Jeff Tweedy's Songwriting Master Class

songwriting code and he's ready to share it. With Tweety's work ethic, it's no surprise that eight months into the Pandemic, he has a new solo album to share. This song, Guess Again, is from his new project Love Is the King. More surprising, though, is that he's found the time to document the creative process behind his prodigious output, and a book titled How to Write One Song, Tweety lays out

in his own workman like approach to songwriting. The book reveals how he comes up with melodies, lyrics, and chords, and even more importantly, how he finds the inspiration and the time to write. Jeff Tweety spoke to Malcolm Gladwell about his new book, explaining why he believes songwriting isn't a mystical endeavor but something that can be honed with practice, and at the end of the episode, he plays us through the writing of one of his new songs, step

by step. This is broken record liner notes for the digital Age. I'm justin Richmond. Here's Malcolm Gladwell with Jeff Tweety. Can I start with this tantalizing little anecdote. You're telling your book that when your dad got mad, he would go into the basement and write poems. And all I could think of is this is the Jeff Tweedy origin story? Pretty much? I think so, Yeah, it was your father musical.

My father was a frustrated entertainer. He got my mom pregnant in high school and they dropped out and he got a job on the railroad, and I think his whole life, I think that he wished that he had had an opportunity to be on stage somehow. But he was not particularly musical, but he was entertaining, that's for sure. But he aspired to be musically always. He liked to sing, He drank a lot, and he got up at every wedding and embarrassed us, terribly humiliated us in lots of cases.

But where's poems with any good? Yeah? I know my dad was brilliant, you know, they weren't. I don't think that they were good and like a Robert Frost way or or but they might have been good in a Jimmy Stewart kind of way or Ogden Nash maybe at the high end of his aspirations. But you know, um, he wouldn't have had any of those references other than

Jimmy Stewart. So but he did. You know, he made un requited forays into indulging his musical side many times, like he bought an organ from the mall that the salesman claimed would teach him how to play, and he would just sit there and watch the lights flash as it would play itself, and drink a beer. It was. I have a lot of memories of that. But the poem he wrote, the poems when you said when he

was angry, Uh, that was my memory of them. Yeah, and I sadly, you know, a couple of summers ago when he passed away, we you know, we emptied out the house, the house that I the only house i'd ever lived in when, you know, like my parents bought when my mom was pregnant with me, and I found a lot of his homework from when he taught himself or basically learned computing early on, uh, math homework and stuff like that. But I didn't find any of the

notebooks that had any of the poems. So I suspect that he just got it off his chest and then threw him away, you know, Yeah, I just I just love these kinds of generational parallels. It's almost like, you know, if if if you were on the couch, I would say, you're like tweety two points. No, you're like the do over, the frustrated musician, who's who's writing these essentially lyrics sort, and then you're you You You've come along and you've

turned it into an art. Well, yeah, I mean, there's there are tons of parallels that I I mean, I mean it's disturbing as you get older how much you start to look like your parents, and I look like exactly like my dad. And you know, I think he suffered from a lot of the same mood disorders that

I've dealt with in my life. But he clumsily but somehow, you know, as far as employment goes, and far as far as like not having worsening consequences, which would be typical of alcoholism, he managed to medicate himself clumsily for his entire life, you know, for anxiety. I'm sure he had anxiety and depression. And yet and he did instinctively seem to have turned to some of the same things that have provided some solace for me that weren't unhealthy,

you know, like getting things off his chest. And you know, I was indulged a lot, perhaps because I was a do over. When did you write your first song? Do you remember the first song I remember writing? And I'm pretty sure that there were songs before this, But the first song I remember writing was a song called Your Little World, and it was about a girl and her not having enough room in her world for me. And how old you when you write it? It's maybe thirteen fourteen.

You don't remember it, do you? Your little World's much too small? Oh, I ain't got no room at all. It's so yeah, I was. I can remember. I could play it. Actually. One of the weird things is is that, uh, this local musician who went by the name Joe Cammell a band Joe Cammell in the Caucasians. They actually recorded that song and and made a single out of it.

