Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Susanna Hoffs

Transcript

Susanna Hoffs · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

• 0:24
  Speaker 1: This is not a cautionary tale.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: But it's the truth of an.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Epic winding trail A list that ends with you First
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: name was Mark All lost, all spark The first one
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: to break through The next name on my list A
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: very dapper Brit Who I never could resist Then he
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: faded in the mist He was in a band from
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Birmingham What a smile, oh what style He said he
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: could have married me Every name was true But none
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: of them were you Then came a suave and handsome
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: actor You would know his name But the disqualifying factor
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Wasn't his fortune or his fame The movie star, fancy
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: car Black heart, he played the part Turns out he
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: wasn't acting Every name was true But none of them
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: were you Quiet forecast Looking through the lens Unassuming I
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: couldn't have known then Love is as much about trust
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Everything else fakes You were the last name on my list.
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: All the years.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: That led to third treat, blind date. I forget the restaurant.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: I couldn't eat or think straight. You and me, those
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: other guys never stood a chance. Cause none of them
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: were you. None of them were you.
• 3:51
  Speaker 4: Welcome to Broken Record, Susannah Huffs. It is such a
• 3:54
  Speaker 4: thrill to have you here. And you're with your producer.
• 3:57
  Speaker 4: CJ Camareri, who not only produced the record, but some
• 4:00
  Speaker 4: of those beautiful trumpet lines you will hear on this album.
• 4:05
  Speaker 4: We do want to talk about your new, really wonderful album,
• 4:09
  Speaker 4: which I've been enjoying so much because I got a preview.
• 4:13
  Speaker 4: Let's talk, first of all, about the title.
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: The List.
• 4:16
  Speaker 5: The List.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: So The List came from a conversation that popped up
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: in our writing sessions about a that I had cobbled
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: together a list over the years in pencil from an
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: old Filofax diary. So it was a very small little
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: piece of paper, three holes, but a little size of
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: my original Filofax when people had Filofaxes. And I had
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: just cobbled together this list for my memory banks as
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: I went along. And it was decades ago when I
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: made the list, but it was just the names of
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: anyone that I dated or canoodled with or so there
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: were demarcations of or things denoted like if there was
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: like a one or a two it might have been
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: that there was two two nights with that person or
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: two you know stuff like that it was color-coded no
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: not color-coded it was in pencil and just like a
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: it's a small page about this size from a file
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: effects when file effects is where it was an 80s
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: thing they were.
• 5:22
  Speaker 4: Very popular Most rock stars would not be able to
• 5:25
  Speaker 4: fit that on a small piece of paper.
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: You mean other rock stars had longer lists than mine,
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: you mean?
• 5:34
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: Something along those lines, we're thinking.
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: Mick Jagger would need like a teraflop of data or
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: something to, you know.
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: I love the Rolling Stones, just FYI, as an aside.
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: You might not think of that because... You might think Beatles,
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: influence for bangles, which it was, and why the name,
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: we wanted a B name. And we all had the
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: same affinity for the songs that we grew up listening
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: to on the radio in the 60s.
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: And that started with the Beatles?
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: For me, because my mother's friend had a connection, well,
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: she worked at Capitol Records. So I have all the
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: original Beatles records from the 60s.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 6:15
  Speaker 4: Do you remember the first one she brought?
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: It would have probably been the first Beatles album.
• 6:20
  Speaker 4: Okay, so from the beginning.
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 6:22
  Speaker 4: Was that Meet the Beatles?
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: It was Meet the Beatles.
• 6:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, amazing.
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Meet the Beatles.
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: Those amazing photographs.
• 6:27
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: In the bangles, there was four of us. So it
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: was like based on the Beatles, like the kind of,
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: the four players, a drummer, a bass player, and two
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: guitar players, and everyone sang. Because there was a lot
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: of shared singing in the Beatles, taking turns. And even
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: Ringo got... his turn in the Beatles to sing lead.
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: So yeah, so it was sort of like, it just
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: felt right with the Bangles to kind of, because we
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: all had that intense affinity for their childhood memories of
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: loving the Beatles. That's sort of how it came about.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: Well, we've wandered from the title, The List.
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 7:11
  Speaker 4: The way you describe it, it sounds like almost kind
• 7:13
  Speaker 4: of a jokey thing but in fact it's this very
• 7:17
  Speaker 4: beautiful yeah i'm not gonna say earnest i found it
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: a very touching song.
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: Oh the song itself the song is touching i can
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: hardly uh get to the to my own husband's name
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: on the list when it and there's a little gap
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: and he's at the bottom of it and Sometimes I
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: have to hold back this feeling like I made it
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: all the way through all of this stuff, all of
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: this weird history in my 20s and being on the
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: road and a bangle and blah, blah, blah. And then
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: I just got to Jay. And that was it. That's
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: the last name on the list.
• 7:58
  Speaker 4: Has he heard the song?
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: Oh, I think so.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: He loves it.
