You do a lot of rehearsing before you go into the studio…do you feel like once you get there you pretty much have the arrangement down?
Yeah, once we get there, we go for great takes where everybody’s in the same mindset where you get that magic thing where all the musicians are with each other, playing inside the song, and it’s really lovely. So we kind of go for one or two takes. And a lot of the vocals I did live, too, so it’s musically a much more satisfying experience, which is handy. I hate to do 50,000 takes.
Is there a song on this record that you feel was the most magical moment in the studio?
I really feel like all of them got that…there were moments in every song where everybody was just locked in and it was fantastic. I don’t think I can pick any one out.
What do you do in the studio to get in the mood?
You just have to make sure you can hear everybody.
You don’t light candles or turn the lights off...?
[laughs] No, but you can kind of kill the bright fluorescents.
This site is focused on singer/songwriters, folk music, Americana and roots stuff. Do you identify with that at all?
I think [my music] does a little bit, I don’t know if it does in a way that could be noted by anyone else. I grew up in the south and I do have that in my blood. I identify with it, but I don’t know if anyone can hear it in my stuff.
Tell me about United Musicians…
Well, it’s kind of done, unfortunately, it never really took off. Now it’s come in and out. The idea for it was that it would be a collective where musicians could share their resources to enable people to put out their records. But what I found was that a lot of singer/songwriters still clung to the hope that a major label was going to do right by them. So not a lot of people wanted to have their records [done like that]...it is a lot of work. We put out a few records, but I found out that my manager was doing the lion’s share of the work. It wasn’t like a label where we were signing people. We didn’t have the money to be able to compensate him for his work, so it kind of had to be dropped.
It’s surprising that singer/songwriters are holding out for major labels. It seems like that would be a dying reality.
Yeah, God knows what’s going to happen to people. It seems like there are so many artists out there and so few opportunities, but I think the illusion of opportunity is there and that’s the problem. People sort of approach being famous as a viable career. Like, "I know, I’ll be a rock star." [laughs] But it just doesn’t work that way.
Do you think the oversaturation of music online and in the world is a good thing?
I don’t. I think it’s a bad thing, I don’t think it’s good. But it’s a big country, there’s a lot of people in it. So it just makes sense that the more people there are, the more singer/songwriters per capita there are.
(Conducted April 9, 2008)