Really it is it exists, Yeah, yeah, is because I was I was this kid that hung out with all like at the record stores and hung out at the you know, with around other musicians when I could get near them, and I would always I write songs. And this guy in this band, Joe Cambell, said hey, let me hear one of your songs. And I went over to his house and I played him this song. He said, oh, that's great, I'm gonna record it. We're gonna like go to record this song, and he did, It's fantastic. When

do you think you wrote your first good song? Well, I honestly don't think that that one was terrible. I think it's you know, it's it's not great, but it was it was good enough for somebody else to want, you know, see some potential in it. Um the first song I liked that I wrote was probably screen Door on the first um Uncle Tupelou record. You know, that's the first one where I felt like I had said something that felt true to me and that I didn't

necessarily have anybody else's song to convey that idea. I always look at it like I'm trying to make songs and a new song for me to sing that someone hasn't already written. So that one was the first one that felt like that, How old are you when you write that song? Sixteen sixteen seventeen? Yeah, so pretty, it's funny. I just I have heard musicians of various kinds answer that question over the years, and there's a whole set of them who, like, you know, ten years passed between

the first song they write and the first one they like. Yeah, but you, you you have a much less um ambivalent relationship to your early songwriting. One of the things I feel like I've had some shame about in my life is how shamelessly I love stuff that I make. And I think, over time, I've really made peace with it because I think that that's like kind of beautiful and it's kind of one of the things that's allowed me to grow. I don't I don't tend to keep liking

things that I've made. I tend to get pretty dissatisfied with them over time. But when I initially even when I figure out how to play something on the guitar that someone else has done, I feel like I invented it. I have this like, really you know, sort of delusional relationship with the joy that I take from making something, and I think that's that that really comes naturally. So a lot of times, my favorite song is always the

one I'm working on. Almost invariably, I was like, Wow, this is a this is really great, and it dissipates over time. But but I've always felt like that, does that make you a bad judge of your own song writing? I think it does, and that's that's part of the reason that I've had to learn a lot of different ways to get out of the get my ego out of the way, Like I allow things to just state for a lot longer, or put them away and forget them, forget about them so that I can come back to

them with a little bit more objectivity. But in general, I think it's just kind of the spirit of it is what comes across a lot of times, and that that that, in a lot of cases, is enough, because you know, not every song has to be the greatest song that's ever been written, but it's sure it helps if you feel like it is at the moment in the moment. You know, you describe in this lovely book

You've just done, how to write one song. Yeah, you describe a series of exercises songwriting exercises, and also describe a kind of what a songwriting day should look like. And I was curious before we go into that, how long did you I mean, if that's the pattern of song writing you practice, now, how long have you been doing it that way? Did you always have this kind of very structured way about writing music. No, I think

that I've as I've gotten older. I think one of the things I've really had to learn how to do is provide myself structure because I work in a profession that doesn't have a lot of structure outside of touring, which is extremely structured and routine. You know, but being home has always been a little bit dangerous for me in terms of my mental health. Though the routine has been something I've had to learn and has helped me

a quite a bit. That being said, I don't remember a time where I haven't felt like a kind of a nagging sense all day that I should be making something, or that I should be learning something, or I should be reading something, or I should be listening to something and that tends to provide a lot of momentum to

my days. This ugly feeling that I'm avoiding almost all the time is that I don't want to get to the end of the day and feel like I didn't learn anything, or didn't didn't make something, or just didn't participate in my life in the ways that I've found to be the most enjoyable and helpful to me. You described this ideal songwriting day. When was the last ideal songwriting day you had and what did it look like.

It's been a while. I think the ideal day, the last one I might have had, would have been during the process of making the album I just really Loves the King, where, you know, around eight o'clock at night or something, I would have started working on a song that I was thinking about recording. The next day, I would have, you know, worked on it and played around with it, maybe illuminated a little demo of it on my phone until like maybe midnight, gone to sleep, woke up.

Probably would have finished the lyrics early in the morning because that they tend to kind of un tangle themselves in my sleep a lot of times, and I like to I like to write even before I get out of bed, you know, where I feel like I'm still sort of you know, the judgment side of me is still sleeping or something, you know, And I would have gotten up and come to the studio, maybe worked on that song for a little while in the studio, head lunch,

maybe taken a nap, would have gotten up from the nap, finished the song, maybe invited my younger son over to sing a harmony vocal on it. Common practice in that moment when I'm asking someone else like Sammy to sing on something would be to really focus on the lyrics and make sure they're where I want them to be.

