Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Norah Jones Begins Again

Transcript

Norah Jones Begins Again · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

0:08
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Just a quick note here. You can listen to
0:14
Speaker 1: all of the music mentioned in this episode on our playlist,
0:17
Speaker 1: which you can find a link to in the show
0:19
Speaker 1: notes for licensing reasons, each time a song is referenced
0:23
Speaker 1: in this episode, you'll hear this sound effect all right,
0:28
Speaker 1: and enjoy the episode. This is Wintertime, a song off
0:34
Speaker 1: Nora Jones's album that came out this past spring. Begin Again,
0:37
Speaker 1: Malcolm Gladwell and Bruce had them of absolutely fallen in
0:40
Speaker 1: love with this tune. Wilco's frontman, Jeff Tweety started writing
0:44
Speaker 1: it some time ago before discarding it somewhere along the way.
0:47
Speaker 1: During a recording session with Nora Jones. The two of
0:49
Speaker 1: them picked it back up and brushed it off together
0:52
Speaker 1: to make this In case you don't remember, Nora Jones
0:56
Speaker 1: had a massive hit seventeen years ago with her debut
0:59
Speaker 1: single Don't Know Why, which has basically become a standard
1:02
Speaker 1: in the American songbook thanks to her minimalist performance. After that,
1:06
Speaker 1: she did a run of solo albums, but also did
1:08
Speaker 1: a lot of collaborating a song with Ray Charles, the
1:10
Speaker 1: song with Willie Nelson, whole albums with producer Danger Mouse,
1:13
Speaker 1: but recently, Nora's discovered a new way of collaborating. She
1:16
Speaker 1: talks with Malcolm and Bruce about why this new way
1:19
Speaker 1: feels so good. She also takes a seat at the
1:21
Speaker 1: piano and plays through some of the new songs on
1:23
Speaker 1: her record, and also talks about some of the ways
1:25
Speaker 1: she coped with her son and fame in two thousand
1:27
Speaker 1: and two. This is Broken Record Season three, liner notes
1:34
Speaker 1: for the Digital Age. I'm justin Richmond. Here is Malcolm
1:41
Speaker 1: and Bruce's conversation with Nora Jones from Bridge Studio in Brooklyn.
1:45
Speaker 1: Bruce and I are mildly obsessed with wintertime, and we
1:49
Speaker 1: thought we would start there, not the season, the song,
1:54
Speaker 1: not the season. We want to go as deep as
1:57
Speaker 1: you want to go on that and where it comes
2:01
Speaker 1: from and how you went about writing it, and well,
2:03
Speaker 1: I don't want to disappoint you too much on that one.
2:05
Speaker 1: But I went to record with Jeff Tweetie in Chicago
2:08
Speaker 1: and which was really amazing and fun. We wrote several
2:12
Speaker 1: songs together and this was one that he sort of
2:14
Speaker 1: had the scraps already, yeah, lying around, so we picked
2:17
Speaker 1: it up and dusted it off and tweaked it and
2:20
Speaker 1: put some clothes on it and changed it around, and
2:22
Speaker 1: then it sort of came even there. I have another questions,
2:26
Speaker 1: when did you first meet Jeff Tweetie. It must be
2:28
Speaker 1: at least ten or fifteen years ago, probably no more,
2:32
Speaker 1: because I think I met him for the first time
2:34
Speaker 1: on my first record when I did the Jewels Holland Show,
2:36
Speaker 1: so that must have been two thousand and two. Gosh. Yeah,
2:39
Speaker 1: it's been a long time. And Wilco did it as well.
2:42
Speaker 1: And I was already a fan because that was right
2:45
Speaker 1: when Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was out, and over the years,
2:50
Speaker 1: I've just sort of seen him around a lot. We
2:52
Speaker 1: worked with a lot of the same people and we've
2:54
Speaker 1: always been really friendly. Wilco had me and my band
2:58
Speaker 1: put some boots come hang out with them when they
3:02
Speaker 1: open up for Neil. They let us sit in on
3:04
Speaker 1: Jesus et cetera, which was really fine. That must have
3:07
Speaker 1: been fun, yeah, which you've done too, which we covered. Yeah,
3:11
Speaker 1: So we covered Jesus et Cetera in this band a
3:14
Speaker 1: man called Puss and Boots, Sasha top Set and Katherine
3:16
Speaker 1: Popper and myself and we did the Bridge School with
3:19
Speaker 1: them one year and and Cat and Sasha are pretty saucy,
3:23
Speaker 1: and Cat goes up to Tweety and says, hey, dude,
3:26
Speaker 1: are you going to do Jesus et cetera in your set?
3:28
Speaker 1: And he's like, oh, no, no, we might do that.
3:30
Speaker 1: And she's like, well, we're pooting in in our set
3:32
Speaker 1: and we're going first. So so we literally just like
3:35
Speaker 1: went ahead and play their song before they went on.
3:38
Speaker 1: We just enjoyed each other's like kind of rimming each
3:41
Speaker 1: other after that. Yeah, no, is that? So there's two
3:44
Speaker 1: categories here. There are categories of people that you're fans
3:46
Speaker 1: of and categories of people that you want to work with.
3:50
Speaker 1: Are they the same or are they different? Well, I
3:53
Speaker 1: think in making lists of collaborating with people, because this
3:57
Speaker 1: is what I'm trying to do right now is just
3:58
Speaker 1: do these singles and work with different people and with
4:01
Speaker 1: low pressure stakes, you know, like just one song. It's
4:04
Speaker 1: the only goal. And I figured out that, yes, they
4:08
Speaker 1: are different. I can be a fan of someone and
4:11
Speaker 1: have no idea how to insert myself into their world
4:13
Speaker 1: or them into mine. Yeah, that doesn't mean it can't
4:16
Speaker 1: happen once you get in the room. It might be
4:18
Speaker 1: totally magical, But unless I have some kind of an
4:22
Speaker 1: idea of something I want to try. Then I'm not
4:27
Speaker 1: going to just reach out somebody and said let's go
4:29
Speaker 1: get in a room and just stare at each other.
