, in need of someone in their corner, please please please find a mental health professional with which you can speak, or call your local suicide prevention service. Do not suffer alone.

We need you here with us. We’ll be unified and sad.

Want to “Ask Me Anything”? Add your question in the AMA section HERE.

Dear Russ,

This is such an excellent question. I’m sure you’re not the first person to wonder how artists like myself fall into the mix when it comes to privacy and personal data. I’m all for transparency, and perhaps it might be interesting to see behind the curtain a bit.

First off, why so many platforms?

Social media can be helpful to cast a wide (though shallow) net. If you’re zeitgeist’y, the algorithm pops in your favour, and you reach a larger audience. God knows what information is gathered here, or what deals we make with the devils of data in return for the fleeting bumps of quantifiable gratification we get out of it.

From the artist perspective, the problem with socials is that we don’t own the relationship with “followers”. These platforms increasingly limit our reach to the very people who have already opted in, hoping that we’ll boost our posts. This feels like buying friends, because that’s what it is.

So artists seek one-to-one access to listeners. I believe the tech-bro term here is “return path”. Let’s say that amidst the never-ending cavalcade of content being shoved down your gullet every moment of every day, you actually feel an instant of serene cosmic understanding in something that someone else has created. How might we foster that brief moment of shared humanity into a long-lasting relationship between kindred humans?

My own main methods of maintaining a dialog are email and text messages.

Texting

The platform I use for SMS communications is called Community. The number you see in your phone is 310-347-4597, but I don’t actually see your phone number at all. Here’s a screenshot of my side (names redacted):

When you first text me, Community will ask you for the following information:

• first and last name

• gender identity

• location

• birthdate

• email address

I can use this information to, say, send out a “happy birthday” text to you, or send you a note regarding an upcoming show in your city. I’m able to chat one on one with folks, or send out campaigns out to groups of people based on location. This is important because a show announcement for Seattle is not very helpful to people who live in Houston. Targeting means that I can give updates to the people who might care the most, without aggravating the people who would care the least.

People often ask if they’re getting texts from a bot. When you first text me, there are some automated bot texts, but they explicitly say they’re from “Danbot”. Sometimes you’ll receive something in a wider “blast” alongside other folks getting the same note, but that comes from me. And any other kind of one-to-one message is from me and only me. Sometimes it takes a lot of time to get through the inbox, but I try to read every note and get back to everyone.

Now here’s the important privacy part. Community encrypts personal information and will never sell your data. Here’s what they say on the matter:

Respecting the privacy of both our Leaders and Members is central to our values. We do not sell personal information. To find out more, please read our Privacy Policy

And I also will never sell your data. Sounds gross. I wouldn’t know how. And Community doesn’t even tell me your phone number.

Email

My newsletter (the one you’re seeing now) is hosted by Substack. Most recipients are on the free tier, and that is absolutely fine by me - I’m just happy to have access to your inbox. And considering that social media is generally a race to the shortest attention span, I dig a more long-form medium.

Some people opt for the paid tier, and they enjoy some perks like access to a massive vault of live show recordings or un-released demos of new songs I’m working on. To be honest, I imagine that some folks are paid subscribers just to be supportive, and barely even dig into the perks. Those people are friggin’ angels. It all helps me feed my hungry, hungry, children and feel like I’m offering something of value to the world.

Substack does show me your email addresses, same as most any email-based platform would. As with Community, Substack does not sell personal information. And of course, neither would I. Ever. Here’s some of their CCPA Policy:

This CCPA Policy is incorporated by reference into the Substack Privacy Policy. While the framework used here is based in the provisions of the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”), we provide the rights described here to all our users…

No Sale of Personal Information

We do not sell personal information.

In conclusion

Do awesome shit, build community, and don’t be a jerk.

Thanks for visiting my TED talk :)

x
Dan

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Dear Sera,

Thanks for writing. Not to minimize that we live in a complicated era with some existential comeuppances on the horizon… but I do think that these chilling moments of quiet terror have maybe been a central part of parenting (or existing?) since forever.

I acknowledge that it’s a knob-headed move to quote one’s own music, but this is the final chorus from my song Which Is It:

We’re drawn to the madness like an accident scene
Divvy up the sadness like a currency
Drawn to whatever we don’t have anymore
Drawn to the demons and the wolf at the door

Drawn to whatever’s hanging low on the tree
Drawn to whatever prison tells us we’re free
Drawn to an ending that’ll settle the score
Drawn, but we’ll try to keep the wolf at the door

Is this new?
Is it ancient?
Are we screwed?
Which is it?

A few things come to mind:

1. There are many things to worry about. I won’t start naming them. We know what they are. So, yes... it’s a real thing, and there are real looming consequences to these problems.