So I would have done some revisions on that, maybe until around five or six, and have a rough mix to take home and have some dinner and listen to records generally until I get excited about trying to make something to beat something I just heard, some sort of like trying to activate some competitive side of my brain, and then start the whole process over with maybe seeing if I could, you know, come up with another song

for the next day. So, in your ideal world, is it a song from start to finish in that one day, or is it is it that you have little bits and pieces already there that you're going back and finding and playing with. I can do a song start to finish in one day, but typically there are little pieces

of raw material that have been accumulated. Yeah. I think one of the things I might do at eight o'clock, say, the beginning of the day I just described, would be to go through my phone and find a musical idea that I'm excited by that I don't know. It just catches me enough, unaware to start dreaming about it and start like fantasizing about where it could go or what it could sound like. Do you have your phone with you right now? Can you play as a musical idea

of the phone? Sure? Let's see. Well this one sounds a little bit maybe a little bit more finished than normal. The tunnel at the end of the life, So that is that Has that little bit been turned into a song yet? Or is it just waiting? It's waiting, it's waiting. I mean, there's and then there's stuff that's maybe I don't even know what this is, just some chords I thought were pretty, but yeah, there there there are dozens or not dozens, there's probably literally hundreds of those things

in my phone. When they stack up a little bit, I usually transfer some to the computer here at the loft, so they're at least in a couple of places. Yeah, so I'm vastly by this process. How long might some a little bit linger on your phone or in your archive before you use it? Is there stuff? And if I if we went into that, you said sometimes you download them on at the loft, how far back would we have stuff there from ten years ago you've never used? Yeah,

I mean probably there are. I used to do it on cassettes and basically I used to just leave a cassette in a dictaphone old style, like what you would have Steno would have used, or someone in an all uh, you know, secretary pool, and I would just leave it on the coffee table and until it filled up, and then I'd put another cassette in. And there's there are

dozens of those cassettes. And like um on the Suki ray album that I made under the name Tweetye, there's a song on there that I finished after fourteen years. I think it's called I'll Sing It. Was there a little snippet of it that was the original stippet. It's actually in the track I actually just played over the cassette version. Yeah, yeah, and then and then I think that ended up on the Summer Teeth box set that we just put out because it was written around the

same time as Summer Teeth. Yeah, when you go back and find a little snippet like that, do you remember when you created the snippet or is that gone? It depends. A lot of times I don't remember at all. I have no recollection at all of a lot of times I don't even remember the tuning, and I have to like sit and figure out because I use a lot of different tunings, and I really hate it when I don't bother to tune the guitar to a standard pitch because then it makes it even harder to figure out

what tuning I'm in and stuff like that. So a lot of times it's it's completely gone wherever it happened, which is kind of I love it when that happens, even though it can be frustrating trying to relearn it. But then there are times where I absolutely have a distinct memory of where I was and what was happening. And a lot of times that's because there are other ambient elements that made it made their way onto the recording.

I like, say, backstage and somebody and Wilco walks through and says something, and I can I can viscerally feel that that room and I'll know even what city it was. In a lot of cases, sometimes when I'm doing it in hotel rooms in Europe and you have the windows open. Whenever we're fortunate enough to find a hotel that has windows that open, you hear like people leading on at the cafes or something like that. That's those are always really kind of special recordings that a lot of times

mean a lot to me even without them being finished. Yeah. We did an interview with Norah Jones while back now and she was talking about how she did her song Wintertime with You, and she was talking about this this very process that she had some scraps, little bits and pieces, and you had bits and pieces and you kind of

put it together to create a really beautiful song. Can you can you because walk us through that that little case study of this time with a twist with another person involved, but doing seems like both of you were doing doing the work of creativity in the same way. Is that true? Yeah? I think that well, first of all, Norah Jones doesn't need me to help her write a song, for sure, But but we admire each other, so there's a there's already a kind of a base level of

camaraderie or something, you know. But I haven't found many people that I've worked with to have just wildly different approaches to it. Everybody seems to have sort of the core process is sort of similar. You basically start with something that is nothing, you know, that feels but feels like it could be something, and then you basically surrender this idea that you can't you can't do that, you can't make something out of nothing, and you do it.