4:31
Speaker 1: You know, it's easier. I can imagine. It's not hard
4:34
Speaker 1: for me to understand that you would listen to Will
4:38
Speaker 1: go and meet Jeff Tweety and say, oh, that makes sense. Yeah,
4:41
Speaker 1: I mean, I think we should probably do a record
4:42
Speaker 1: together at some point. And it was so fun and
4:44
Speaker 1: you know, we both play enough of enough instruments to
4:48
Speaker 1: sort of just have the two of us with the drummer.
4:50
Speaker 1: His son, Spencer Tweety was playing drums, and we did
4:53
Speaker 1: all the stuff with just the three of us, and
4:56
Speaker 1: that kind of recording is really fun. So you have
4:59
Speaker 1: this idea now that you want to do these kind
5:01
Speaker 1: of one offs with people that are where did that?
5:04
Speaker 1: How did you come to that? It's really it sounds
5:06
Speaker 1: like a really really but I'm surprised that more people
5:09
Speaker 1: don't do that. But I'm well, I think a lot
5:10
Speaker 1: of people do do it, but they don't like call
5:12
Speaker 1: it what it is. Maybe, But it was actually my
5:15
Speaker 1: husband's idea. He was saying, you have all these resources
5:19
Speaker 1: to do something easy like this, why don't you do it?
5:23
Speaker 1: It's like, gosh, why don't I that's a great idea
5:27
Speaker 1: and what a fun way to just make music. I
5:29
Speaker 1: have little kids, you know, I don't want to My
5:32
Speaker 1: attention span is very short, just like everybody's nowadays. But
5:36
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's really fun to be musical and
5:40
Speaker 1: be doing things and have it come out quicker than
5:43
Speaker 1: if you do a full album, you know, and that's
5:46
Speaker 1: why is sort of the nature of the internet and everything.
5:48
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's good. But now you've questioned, why
5:52
Speaker 1: is it easier to work with someone who you may
5:57
Speaker 1: know as a friend but haven't actually worked before than
5:59
Speaker 1: it is to work with someone who you've been writing
6:01
Speaker 1: songs with the making music with for ten years. Well,
6:04
Speaker 1: for me, I mean I don't like to take a
6:07
Speaker 1: long time to record music or write songs or I
6:10
Speaker 1: mean I'll think about a song if it's not done.
6:13
Speaker 1: You know it's not done and you want to tweak it.
6:14
Speaker 1: But you know, some people go in and they take
6:17
Speaker 1: three years to make an album. That's not how. I
6:19
Speaker 1: get bored and I want to move on to something else.
6:22
Speaker 1: So for me, I mean, it's fun three days in
6:27
Speaker 1: a studio with someone, it's plenty to get one song,
6:31
Speaker 1: and in all these cases we've gotten three to seven
6:34
Speaker 1: songs each session, which has been great, and maybe not
6:37
Speaker 1: all of them are amazing, but it's really fun. It's
6:40
Speaker 1: just a fun way to work. It's low pressure to
6:43
Speaker 1: get somebody to commit to something, somebody who maybe I
6:46
Speaker 1: don't know that well or is very busy, I don't know.
6:51
Speaker 1: For me, it's not scary so much as it is
6:55
Speaker 1: it has been a little bit stressful because there have
6:57
Speaker 1: been many of these sessions where I've gone in and
6:59
Speaker 1: I'm so underprepared. I'm like, Okay, I don't really have
7:03
Speaker 1: a full song at all in case we can't come
7:05
Speaker 1: up with anything, because I try to have something in case,
7:08
Speaker 1: you know, we're drawing blanks in there. What is what
7:12
Speaker 1: is another day? Dumb question? What is something? I have
7:17
Speaker 1: all these voice memos on my phone, you know that
7:19
Speaker 1: I make in the batstub because that's the only piece
7:20
Speaker 1: in quiet I get. And you know, some of them
7:23
Speaker 1: are just like a small snippet of a melody. It's
7:25
Speaker 1: like na da da da da da, whatever it is.
7:28
Speaker 1: And sometimes those little somethings stick in my head for
7:32
Speaker 1: months or years and I'll go back to them. And
7:35
Speaker 1: that's like when I worked with Thomas Bartlett, that's all
7:38
Speaker 1: I had was I had a few lyrics and I
7:40
Speaker 1: had a few melodies, and we just turned them into
7:43
Speaker 1: songs in the studio. And I guess my point is, like,
7:46
Speaker 1: sometimes I'm a little stressed and underprepared when I'm going
7:49
Speaker 1: into these sessions, but I know and I have faith
7:52
Speaker 1: in the process and that when I get into the
7:54
Speaker 1: studio and I can focus and like all the noise
7:57
Speaker 1: isn't surrounding me and I'm with somebody who inspires me
8:01
Speaker 1: and hopefully they are the same, then it happens and
8:08
Speaker 1: I don't know, we haven't gotten nothing yet. Yeah, I'll
8:11
Speaker 1: say that how many how many ideas would you have
8:14
Speaker 1: on your phone right now? Right now, I'm pretty dry,
8:17
Speaker 1: but I have a lot of old ideas. Yeah, so
8:21
Speaker 1: you can't change phones because you're well, yeah, exactly, you're
8:25
Speaker 1: locked in. I'm locked in. Yeah, I missed my own
8:27
Speaker 1: voice recorder. Sometimes what's the longest time that's a lapse
8:32
Speaker 1: between a stippet of an idea and a song It
8:34
Speaker 1: actually appeared on an album. There's a song I wrote
8:38
Speaker 1: with this friend Ilhan Risanna used to be in a
8:41
Speaker 1: band called wax Poetic when I first moved to New
8:43
Speaker 1: York in like nineteen ninety nine, and we wrote this
8:47
Speaker 1: song together and that band didn't make another album and
8:52
Speaker 1: it kind of petered out and it continued without me.