2. Worry is a natural part of existing and it’s healthy to accept it as a part of our emotional process.

3. Acknowledging real feelings of worry can spur us to take action, for ourselves or for others, and this can be a good thing, but…

4. Adopting worry as an ongoing pastime and taking on the world’s pain as our own only enlarges the sum of Gross Worldwide Pain (GWP).

I’ve come to the opinion that dwelling in these pangs of world-sad is actually a self-serving occupation. It doesn’t do a whole lot for those being dwelled on, but it’s eerily pacifying for the dweller - sorta like…

“If I’m sad for the world all the time, I must be a good person.”

It’s also a an excuse to atrophy and do nothing at all…

“I’m just too sad to act”.

Empathy is crucial. We must feel and be aware of the pain. I’m not advocating for narcissism. But when we look to the inspirational empathic heroes of the modern world, they often carry a surprisingly joyful spirit alongside their not-so-surprisingly mindfulness. The Dalai Lama, Malala, Desmond Tutu, Beatrice Webb, Gandhi, Jon Stewart, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Nelson Mandela…

SO - this is all just a longwinded way of saying that I think we should forgive ourselves when we do manage to get beyond the worry. We need not have survivor’s guilt for simply making it through the day. We might cosmically inspire a net reduction in Gross Worldwide Pain by reducing our own internal pain.

AND - the best ways I have found to centre my mind and reduce anxiety all come down to daily practices. They require commitment. Also, they require a bit of selfishness, which I think is okay, because being selfish for a few minutes each day means that my kids and wife get a better version of me for all the other hours they have to deal with me.

1. Extreme breathing. I’ve tried meditating but I have a hard time getting over the boredom. Alternatively, doing 10 minutes of Wim Hof breathing is an ACTIVE practice. It feels like when I was a kid and I’d press RESET on my Nintendo when the screen would freeze. Good as new.

2. Cold baths (or cold ocean/lake plunges) now and then, or 2 minutes of cold shower at the end of my hot shower each morning.

3. 10 minutes of exercise. I don’t know how anybody makes time to go to the gym, but I can fit some squats, crunches, planks and push-ups into my routine most mornings.

4. Reading a real book for at least ten minutes in bed before I go to sleep.

When I’m in a cold bath, different parts of my body will feel pain. If I focus on those parts of my body, they get warmer. I acknowledge the sensation, and accept it. I relax my shoulders. I stop resisting. And when I get out, I feel energized and peaceful.

I think there’s a metaphor for life in there somewhere.

I’d be curious to hear about other daily practices that folks have found helpful. Feel free to pop ‘em in the comments!

x
Dan

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Dear Niki,

Thanks for being there. I love Glasgow. I love so many places in Europe. I like being reminded that my own North American way is not the standard from which other places deviate. That there is no standard… only relative deviations from other deviations.

The truth is that I lost money on this recent European tour (or maaaaybe just barely broke even - I’m too afraid to properly investigate). I also lost money on my Canadian tour back in May of 2022, where we did, in fact, sell out some big theatres. In that instance, six of nine of us got covid, which meant a swath of extra hotel rooms and flights for scattered folks isolating and reuniting.

Excluding some weatherproof megastars and iconic legacy acts, ticket sales across the music industry are about 60-80% of where they were pre-pandemic. Particularly so for the middle class of realized touring acts, of which I’d consider myself a member. By “realized”, I mean they do this for a living.

Meanwhile, fuel costs are up. Accommodations up. Rentals up. Flights up. Labour costs up. Fewer acts than ever have the selling capacity to make touring financially feasible. Bands are cancelling tours on the regular. “Mental health” tends to be the going reason given, which is indicative of the stress around all of this.

I think fans used to buy four tickets and then figure out which friends to invite. Now they’re waiting until the last minute to buy two tickets. And I get it. People are stretched financially. What’s more, we’ve been conditioned to go out less, and stay home more. The real supporters are making it happen, but perhaps not their luke warm co-worker who may have tagged along in the before-times.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. I don’t think I have EVER been more fulfilled from playing shows than I have in 2022/23. Perhaps it’s that the recent touring scarcity has inspired a deeper appreciation. Perhaps it’s the love and chemistry within the band these days. But my gut tells me that the people who are showing up have never been more engaged. It’s never felt easier to meaningfully connect with a room full of people.

I did consider cancelling this past European tour. The unprecedented costs and slow ticket sales were causing some sleepless nights. But I came to the realization that if I cancelled this tour, I might never get back there. And that was far scarier.