And it's really the most important part is just letting go of the idea that it can't happen. I think, and with someone else it requires a lot of waiting until you both have both people have to feel comfortable and supported enough and trusting enough to kind of throw out ideas until you know, a light bulb goes off in two heads at once. It's a little bit more foolproof in a way because you have that consensus of universality for two people, as opposed to like just trying

to imagine that everybody will like something you like. We'll be right back with more from Jeff Tweety. After the break, We're back with more of Malcolm's conversation with Jeff Tweety. You've done an unusual amount of collaboration with other artists you write for, maybe Staples. You did those beautiful Mermaid Avenue albums with Billy Bragg that I are among my favorites. When you're writing with another person in mind, does it change the way you write a song? Yeah, I think

it does. I honestly think that that is the thing that I am most comfortable doing. I think it's the thing I truly aspired to do more than almost any other thing that I get to do. I always pictured myself being a person that would write songs for other

people to sing, and Uncle Tupelo. I wanted my songs to be sung by Jay because he had this magnificent, like rich, authoritative voice, and I had this squeaky, you know voice that I didn't feel like was quite my own, even at the time I was struggling to find it. As much as I felt great when I sang, I just loved the idea of writing the song more than

the idea of singing it. And I still think that that's where my most natural abilities lie is in helping somebody with another with their song, like working with Nora or finding something for someone to sing like Mavis. I don't look at it is like I'm putting words in her mouth. I feel like I'm just kind of helping find something that she feels comfortable singing that makes sense for her to sing. Same thing with the Woody Guthrie lyrics. That was even more along the lines of what I feel.

I have the strongest sense about it as being something that comes naturally to me because those lyrics were sacrosanct. You know, they're They're like you know, you're not gonna you're not gonna mess with them. They're there. You don't even need to worry about whether or not they're good enough.

They're important for people that don't know. There were all these lyrics at Woody Guthrie left behind that the music was never documented or he never really made any music for There's all these archival lyrics and writing that we took and made songs out of, and with those I would just sit and read them over and over and

over again until the meter would emerge. And then next there would be a melody that would emerge, and a lot of cases with Woody Guthroe lyrics, you read it and all of a sudden a Carter Family song emerges, because that's what he was actually writing his lyrics to

was someone else's song. I did the same thing with a bunch of lyrics for Bob Dylan that never came out because I wasn't able to be a part of that process for that record that they did a couple of years ago where they had a bunch of lyrics that Dylan had written. It's like Elvis Costello was a

part of it and some of the US mumfordness. But anyway, t Bone had asked me if I could do it, and I got all these lyrics, and then my wife started treatment for cancer, so I couldn't go to LA for the amount of time that they wanted me to. But I did the same thing with those lyrics I wrote, I wrote and recorded a whole record in a weekend. Like, did you find it sort of freeing to not have to do it in your own with you with your

own voice in mind? Yeah? I think that I just struggle with allowing myself to comment on certain things that I don't feel like I have the authoritative weight to weigh in on, for for in terms of like Mavis or something like that, or the things that I feel like Mavis has a voice of righteousness of some you know, of some broader scope in a historical importance and place. You know, there's just a weight to it that. Um, I feel very privileged to have been able to write for.

But um, a lot of those things are are not going to make as much sense coming out of my mouth. It just doesn't feel right for what for a lot of you know, social reasons. I think what's the right word to describe your attitude towards your own voice? Are you self conscious about it? No? I mean dot com about Tupelo and how you preferred if No. I feel like I've gotten way better as a singer, and I've worked really hard to get better over a lot of time.

And I actually I enjoy my voice, my singing voice quite a bit. I actually do like listening to myself sing now when I find things that I want to sing a lot of cases, i feel like I'm the only person that could sing it the way I want to hear it. But that doesn't mean that I'm oblivious to the fact that my voice isn't technically great in the you know, by the normal criteria of American idol or the voice or you know, whatever, whatever you know.

But all my favorite singers are like that. Almost all my favorite singers have non traditional voices that have become communicative. You know. It's like it's like where they they trade virtuosity or technique or whatever for sincerity or or or sentiment and conviction. And I feel like I found that in my voice over time, and I'm very, very proud of the idea that I still work at getting better and try and sing in tune, you know. But I'm more I'm much more concerned with making the words feel

the way I want them to feel. My speaking voice, on the other hand, is awful. I cannot. I will never listen to the book that I just read or this interview. I might listen to you do another interview

with someone else. But wait, so on this point in the book, you talk about stealing, but you're being you're being a little bit mischievous because you don't really mean stealing, but you're talking about being open to influence essentially, So give me an example of another artist whose work you find lots of stuff to borrow from and be inspired by. And I'm just curious, does it come from everywhere? Are there predictable places where you go to find ideas well?