8:55
Speaker 1: I wasn't in it anymore. But then I kind of
8:59
Speaker 1: dug up that song and put it on my third
9:00
Speaker 1: out about So that's how many years I have you beat?
9:05
Speaker 1: Because I just did that podcast episode that was inspired
9:08
Speaker 1: by an interview that I did in nineteen ninety two. Wow,
9:13
Speaker 1: And I thought about it for that long, For twenty
9:16
Speaker 1: five years, I always wanted to do something and finally
9:19
Speaker 1: did it. So I love other words. My point is,
9:22
Speaker 1: you know you can revisit the stuff when you're as
9:25
Speaker 1: old as I am. Yeah, these ideas don't really leave
9:27
Speaker 1: your sort of being until they become something. But I
9:32
Speaker 1: think for a lot of people listening to old ideas,
9:35
Speaker 1: it would make them intensely uncomfortable because they would hear
9:38
Speaker 1: the mistakes, the things that aren't so good. Are you
9:41
Speaker 1: like that at all? Can you can you turn off
9:43
Speaker 1: whatever critical voice you have that? Yeah, I'm not too
9:47
Speaker 1: critical of myself because I learned when I. When I
9:51
Speaker 1: first my first record came out, I had just started
9:54
Speaker 1: writing songs because that voice I could not turn off
9:57
Speaker 1: until then. I wrote songs in high school and they
9:59
Speaker 1: were so horrible. I was so embarrassed and I never
10:02
Speaker 1: wanted to do it again. Did you perform them? Well, Like,
10:05
Speaker 1: I went to this performing arts high school, which was amazing,
10:09
Speaker 1: and so we were all very encouraged. So like it
10:11
Speaker 1: ended up on the you know, the high school tape.
10:13
Speaker 1: So yeah, I you know, it was out there and
10:17
Speaker 1: I was like, I want to put it back in.
10:18
Speaker 1: I don't like it, but yeah, when you're young, that
10:22
Speaker 1: stuff can be a little embarrassing, and so I definitely
10:25
Speaker 1: shut down. And then I got into songwriting. When I
10:27
Speaker 1: moved to New York. I only had two two and
10:30
Speaker 1: a half songs on my first album because I was
10:33
Speaker 1: really new at it. And then after that, after a
10:36
Speaker 1: couple of albums, I got more and more into it.
10:38
Speaker 1: And then I got really kind of down on myself
10:40
Speaker 1: and frustrated. And then I had this whole thing with songwriting,
10:43
Speaker 1: and I finally realized I don't have to show anybody anything.
10:48
Speaker 1: Just finish the damn song, do as much as you
10:51
Speaker 1: want to and make it as cheesy as it is
10:53
Speaker 1: or whatever, and then in the end you can discard it.
10:56
Speaker 1: You don't have to show the world if you don't
10:59
Speaker 1: like it, but see it through. That's a good lesson
11:02
Speaker 1: for It's a good lesson for a lot of things,
11:04
Speaker 1: but especial. But that's what kind of freed you up to,
11:08
Speaker 1: kind of freed me up. Yeah, because you did start
11:10
Speaker 1: writing after you became famous. I started writing more, yeah, yeah.
11:13
Speaker 1: And you learned the guitar yeah, after you became famous.
11:17
Speaker 1: So that takes a nerve. I mean for me, I
11:20
Speaker 1: was just trying to stay inspired. The fame and the
11:22
Speaker 1: kind of crazy whirlwind that was my first record. It
11:27
Speaker 1: took a lot of took a lot away from like
11:30
Speaker 1: the point, which was staying inspired and making music I
11:34
Speaker 1: really loved. You know, were you working with somebody in
11:39
Speaker 1: the kind of pairings that you're describing now, how often
11:43
Speaker 1: do they make you realize you may have been wrong
11:46
Speaker 1: about something, like you're talking about how you have these
11:49
Speaker 1: old things and sometimes they don't work. How often does
11:51
Speaker 1: the second voice in a room say, wait a minute,
11:54
Speaker 1: that does work. I love it when that happens. That's
11:57
Speaker 1: my favorite thing. It does happen. Yeah, it happens sometimes.
12:01
Speaker 1: You know, when you get in a room with somebody
12:03
Speaker 1: you're like, well, I have this idea. It might be stupid,
12:05
Speaker 1: or like it's your nature to be self mine anyway,
12:09
Speaker 1: to be self deprecating, and I be like checking out
12:11
Speaker 1: this awesome idea. But you know, like, oh, I don't know,
12:15
Speaker 1: is this dumb? Check this out? No, that's not dumb.
12:18
Speaker 1: That's like what you want to hear for sure. Yeah,
12:20
Speaker 1: or their particular collaborators who are just good at that,
12:22
Speaker 1: at hearing things that you don't hear. Brian Burton, I
12:26
Speaker 1: mean Danger Mouse is he's really good at that. He's
12:30
Speaker 1: amazing at it. And not only musically he has hooks
12:33
Speaker 1: for days, but also lyrically, he's really good at it.