Near the beginning of my career, I decided that I’d be willing to be broke in order to make a life in music. Magically, that level of commitment led to actually beginning to make a living from it. I’ve always been ambitious, and I’ve always been willing to take risks in order to manifest big things.

TO ACTUALLY ANSWER YOUR QUESTION…

What keeps me coming back? It may be as simple an answer as: hope.

I just put out my sixth album - and yet, I feel like I’m at the beginning of my career. There are so many more songs I want to write. So much I want to do. I don’t want to scrape the barrel of what I’ve built. I want the barrel to be bigger and even more exciting.

I believe that my songs are a valuable contribution to music. I think I’m good at this. I feel good after the shows, and I can tell that other people feel good also. I am so grateful to everyone who includes my songs in their lore - in their road trips, weddings, lucid moments, late night hangs, what have you.

I’m not ready to start approaching my career rationally. I’m still at the table, making bets. One day, I’ll need to cash in my chips. But it’s not today.

I’ll leave you with this song by Veda Hille with the refrain “If you do nothing, it means nothing.” - it’s one of my favourite songs ever.

x
Dan

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Dear Tessa,

I’m particularly proud of that line.

Years ago, I was in a cab on my way to La Guardia airport, sitting in tied up traffic on a freeway overlooking Brooklyn. As far as I could see in every direction was just red. Red everywhere. Bricks. I was floating on a yellow raft in a sea of bricks.

I got to thinking about the history of New York, and all the millions of people and the boats and the hopes and the landings and the awakenings and the vibrance and the toil and hardships and the histories cultivated.

But mostly, I wondered to myself… “Imagine how many f*cking bricks there are in Brooklyn.”

To me, the song All Roads is about feeling the lightness or emancipation of humility. Accepting the infinitesimal nature of our existence. In a billion years, it’s all just space dust. Our histories, our religions, our art…

I’ve been spending a lot of time catching up on the work of Richard Powers. The Overstory is a monumental achievement - simply one of the most impressive pieces of writing I’ve ever come across. But Bewilderment… That book is the most poetic and impactful novel I’ve read since The Handmaid’s Tale. It just nailed me. I wept several times. It’s hard to believe that there is a human smart enough or emotionally intelligent enough to manifest Bewilderment.

His work has enhanced how I look at the natural world and I am thankful. If all life on Earth was compressed into a single day, mammals would exist for maybe a minute, and humanity, the duration of an eye-blink.

And so, though I firmly believe in spiritual interconnectedness, and cosmic wonderment, I do not believe there to be a greater meaning to our existence. I find this so freeing. Rather than bumbling around, seeking external evidence of our empirical importance, or confirmations that we are living up to some supposed benchmark of personhood, we can simply assign beauty and meaning to all of the things that bring us joy and purpose. Love. Friends. Family. Connection. Flow. It’s a license to accept. To eat, drink, and be merry. To choose kindness, if only for the reason that it feels good.

Being Somewhere was, at least in part, titled as a nod to the 1979 Peter Sellers & Shirley MacLaine film Being There. In it, Sellers’ character Chance (or “Chauncey”) approaches every encounter with an impossible lack of presumption. Childlike wonder. Cosmic humility.

So, I suppose, to me, the line “Feeling like a brick in Brooklyn”… it’s about feeling like a very small thing amidst an unfathomable quantity of other small and large things. And that it’s okay. I can be in my skin, fragile and imperfect and weird.

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Dear Greg,

Can I please kiss you on the face.

The truth is that I have struggled with my voice. Endlessly. When I was in my twenties, I didn’t have a whole lot of technique or talent, so I leaned on gumption and will. I growled. I howled. I bellowed.

Have a look at this clip of us performing on a workshop stage at Calgary Folk Fest back in 2012.

In this clip, I’m singing entirely from my belly, through the back of my mouth, to the detriment of pitch, tone and my throat’s wear & tear. Probably because I overheard someone talk about using your diaphragm at one point and I figured that’s probably somewhere down near your belly. I’m also hunched over, which isn’t great.

For years, I struggled especially with pitch. At the root, I was singing too loudly. I always felt like I couldn’t hear the pitch because my fallback monitor “wasn’t loud enough”, and thus, I’d sing louder and louder to try and hear myself. But, of course, several elements were at play in this fool’s feedback loop:

1. A microphone can only capture so much information. When you jam too much information through the device, it has to naturally condense it into a simpler signal to carry it through. More becomes less. As I increased my vocal output, the volume may have increased, but the tonal quality of my voice coming back at me would get increasingly thinner.

2. As I endeavoured to push infinite volume out of my cake hole, my ears couldn’t hear properly because my entire face and jaw were too tense. How could I receive quality tonal input to my ears when my whole apparatus was exhausting itself trying to output?