The thing I'm describing in the book is just based on this belief that you can't really copyright a group of chords. What I'm describing in the book is basically me saying, well, I'm going to look for a song that I think has a bunch of cool chords in it, and I'm going to learn how to play it, and then I'm going to take it and make it into something that no one would hear that song in it anymore.

But it's basically like just when you're a little bit stuck, just realizing that the world is full of these, you know, sort of naturally occurring shapes that you can appropriate. You know, I don't look at them as being particularly ownable by by anybody, and especially if I don't, you know, sing the same type of song or put the same type of melody over it, or even have the same rhythm or you know, there are many many ways to describe it.

But it's such a it's such a liberating thing to do, to just go, oh, I'll just take these chords and and and start there because I haven't been able to come up with anything all day. That being said, there are just tons and tons of artists, new and old, every day of my life that I encounter, and to me, you have to work to not encounter art that inspires you, I think, and I think that that does overwhelm people.

I think sometimes some people do get to a certain point where they want to hide from influence or hide from the feeling that they're being challenged by other artists. But I look at it like most of the time I get that way too. I can, I can feel overwhelmed sometimes, but more often than not, I feel really invigorated by the fact that if I go looking, it won't take me long at all define something that shows me where the bar is that I should be aiming for.

What's an example of a song you listened to recently that triggered all kinds of reactions and inspirations in you. You know, Kate Kate Lebon writes a lot of music that makes me feel that way. She's just the first person that popped into my mind. She's an artist that has this undeniable kate lebon about what she does, you know, like we're and that's that's that's hard to find, you know. I think there's she has a very specific angle that she comes at what she does, and nobody else knows

that precise angle. I think the song um Meet the Man, I wanted to Meet the Man. I think that's the name of it's. I think it's the last song on her most recent record. It has all of these twists and turns that are unpredictable. And I don't know, when you listen to that song, can you turn off the part of your brain that wants to to kind of learn from it, use it, employ it in some way, and just enjoy it or do you Is that part of the brain always on? Well, that is how I

enjoy it. I think that I think that is part of how I enjoy it. I think I enjoy it first and foremost the way I have enjoyed music since I was a little kid, before I played any music or wrote any music, I am just attracted to sound and excited by records. And I don't think that that's any different. But I don't feel burdened by the knowledge that I have now, and I think it's it's just adds this insight, like, oh wow, I can kind of

tell what Reaver is going on there. But that being said, the things that I tend to enjoy the most are the things that I have zero idea how they came to be. Those are the things I listened to, you know, like have more repeated listenings, tend to be like some hip hop records and things that are outside of my skill set, and and you know, and then there then there are times where I crave comfort food, where I just want to hear a simple country song played on

an acoustic guitar. And I have a very very firm grasp on how that comes to be, but it doesn't diminish its importance in my life. You know, is there an artist, a contemporary of yours whose career you would have loved to have? No? I honestly, I've thought about that a lot. I have moments where I have a professional jealousy. I think it'd be impossible not to have these moments, especially if you're somewhat competitive like I am.

I think it's like, whise everybody writing about this guy now, I'd like, you know, like that, like I'm not ashamed to admit I have, Like you know, it's it's it's not the end of the world to admit you have petty feelings, you know. But but but honestly, I don't think so, because when I take a step back, the

prevailing emotion is gratitude. I mean, would this is nothing like I would have been ever been able to imagine for myself, you know, thirty years in from my first time probably playing on a stage or you know, getting in front of people. We'll be right back with more from Jeff Tweety. We're back with the rest of Malcolm's

conversation with Jeff Tweety. It would be really fun if we put together a bunch of the stuff we've been talking about in a song, like is there a song that you could break down, play and break down for us? Will you talk about all the little pieces that brought it together, how the song was created, the little bits of influence if you remember them, is the one that's that fresh in your remember that you could do that

a little mini masterclass. Let me think, I have a guitar here, so that's the g cord I always play when I pick up a guitar. It's inadvertence variant gweet, it's pretty it's my grounding. Well, there's a song on the new record called Opaline where um. I was writing it this summer or this spring when there was so much going on in the world, and our relationships with our police departments were being investigated and talked about a lot. So I'm not a person that's ever had that feeling.