12:39
Speaker 1: He was someone I was really self conscious, Like, I
12:42
Speaker 1: wasn't nervous about the project, but when it came down
12:46
Speaker 1: to lyrics sometimes I was sort of nervous to show
12:49
Speaker 1: him my lyrics sometimes because it was very it was
12:51
Speaker 1: all very personal. Lyrics are very different than showing a
12:55
Speaker 1: musical idea. They're way more exposed, I think, and naked,
12:59
Speaker 1: especially for some one who's a little late to the
13:02
Speaker 1: lyric party. You know, so I was definitely more self
13:05
Speaker 1: conscious showing him my lyrics, and I don't know that
13:09
Speaker 1: he was, but his lyrics were really great. The more
13:12
Speaker 1: we wrote together, the more self conscious like out because
13:14
Speaker 1: I realized his lyrics were so great. But I was
13:16
Speaker 1: also very comfortable with him, so I thought, well, he's
13:18
Speaker 1: like my big brother. Let's let's just do this. But
13:23
Speaker 1: he's really good at that. Is there a song that
13:25
Speaker 1: comes to mind from your collaboration with him that you
13:28
Speaker 1: think is so the best example of the two of
13:30
Speaker 1: you rook and you get. The whole album was super collaborative. Yeah,
13:36
Speaker 1: there wasn't a lot of like scraps that were brought
13:39
Speaker 1: to the table as much as you know some other things,
13:43
Speaker 1: but lyrically, like, I've been going back and I love
13:47
Speaker 1: playing songs from that album. Sometimes there's songs from old
13:51
Speaker 1: albums that I just that I still like but I
13:54
Speaker 1: don't really connect with at this moment in time. Doesn't
13:57
Speaker 1: mean I won't again, it doesn't mean I never have.
14:00
Speaker 1: But that's how playing live, that's kind of how it goes.
14:03
Speaker 1: Pick songs that you're connecting with in the moment, and
14:06
Speaker 1: some of the songs when I throw them into the
14:07
Speaker 1: set from that record. It's like, whoa, these lyrics are
14:10
Speaker 1: so great. I'm so happy, you know. Yeah, We've been
14:13
Speaker 1: doing a song called stay Goodbye and the lyrics are
14:16
Speaker 1: really good. I think, do you try and do it
14:19
Speaker 1: in thee because I had that album had such a
14:21
Speaker 1: great sounds. It's his sound, that's him, Yeah, And I
14:26
Speaker 1: don't mean that like he makes the same sound over. No,
14:28
Speaker 1: he's a little like Brian Eno. He's sort of it's
14:31
Speaker 1: like he's created a little universe somewhere that you kind
14:33
Speaker 1: of flowed into. Do you try and kind of reproduce
14:36
Speaker 1: that on stage or do you do it in a
14:38
Speaker 1: different setting? I did more and when we toured that album,
14:42
Speaker 1: and we had a great band who could do it
14:44
Speaker 1: without it being contrived, you know, like we only had
14:48
Speaker 1: it was a five piece band. It was me, a keyboard,
14:51
Speaker 1: organ player, guitar, bass, and drums. It wasn't like it
14:55
Speaker 1: wasn't like we were obsessed with recreating the album sound,
14:57
Speaker 1: but we did a good job of doing it. Now, however,
15:02
Speaker 1: I'm really into stripping it back a little bit and
15:05
Speaker 1: not trying to recreate it. And I'm into rearranging some things,
15:09
Speaker 1: and especially with that album because the soundscape was so specific.
15:13
Speaker 1: Unless it's a natural thing for me to recreate live,
15:17
Speaker 1: I'd rather not try to be married to the sounds
15:21
Speaker 1: and just serve the song, because they're great songs even
15:24
Speaker 1: without all that. And that's the great thing about that album.
15:28
Speaker 1: When we come back, Malcolm and Bruce picked back up
15:30
Speaker 1: with their obsession with the song winter Time that Noah
15:32
Speaker 1: wrote with Wilco's Jeff Tweety. We're back with more from
15:39
Speaker 1: Nora Jones. So, Jeff Tweety, do you call him upet
15:45
Speaker 1: hey tweet? Calm tweet? No, you're just kidding. How did you? Who?
15:49
Speaker 1: How did you? I want to? I want, I want,
15:51
Speaker 1: I want the absolute details on this. You just call
15:53
Speaker 1: him out of the blue and said, hey, let's work together. Well,
15:56
Speaker 1: Jeff Tweety, I used to have his phone number, but
15:58
Speaker 1: he stopped returning my my text and then I got
16:01
Speaker 1: this text once from him, like I hadn't heard from
16:03
Speaker 1: him in two years. He's like, hey, I just got
16:05
Speaker 1: all your texts. I'm sorry. I didn't really check my
16:07
Speaker 1: phone much. I was like, dude, that's fine, but that
16:10
Speaker 1: was like a long time ago. But so I didn't
16:14
Speaker 1: know if I had his inphone anymore. But yeah, Tom
16:17
Speaker 1: Shick is a great engineer who I used to work
16:19
Speaker 1: with in New York a lot, and he moved to
16:22
Speaker 1: Chicago to be Jeff's house engineer at his studio and
16:26
Speaker 1: he so Tom's an old friend of mine. So I
16:28
Speaker 1: had just told Tom, I said, Hey, here's what I'm
16:30
Speaker 1: trying to do. See if Tweety's into it. I would
16:32
Speaker 1: love to do this with you and him, because that
16:34
Speaker 1: would be a dream to go to Chicago, check out
16:36
Speaker 1: the studio, finally work with Tom again and work with Jeff.
16:40
Speaker 1: Let's keep going on this narrative. Show up, you're you
16:44
Speaker 1: walk in? Do you what do you have with you
16:47
Speaker 1: when you enter the studio to work with Jeff Tweety.
16:49
Speaker 1: I had a couple of scraps. I was very underprepared,
16:53
Speaker 1: but I had I had a couple little tiny ideas.
16:57
Speaker 1: One of them was completely written santaneously on the couch,
17:01
Speaker 1: and that's the version that's recorded pretty much. It's called
17:05
Speaker 1: song with No Name, and we were just sitting I
17:08
Speaker 1: think that's the first thing we did the first day.
17:10
Speaker 1: We were both kind of shy, even though we knew
17:12
Speaker 1: we shouldn't be. I think he was a little shy
17:15
Speaker 1: and I was a little shy about just jumping in
17:18
Speaker 1: and giving all our ideas. You know, we're sensitive people,
17:23
Speaker 1: we're artists, right, So we're just sitting on the couch.
17:27
Speaker 1: He has a collection in sane collection of guitars, so
17:30
Speaker 1: I just picked one up and it was tuned really weird,
17:33
Speaker 1: and so we both just started playing. I'm not a
17:35
Speaker 1: great guitar player, but like, it's just a little acoustic part,
17:39
Speaker 1: and he and I just both started playing this part together.