A few things helped me break this cycle:

• I started working with producer Drew Brown on More or Less. He kept telling me that he enjoyed my voice most when it was just louder than a whisper. Every time I’d start to bellow in the studio, he’d calm me down and ask me to try again, but softer. Then I’d go into the control room and listen back and think, “Wow. I’ve never heard my voice sound so rich and full of tone. And on pitch.”

• I was diagnosed with silent reflux as well as TMJ. I’m also just getting older and I can’t rely on abusing my voice without consequence anymore. All of this resulted in a lot of changes to my diet and eating/exercise habits, as well as many appointments with practitioners like ENTs, speech pathologists, physiotherapists, nutritionists, naturopaths, and singing coaches.

• I tend to engage a different “resonator” when I sing now - using my soft palate, or “light voice” at the top of my mouth. I only sort of understand what any of these terms mean so I’m probably mixing them up. I ensure that my knees are bent, and that my shoulders are loose. My breathing is considered and properly engages my diaphragm. Even though I still have moments in a show where I really “go for it”, I have generally found power and respite in softness.

• One time, Don Kerr said to me something along the lines of, “When you get on stage, the song itself is doing 90% of the heavy lifting. All you have to do is carry it over the finish line. Trust the song.” - this was absolutely huge. If I can trust that a song is great, then I don’t have to kill myself trying to give the audience the hard sell. And with that came the hard realization that selling the song is exactly what I’d been doing all those years.

I essentially had to re-learn to sing. Posture. Breath. Approach. It’s all so crucial. It’s a process, and I am not quite where I’d like to be, but I do feel that I’ve come a long way.

For most of my life, I felt like my voice was a hurdle to surpass. I knew how to write songs and perform, but I didn’t really know how to sing. It was a problematic part of my life. I felt like some people had a god-given vocal talent that I lacked, but that I could make up the difference with effort. I figured that I could make it work in spite of myself.

In time, I’ve learned to be thankful for my voice. It’s given me a life in music. It literally pays for my family’s groceries. And, of course - when it’s working well, it does bring me a great deal of joy. Though it hasn’t been an easy journey, I’ve learned to appreciate it for the crackly fragile thing that it is. I try to approach singing now with gratitude rather than spite.

And now to answer your question, Greg: no, sorry, I don’t have perfect pitch. That would be nice :)

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Dear Ryan,

I love deadlines; they’re the worst.

It’s hard to make an opus on a time crunch, but it’s also easy to overcook something for a year when it was better six months ago.

So, I think the best answer I can come up with is: both. Sorry. Here, I’ll elaborate…

The case AGAINST deadlines…

It took me a year to know for certain that Mouthpiece was finished. I’m typically a slow songwriter. I mull things over. I sing alternate melodies in the shower. I explore internal rhymes or extra alliteration for a verse while I’m driving.

Jason Isbell once tweeted “Songwriting is like attempting to solve the NYT crossword during a therapy session.” - he’s right, and quite often, puzzles take time to solve.

One of the most vital tools in the toolkit is perspective, and perspective requires hindsight. I’ll get excited about a lyric, and then decide a week later that it’s awful, or that it could be great if it was tweaked ever so slightly.

I believe that everything is part of the process. The procrastination. Being too busy to finish something. That art arrives when and how it’s supposed to. And that you often cannot rush the muse.

The case FOR deadlines…

Of course, having infinite options can be paralyzing, and when it comes to any creative endeavour, having a box in which to operate is often handy.

Deadlines are a box. They force us to make decisions - to choose one route or another. Often, it’s not about making the right choice, but about making any choice at all. Hopefully, you arrive in a place where you can look back with more gut-level certainty, and then make the right choice.

When I was young, I scoffed at the idea of “co-writing”. Writers in a writing room in Nashville or LA, conjuring hits. It felt like a superficial lane of the industry. Pop music. I thought real artists wrote in a vacuum.

But as I’ve aged, I’ve really embraced being around other creative people when writing. They find avenues and alleyways you may not have found, and it can really speed up the process. It can take me weeks (or years) to finish a song on my own, but I’ve written great songs with co-writers in a matter of hours because that’s all the time we had with each other. And sometimes there’s a flurry of text messages over the following weeks whereby you continue to edit and whittle the song into form.

Also, life is just busy, and having a block of hours in my calendar can really help me focus.

I also believe that creativity is like a sponge, and if you don’t ring it out now and then, it gets soggy and moldy. Vice Versa, if it sits dry for too long, there’s nothing in it to give. You have to fill the coffers and empty them on the regular. Hone your creative mind to always allow input while generating output. The cosmic creative lung needs to expand and contract or you’ll kick the bucket.