I've never really been a fan of police because I've always felt like police had a lot more to do with um, their mentality, had a lot more to do with the people that made fun of me in school and were more jockey, and it's just a general atmosphere around police that I've not enjoyed. But I've not had this experience that a lot of minorities have had with police in this country. And I'm aware of that, but I was trying to put myself into that that headspace

of living with that fear. So those were those were the lyrics that I was playing around with. Is like, I hear the police outside my window. I can hear them talking on their radios and uh yeah, police, that's my window. I can hear them talking all the radios. I keyed my head my pillow pray that they're gonna lea me alone. Um. So that's like just one little chunk of the song that was a melody that I had without any words. Did you write that chunk first? Yeah?

I did, And then I had a piece that was like, oh, you know, I didn't really have any lyrics, so I was I. Um. We had a golden orb weave spider weaver spider in our garden this spring that um I named Opaline for some reason, just because it just seemed like a cool name. I had an aunt Opal and so I just start singing to her, Oh, oh, belief, make believe that you still lovely? Oh who believe? It's hard to s reality when you got no love it all.

So that's just writing a country song that's just trying to figure out a way to get to the line. Reality is hard to see when you've got no love at all. Because one of the things that has been on my mind a lot these last few years, or you know, for a while now, is how do you

get to the point where reality doesn't matter? And it obviously is very negotiable for a lot of people in our information climate that we can shop for a reality that we trust and believe, and there isn't a shared consensus a lot of times, which is really maddening and strange to witness. We don't even have the same agreed upon fictions anymore, you know. Like so it's it's really troubling.

And my theory is that must be a lot easier to do when people have been isolated from a lot of their feelings of being cared for or having affection and warmth in their life. So you have in a song, you've got opening image of the kid in bed, head under the pillow and hearing the cops outside and worrying, and then you have opaline. Yeah, and then you also have there's other other interesting element is it's very plainly

a country song. But we're not in country territory, are uh well, I mean country territory is pretty pretty vast in my opinion. It's it's it's to me where country music fails is when it tries to adhere to the tropes of country music and becomes like Civil War reenactment or something. It's, you know, it's not it's not about what's happening. And this is this is a weird song for me to pick, but I'm going to stick with

it now because we're in it. But you know, this is this is like a This is a little bit of a pastiche to where I got all of these elements to make sense to me and feel good to me. There's a story that runs through it that feels apprehendable to me, you know. So, so I had that, and that's probably what I put in my phone first, aside from the initial chord progression that I might have hummed over.

That was like the first document of this song. And then um, I was out driving my car on a toll road right after that, and there was a hearse on a toll road outside Chicago, and this literally literally happened. And I went through a toll next to a to a hearse, And as I went through the toll, I looked back and the hearse was stuck at the toll

like it didn't have any money or whatever. But as I kept driving, I kept looking in the rear view mirror and it was it just kept not being let through the toll, and I just felt like I'd been hit over the head with one of the most striking metaphors I'd ever encountered in the real world. You know, like what is you know, what is purgatory? I don't know, Like I was just just just one of the craziest things. And so I actually wrote this in the car into

my phone or just voice memoed into my phone. There's nothing worse than a hers driving slow, add on the toe way, stopping at the tolls, no change, no easy pass, what a way to go? There's nothing words than a herse driving slow. Oh oh belief? You know? Then you get back into the chest do why we don't question, but you had the herse experience, and you had these

two little bits that you've already done. Why do you think the herse experience belongs to this song or not any number of other things that you have stashed away for future reference. How do you know it belongs here? It's just what was in my mind. So I don't really think of things as accidents that I need to really investigate. And it just it sang well to these this melody before I could even make a decision about where it should go, do you know what I mean?