17:42
Speaker 1: And Tom is such an amazing person to work with
17:44
Speaker 1: because he just had a mic set up and he
17:46
Speaker 1: just breast record and so we just started playing it
17:50
Speaker 1: and then I started like and then I started singing,
17:55
Speaker 1: and I was just singing gibberish words that were just
17:58
Speaker 1: coming to me, and it was cool. And then, you know,
18:02
Speaker 1: three days later we went back to listen to that
18:04
Speaker 1: because we kind of moved on and started doing the
18:07
Speaker 1: real stuff. And then Tom was like, checked this out
18:12
Speaker 1: from the first day and it was awesome, and we
18:14
Speaker 1: both really loved it, and we added a bunch of
18:16
Speaker 1: other instruments to it, and we just kept exactly what
18:19
Speaker 1: we had done on the couch. There was one lyric
18:21
Speaker 1: I remember thinking I was like, Tom, I wish I
18:23
Speaker 1: could change that lyric. He's like, well, you can't really
18:25
Speaker 1: change it unless it sounds really similar, and we double
18:28
Speaker 1: your vocal and you could kind of flub it. But
18:31
Speaker 1: because it was just we were on the cauch, we
18:32
Speaker 1: were all singing, and we was singing with the guitars
18:35
Speaker 1: and everything, so I just left it. But how much
18:38
Speaker 1: when you first start was everything made up in the
18:41
Speaker 1: room on the couch of that song? Yes, melody and
18:45
Speaker 1: lyrics and the main guitar party, yes, yeah. And when
18:47
Speaker 1: you start that process of improvisation the very first iteration,
18:53
Speaker 1: how much do you have? Do you have? Like ten seconds?
18:57
Speaker 1: Do you have twenty seconds? When you first said it?
19:00
Speaker 1: When it first comes to you. Well, we started doing it.
19:03
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know how much he recorded before
19:07
Speaker 1: we sort of had the take, but probably we were
19:11
Speaker 1: playing like five minutes, maybe you just playing the part
19:14
Speaker 1: and I was humming along. And then he's like, all right,
19:17
Speaker 1: well let's just try one with what you have. And
19:19
Speaker 1: then and then it started and what's he what's Jeff
19:23
Speaker 1: Tweedy doing when you're you're humming and playing on the couch.
19:27
Speaker 1: So he's playing on the couch thing as well. Yeah, yeah,
19:30
Speaker 1: he's a beautiful guitar player. So yeah, well that's the
19:33
Speaker 1: thing about these collaborations, like I might have nothing and
19:35
Speaker 1: be kind of panic what if we get nothing, But
19:37
Speaker 1: then you sit with somebody who's inspiring, and it's just
19:40
Speaker 1: it's beautiful. I mean, I guess he's so and he's
19:43
Speaker 1: so incredibly prolific and it has been so that way
19:46
Speaker 1: for so long that I guess there's no anxieties about
19:49
Speaker 1: him drawing up blank No. And it was interesting because
19:53
Speaker 1: I had this one idea because the way I work
19:57
Speaker 1: in the studio, the way I worked with Brian, and
19:59
Speaker 1: the way I have worked recently is sort of just like,
20:02
Speaker 1: let's write it all down. Okay, what about this idea?
20:04
Speaker 1: What about this? And I had this one idea and
20:07
Speaker 1: we started this other song that again has not been released,
20:09
Speaker 1: but he really wanted to take it home. He said,
20:14
Speaker 1: I do my best lyrics tweaking when I'm like at
20:18
Speaker 1: four in the morning. I'll go to bed and then
20:20
Speaker 1: he says, he wakes up and he does it and
20:22
Speaker 1: then he goes back to bed. Really, and I was like, okay,
20:25
Speaker 1: but I'm dying to do it now. I want to
20:27
Speaker 1: do it right now, you know, I was kind of like, ah,
20:30
Speaker 1: but I was super happy to have him do it.
20:33
Speaker 1: I didn't. It wasn't that I needed to be part
20:35
Speaker 1: of it or control it. I was just impatient, you know.
20:39
Speaker 1: Did he show up the next day, showed up the
20:42
Speaker 1: having done that. I think it was on wintertime. He
20:44
Speaker 1: tweaked some stuff. But yeah, and then there was this
20:47
Speaker 1: other song where I actually did that because I think
20:51
Speaker 1: he kind of inspired me a little bit, and so
20:53
Speaker 1: and then this other song I had done it. I
20:56
Speaker 1: didn't wake up before I am, but I did it
20:58
Speaker 1: before I came here. Now do you Typically, once you've
21:02
Speaker 1: got a melody, your melody, and then words later, not
21:05
Speaker 1: really no, Usually melody words come together, at least some words,
21:10
Speaker 1: and then those words are so cemented in the melody
21:12
Speaker 1: it's impossible to remove them. It's like really hard to
21:15
Speaker 1: change the lyrics. But sometimes there's a melody that has
21:21
Speaker 1: no words, and sometimes more recently and not in the
21:25
Speaker 1: past for me, but more recently, I've had a lot
21:27
Speaker 1: of words with no melodies. But usually it's both and
21:32
Speaker 1: then they kind of you kind of I don't know.
21:34
Speaker 1: It's easier to kind of morph morph from a lyric
21:38
Speaker 1: melody that's already married, is it hard? Once you've got
21:42
Speaker 1: the words to come up with a melody, then it's
21:45
Speaker 1: really fun to find a melody for like a poem
21:48
Speaker 1: or a lyric, because I've done that with other people's
21:51
Speaker 1: words before and it is very freeing. It seems more free.
21:57
Speaker 1: But when you have a melody and you're trying to
21:59
Speaker 1: fit lyrics to those nooks and crannies, that is definitely hard,
22:03
Speaker 1: harder unless it's just already kind of inspired with it.
22:07
Speaker 1: We did an interview with Linda Perry, who worked with
22:10
Speaker 1: Dolly Partner. I don't know who you've worked with Dolly Parton,
22:13
Speaker 1: and she told this amazing story. They did I guess
22:15
Speaker 1: six songs for the Dumpling soundtrack and they worked all
22:19
Speaker 1: these songs then, and Dolly partner the whole time as well.
22:22
Speaker 1: I don't write much anymore really, so anyway, she went back.
22:26
Speaker 1: She wrote the lyrics to all six songs in one day.
22:28
Speaker 1: Who did Linda did, no, No, she just went ahead
22:32
Speaker 1: and she's like, all right, I'm Dolly, I got this. Yeah,
22:36
Speaker 1: And they were I don't know they were. They're fabulous.
22:39
Speaker 1: Of course, she's an amazing songwriter writing is a weird thing.
22:43
Speaker 1: I used to get freaked out because they didn't have
22:46
Speaker 1: any ideas or wasn't inspired, and I didn't have anything happening.
22:51
Speaker 1: And I have a lot of really close friends who
22:52
Speaker 1: are songwriters, and sometimes I see them go this through
22:57
Speaker 1: the same thing. But I've seen myself go in and
23:01
Speaker 1: out of it, and it's like something always happens. Eventually.
23:05
Speaker 1: You go through phases. You go through phases where you're
23:08
Speaker 1: not writing, and then you go through phases where you're
23:10
Speaker 1: writing a lot. And sometimes I wasn't in between, but
23:14
Speaker 1: it's nice to not freak out when you're not because
23:18
Speaker 1: you know it'll eventually come again. Did you listen to
23:20
Speaker 1: a lot of country music growing up? Yeah, I mean
23:22
Speaker 1: my mom is from Oklahoma, so my grandparents and my
23:25
Speaker 1: mom absolutely I grew up on Willie Nelson and Bob
23:28
Speaker 1: Wills and men, Linda Ronstadt and a lot of great music.
23:34
Speaker 1: But it wasn't until I moved to New York when
23:36
Speaker 1: I was twenty that I kind of realized, oh, yeah,
23:38
Speaker 1: I love that music. I didn't really think about myself
23:41
Speaker 1: as ever singing that kind of music. And then I
23:45
Speaker 1: moved to New York and I was like I'm from Texas.
23:47
Speaker 1: People give me some, give me some three chord songs.
23:51
Speaker 1: And then when I started writing songs, I started writing
23:54
Speaker 1: on guitar because I lived in a tiny shoe box
23:56
Speaker 1: in the East Village. I didn't have a piano, and
24:00
Speaker 1: all those jazz chords that I had learned in high
24:02
Speaker 1: school and college that I love so much, I sure
24:05
Speaker 1: didn't know how to play those on guitar. I knew
24:07
Speaker 1: like five chords on guitar. So the first song I
24:10
Speaker 1: wrote when I moved to New York and I finally
24:14
Speaker 1: got out of my head and it was probably four
24:17
Speaker 1: in the morning, and I wrote come Away with Me,
24:18
Speaker 1: which is really just a few chords, and it's really
24:21
Speaker 1: kind of a country song. I mean, that's sort of
24:24
Speaker 1: what it is. And I wrote it on guitar and
24:27
Speaker 1: I can barely play it. So it would have happened
24:30
Speaker 1: if you'd moved to Nashville and not New York. No, right,
24:33
Speaker 1: I don't know. I probably would have gone full like
24:37
Speaker 1: anti country. I don't know. I don't know, or I
24:40
Speaker 1: would have gone full country. You were born in New York, yeah,
24:44
Speaker 1: and then your mother moved to We moved to Dallas
24:47
Speaker 1: when I was four because she was from Oklahoma and
24:49
Speaker 1: her dad sick. I don't know why we moved, actually,
24:53
Speaker 1: but I feel very from Texas. But yeah, I was
24:57
Speaker 1: born in New York and I moved back here when
24:58
Speaker 1: I was twenty. She's something of a character. She was
25:01
Speaker 1: in the music business. Did she just have a lot
25:03
Speaker 1: of records that you could listen to? She was a
25:06
Speaker 1: music fan. I mean, yeah, she did. I grew up
25:09
Speaker 1: listening to Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin and old country music,
25:13
Speaker 1: Judy Garland and Brazilian music. She lived in Brazil when
25:17
Speaker 1: she was in her early twenties, and she had all
25:21
Speaker 1: these great Brazilian records. Do you remember a first record
25:24
Speaker 1: or two that kind of from her? Whatever got you
25:29
Speaker 1: interested in being a musician? Well, she she was always
25:33
Speaker 1: playing Aretha Franklin and at Christmas she would always play
25:37
Speaker 1: like Luciano Pavarotti. And we went to church. We would
25:41
Speaker 1: when we moved to I mean, I don't remember much
25:43
Speaker 1: about New York because I was three or four when
25:46
Speaker 1: we left. But when we moved to Texas, we started
25:49
Speaker 1: going to this Methodist church and I joined the church choir,
25:53
Speaker 1: and the choir teacher was a former Catholic so we
25:56
Speaker 1: were singing all these Latin hymns, which was very funny
26:00
Speaker 1: for this text as a Methodist church. But so that's
26:03
Speaker 1: kind of where I got my start, and I think
26:05
Speaker 1: she recognized my joy in music, and she got a
26:10
Speaker 1: piano and got me piano lessons and stuff. I want
26:14
Speaker 1: to go back to Jeff Tweedy into wintertime. I still
26:17
Speaker 1: want to know about So you said something at the
26:19
Speaker 1: very beginning that he had a few discarded scraps. Yeah,
26:23
Speaker 1: and you guys brushed them off. So how much of
26:26
Speaker 1: a scrap did he have? Do you remember? It was
26:29
Speaker 1: a pretty big one. I mean the song was definitely
26:32
Speaker 1: sort of a shell of itself. And he played me
26:39
Speaker 1: a bunch of we got and got stuck one day,
26:41
Speaker 1: like the second day, we were a little stuck, and
26:44
Speaker 1: I was like, you know, I showed you mine, now
26:47
Speaker 1: show me your scraps. Basically, do you have anything? And
26:50
Speaker 1: I mean he is prolific and he records constantly. Yeah,
26:54
Speaker 1: and he has his own studio. So yes, he's got
26:57
Speaker 1: a lot of scraps. And they're fully like some of
27:00
Speaker 1: them are recorded with a full band, but they're not
27:03
Speaker 1: necessarily finished or the way that they end up and
27:08
Speaker 1: you play me a bunch of stuff, and it was
27:09
Speaker 1: all really cool. But there's this thing that's happened to
27:14
Speaker 1: me over the last ten years where it's it's become
27:17
Speaker 1: harder and harder for me to cover other people's songs
27:20
Speaker 1: because I'm I'm enjoying making my own songs now and
27:25
Speaker 1: so for me, you know, to connect with someone else's
27:27
Speaker 1: words and music enough to sing them. And it's not
27:31
Speaker 1: that I don't want to sing them, but to be
27:33
Speaker 1: able to own it, you have to own it. To
27:35
Speaker 1: cover a song, I have to basically sing it like
27:38
Speaker 1: it's mine. So nothing was completely catching me in that way.