It's like that song was already in my mind. I'd been working on it, so, um, those are the those are the patterns that you walk around with when you have a song in your head. And that's one of the reasons I enjoy having a song on my head because then everything that happens to me is D D D, you know, like everything fits in that melody. It makes them that makes some order out of the world. I suppose you know, So those lyrics that you just sang for me, is that exactly as you compose them in

the car? Would you fiddle with them later? No, that's exactly as I composed them in the carner. And did you compose them in the car like like off the cuff or did you were you playing within your mind before you record it? I played with it in my mind a little bit before I decided that I should document it before I get home. Yeah, you know. And again I'm sorry. Now I'm told I can't get over the zac is so much fun? Do you pull over

or do you keep driving and you're singing into your phone? Well, I mean not to get too technical, but I pressed a button on my phone that allowed me to record it without having to take my eyes off the road. No, I didn't mean I was suggesting you were an unsafe driver,

But I was suggesting, like does he. I was imagined there was a scenario where you're so caught up in this that you're like, I gotta focus, and you're like pull it into the you know, the ihop parking lot, and but no, no, you're just you're just driving me, rolling down the road, singing this into your phone. Yeah. I love also that you know nine of humanity seize the hers. I thought it doesn't see the hers seize the hers and doesn't immediately understand that the perfection of

that metaphor. Well, I feel like you're attuned you. You are attuned to these things. Thank you. I think we all should be. I mean, we're like we're walking around and there's no there's no failed experiment if you're paying attention to the world. I think we get tired. I think we get overwhelmed, like I was saying before, with

like inspiration or influence and things like that. And you know, we're not always receptive and we're not always we don't always have the energy or a lot of us have a lot of concerns all the time about a lot of other things that would require more mental energy than we have, and that tends to crowd out a lot of you know, paying attention to the strangeness of the world or the you know. I don't feel like I'm

doing anything super unique in that guard. I just think that I am aware that my brain wants to make sense of stuff, and I give it an opportunity to make sense of stuff, you know, or actively participate in the fact that it does that. I think all of our brains do that. All of our brains would much prefer to find some reason for something to be the way it is, then for to try and accept and

understand ambiguity and randomness and and things like that. So we're designed to do that, and then sometimes it hits you over the head because it is just too perfect and beautiful, like a hearse being stuck at a toll booth. Class. Well, you're not done, We're not done. Keep going. Well the thing, you know, So there's another verse or verse and the chorus versus a chorus. And then by that time I think I had already recorded it, and I recorded the

song without any lyrics. I didn't sing it. I just was just and then I envisioned this like um long outro guitar solo. So I needed another verse and I needed something that was going to set up a long guitar solo into a last chorus, And that was actually the hardest part because I wanted something that sort of tied those two pieces together a little bit, at least

ambiently somehow. So I came up. I came up with a bunch of things that I actually changed over time, and I can't remember all the different changes because I only know. I only remember what I ended up on. But it was i'd like to find out, Well, she had to go my heart wants or a heart can't control. So I hang in the air. That's the light gets cold, and I had in his shadows welcome home, and then it goes into the solo there. But to me it was kind of like I had become the guy that

was hiding from the cops. They got killed, they got murdered by cops, that ended up on the highway in a hearse, not having the change even the money to go through a toll, you know, comically dark even in in uh my demise, still come completely just devoid of any luck whatsoever, you know, which is a country trope in a way, you know, just like the beautiful loser um but still but still singing this is a theme

on the record. Actually is still singing from beyond the grave to this woman who basically took took everything away in his opinion or his feeling, but knowing basically saying, I'm I'm still gonna be in that air that you breathe, I'm still gonna be. I can't have what I want, but I can still imagine that you are going to think about me from time to time. And it's a it's a sad, pathetic notion that a lot of a lot of weak men have and I've had in my life.

And and is that, um, you'll miss me when I'm gone? And uh, I think it's more often than not wishful thinking. Yeah, where Jeff, you need to finish the song for us? Oh well, there's just one more chorus. It's fun, It's so beautiful. Thank you. Oh, oh, believe me. Believe that she still love me. Oh, belief. It's hard to seriality when you've got no love it all. I love that. Hello, thank you, well, thank you, Jeff. I think that's a lovely way to wrap things up. Well, I appreciate it.

Thank you so much. Thanks to Jeff Tweedy for breaking down a songwriting for us. You can hear all of our favorite Jeff Tweety songs on my playlist at broken record podcast dot com. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken record Podcast. There you can find extended cuts of our new and old episodes. Broken Record is produced with helpful Leah Rose, Jason Gambrel, Martin Gonzalez, Eric Sandler and his executive produced

by Mia LaBelle. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries and if you like Broken Record, please remember to share, rate and review our show on your podcast. To have our theme musics by Kenny Beats, I'm justin Richmond Pace