27:42
Speaker 1: And then and then Wintertime came on. I was I
27:44
Speaker 1: love this. What was it in Wintertime that you did
27:48
Speaker 1: react to? Do you know? Was it the lyric or
27:51
Speaker 1: the feeling of it? I liked the feeling of it.
27:53
Speaker 1: The lyrics were kind of half there, and yeah, I
27:57
Speaker 1: just it just felt good. I liked the tempo. I
28:00
Speaker 1: liked the vibe. It's funny when you write with somebody else,
28:02
Speaker 1: everybody has a chord structure that they tend towards, and
28:06
Speaker 1: his is specific to him and it sounds like Jeff,
28:11
Speaker 1: you know, And what is that there's like a lot
28:13
Speaker 1: of minor twos and instead of four chords, and I
28:18
Speaker 1: liked it, but I liked it had a real flavor,
28:22
Speaker 1: had a real hymn flavor. You know. When we come back,
28:26
Speaker 1: Nora Jones sings, she breaks down her song Wintertime and
28:29
Speaker 1: explains how the minor two chord is part of the
28:31
Speaker 1: Wilco sound. We're back with Nora Jones breaking down the
28:38
Speaker 1: song she co wrote with Jeff Tweedy, Wintertime. So that's
28:43
Speaker 1: our favorite song on the album. What's your favorite song?
28:47
Speaker 1: I really like, I mean, I like them all, but
28:55
Speaker 1: I really like just a little bit. I really liked
28:58
Speaker 1: that one because we've been playing it live and it's
29:00
Speaker 1: really fun to play live. I also really like My
29:02
Speaker 1: Heart is Full because live it's taken on a whole
29:05
Speaker 1: new life. And that's sort of like, you know what
29:08
Speaker 1: I'm saying about these songs being alive, staying a lot,
29:12
Speaker 1: keeping them alive. It's a whole other things changed when
29:15
Speaker 1: you're playing that one live. Well, my Heart is Full
29:18
Speaker 1: I did in the in the studio with Thomas Bartlett
29:21
Speaker 1: and he's got all these cool electronics and it's amazing,
29:25
Speaker 1: but live is just bass, drums, piano and organ, and
29:29
Speaker 1: sonically we can take it to an intense place, but
29:32
Speaker 1: it's not the same exact sonics, you know what I mean.
29:36
Speaker 1: Can you give us a taste of that one so
29:40
Speaker 1: it gets like more primal, you know, than electronic, which
29:43
Speaker 1: is sort of how it is on the album. Anyway,
29:47
Speaker 1: what's the relationship in your mind between the live version
29:49
Speaker 1: and the and the album version? I mean, do you
29:52
Speaker 1: do you do you start to favor one over the other? Yeah?
29:54
Speaker 1: I think I usually start to favor the live version
29:57
Speaker 1: because it becomes its own thing and it's hard to
30:01
Speaker 1: you know, you can't go back in time and change it.
30:03
Speaker 1: But but that doesn't mean that I always do. It's
30:07
Speaker 1: just when you're in the middle of a tour and
30:09
Speaker 1: you're starting to feel something differently. It's It's a funny
30:13
Speaker 1: thing because song's morph and usually they start in the studio.
30:17
Speaker 1: You're not playing them live a bunch before you go
30:19
Speaker 1: into record, though I've done that before too. Yeah, and
30:22
Speaker 1: that is a whole other thing. You find an arrangement
30:25
Speaker 1: that really works live and then you go in and
30:27
Speaker 1: try to capture it, but it never quite has the
30:30
Speaker 1: magic of singing a song for the first time. Kind
30:33
Speaker 1: of and capturing it for the first time. For me,
30:36
Speaker 1: it just depends. So when you're sitting down, is that
30:40
Speaker 1: song I don't think? Did that have a lot of
30:42
Speaker 1: piano on the No, there's no piano on the recorded version,
30:45
Speaker 1: but on live it's instead of doing you know, instead
30:48
Speaker 1: of trying to get a delay and repeat my voice,
30:50
Speaker 1: it just you know, and then we add an instrumental section.
30:56
Speaker 1: It's fun. Don't stop? Is it so much fun? Get
31:00
Speaker 1: give me? That's so you did another one? There's another
31:02
Speaker 1: one that you really love off the album, which is oh,
31:08
Speaker 1: just a little bit, just a little bit, that's right. Yeah,
31:11
Speaker 1: how did that one? Who's how did that one come about?
31:13
Speaker 1: My friend Sarah Oda had a song that she gave
31:19
Speaker 1: me because I was going in the studio and I
31:21
Speaker 1: was completely unprepared. Again, this is completely unprepared, except I
31:27
Speaker 1: was so prepared. We got seven songs in that three
31:30
Speaker 1: day session, so I actually was super inspired, but more
31:33
Speaker 1: scattered maybe. Yeah. I had a lot of snippets. I
31:36
Speaker 1: had some finished songs because I was going in with
31:39
Speaker 1: Brian Blade and Chris Thomas, who is a little band
31:42
Speaker 1: I've been I had been playing with. Anyway, she gave
31:45
Speaker 1: me this song in case I needed something, because I've
31:48
Speaker 1: recorded her songs before and the song was cool. She
31:54
Speaker 1: had a melody and everything. It wasn't unfinished really, it
31:57
Speaker 1: just didn't have any instruments on. It was just her
31:59
Speaker 1: singing the melody and I had the lyrics sheet and
32:04
Speaker 1: we were kind of going in a different direction. That
32:06
Speaker 1: song kind of got pushed on the back burner and
32:09
Speaker 1: we were kind of in a lull, and so I
32:12
Speaker 1: went to the organ instead of the piano, and I
32:14
Speaker 1: just started sort of and I started singing her lyrics
32:18
Speaker 1: because they were just there, just because I was singing gibberish.
32:22
Speaker 1: But then I just saw her lyrics here and I
32:23
Speaker 1: started singing her lyrics over what we were playing, which
32:26
Speaker 1: was completely separate from the song she had written, and
32:31
Speaker 1: I took her lyrics and I accidentally just like put
32:34
Speaker 1: them into this new song and then we called it
32:36
Speaker 1: space Cham and we never listened to it again, and
32:38
Speaker 1: then the engineer sent it to me the next month
32:41
Speaker 1: and was like, this was kind of cool. Do you
32:43
Speaker 1: remember this? And I asked her, I was like can
32:46
Speaker 1: I can? I? You know, is it cool that I
32:49
Speaker 1: used the lyrics in this way instead? And She's like yeah,
32:52
Speaker 1: that's fine, as long as I can record this song
32:54
Speaker 1: and the other way someday. I said, that's fine. But
32:56
Speaker 1: what I really like about it is that her i'm structure.
33:02
Speaker 1: Her original song was I'm not going to sing you
33:05
Speaker 1: the melody, but it was like, I'll sing you the
33:08
Speaker 1: rhythm of the way her melody was. It was I'm
33:11
Speaker 1: not the one you can ignore. I'm not like those
33:16
Speaker 1: you've had before. That was like the rhythm of it,
33:19
Speaker 1: And so I feel like the rhythm of the rhyme
33:22
Speaker 1: scheme got kind of flipped around, and I don't know,
33:25
Speaker 1: I think that's kind of interesting because it was written
33:28
Speaker 1: with one intention but then flipped around. It's kind of
33:32
Speaker 1: backwards in a cool way. Can you give us so?
33:35
Speaker 1: So here's so, you know, I added things here and there,
33:40
Speaker 1: and her basic lyric is just the It was kind
33:43
Speaker 1: of turned upside down rhythmically, totally unintentionally. It was just
33:48
Speaker 1: sitting in front of me, you know. But does that
33:49
Speaker 1: happen a lot with music? You get the people things
33:53
Speaker 1: people give you. I don't often do that, but I
33:57
Speaker 1: did write another song on this EP from a poem
34:01
Speaker 1: from a friend called begin Again, And you know, her
34:05
Speaker 1: lyric was I feel like the rhythm of the rhyme
34:11
Speaker 1: scheme was a little bit more true to what she wrote.
34:14
Speaker 1: But yeah, like I said, I don't do it a ton,
34:17
Speaker 1: but I do like the idea of lyrics and music
34:22
Speaker 1: coming from two different brains and putting them together. It's
34:26
Speaker 1: completely not how probably the one person would think. You
34:30
Speaker 1: know that you sound like artistically you're you're growing more
34:35
Speaker 1: and more open? Yeah, for sure? Is that just? Is
34:40
Speaker 1: that just come from increased self con what's the what's
34:43
Speaker 1: the reason for that? Is that that's because usually, don't
34:45
Speaker 1: you think of people usually go in the opposite direction
34:48
Speaker 1: as they get ultimately get more set. Now, I don't know.
34:51
Speaker 1: I don't want to though. I think I've become more
34:53
Speaker 1: and more open for sure, and I like it. I've
34:57
Speaker 1: I've been more inspired by it. I learn new things
35:02
Speaker 1: and I'm better for it. You know. I know what
35:06
Speaker 1: I'm good at, I know what people Some people think
35:09
Speaker 1: of me as what I do, and that's fine, but
35:14
Speaker 1: I like to open it up and sort of try
35:16
Speaker 1: different things. Yeah, I don't think I ever go outside
35:21
Speaker 1: of myself in a way that's not true to myself.
35:29
Speaker 1: Thanks to Noah Jones for talking and playing us through
35:31
Speaker 1: some of the tracks on our album Begin Again. If
35:33
Speaker 1: you couldn't tell Malcolm and Bruce swiftthrow. You can check
35:36
Speaker 1: out more of the album by visiting Broken Record podcast
35:39
Speaker 1: dot com and subscribing to our playlist for this episode.
35:42
Speaker 1: You can also sign up for a behind the scenes
35:43
Speaker 1: newsletter while you're there. Broken Record is produced with help
35:47
Speaker 1: from Jason Gambrell and me Lobelle. Our theme music is
35:50
Speaker 1: by the great Kenny Beats. Stay tuned for next week's episode,
35:53
Speaker 1: our very first live taping of the podcast. It's Malcolm
35:56
Speaker 1: Gladwell and conversation will flee from the Red Hot Chili
35:58
Speaker 1: Peppers at the Palace the Peter in Los Angeles. So
36:01
Speaker 1: thanks for listening and stay tuned for next week. I'm
36:03
Speaker 1: justin Richmond, h