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: He loves it. Yeah.
• 8:04
  Speaker 4: Throughout this album, I found there's this People who are
• 8:08
  Speaker 4: longtime fans of yours, they'll love the guitar work, they'll
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: love the singing and the smart lyrics. But there's this
• 8:14
  Speaker 4: sort of melancholy that runs through this album for me.
• 8:19
  Speaker 4: Am I misreading it?
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: I don't think you're misreading it. I think there's something
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: about yearning and longing for things and being, you know,
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: you could even be in a long-term partnership with your
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: beloved husband and feel lonely and in the same house,
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: you know, under the same roof. Those feelings are part
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: of human nature. I'm the daughter of a shrink, a psychoanalyst.
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: And some of it is beautiful. And some of it
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: is just how it's life, you know, it's how it unfolds. And,
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: you know, there's even the emptiness part of it when
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: your kids leave or feeling you're under the same roof
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: with your your spouse of however many years, but you
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: still can feel at sea somehow and alone. And there's
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: happy songs and sad songs. I mean, that's why we
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: love music. I mean, I grew up on music. My
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: mom always had the radio on. She was always driving
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: us around in LA here and there. And I just,
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: it would cast kind of this magical spell over me.
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: And I would sing along and try to memorize and
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: and learn, I didn't know what I was doing when
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: I was doing it, but I was studying it and
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: realizing how nuanced, how much care you can put into
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: a syllable, you know, that will change the trajectory of
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: why that song will punch you in the gut with
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: emotion and that kind of thing. So I'm drawn to
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: that kind of music.
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: You're also, I forgot to say off the top, a
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: bestselling author.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: Thanks.
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: A novelist.
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: Since I was a little girl. There was, not far
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: from where I currently live, but there was a library
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: in the neighborhood and I was an avid childhood reader.
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: I was obsessed with reading. And it was a lot
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: of sort of like witch stories. I don't, I couldn't
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: even tell you the names of these books now, but
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: I would sit on the floor of the of the
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: Brentwood library. And my mother would bring us there, my
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: brothers and me, and we would just consume books there.
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: And so that was just part of what interested me, stories, stories.
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: And then that led to, in some ways, the stories
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: that live inside of a song and why we love
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: them and why they move us and why we care
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: and why it makes life better. You know, certainly music.
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: Did the experience of writing a novel, which is a
• 11:02
  Speaker 4: very different kind of writing, did that change your lyric writing,
• 11:07
  Speaker 4: do you think?
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: You know, I found myself liking alliterations or like things
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: in the book that had a melodic flow. It wasn't overt,
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: but I was definitely aware that I liked... rhythmic sentences
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: and I liked alliteration and I liked just things that
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: made it a little bit musical and also obviously it
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: was really fun to write about a musician and what
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: it feels like there's a scene in the beginning of
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: the book where she has to do a crappy Vegas
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: gig after being dumped and cheated on by a boyfriend
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: so her manager who's British says you know I got
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: you a gig It's kind of a crappy Vegas gig.
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: And Jane Start, the protagonist, is like, okay, she's so
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: despairing of her life with the breakup. And then she's like, yeah,
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: just rescue me from my own head and just get
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: me there. And she has to open for a stripper
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: at the Vegas bachelor party. And it's her turn to sing.
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: It's kind of like what happens with me where I'm
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: just like an ordinary singer. gal getting through the day
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: and then it's time to sing and it's like I
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: flip a switch somewhere in my body and my brain
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: and then I don't know what how I do it
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: but I just it just starts it just comes out
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: and then I'm in the story of it I'm on
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: the road map I'm driving the car here comes the
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: high note okay get ready and then please God let
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: it work let it be perfect or let it be
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: great and it's all that kind of stuff and I
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: didn't as I was writing the book I was realizing oh,
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: I know all this stuff, but I haven't articulated it.
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: It's just something I do when I sing. But I
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: was able to put some of that stuff in the book.
• 13:03
  Speaker 5: Nice.
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah. In the book, as I said, I found myself
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: kind of writing in a lyrical style. And I also
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: was able to connect some interesting things like the Jonesy
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: character was kind of like the way Prince had been
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: in my life. I'm jumping around here now.
• 13:21
  Speaker 4: That's all right.
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: But it was fun. And sometimes I didn't even know
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: that I was thinking about some of the interesting conversations
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: and encounters that I had with the brilliant Prince. As
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: I was writing the book, all this stuff was sort
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: of flooding my brain and things would come to me.
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: And it was just, I didn't really have it all
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: mapped out. I wasn't organized that way. It kind of
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: just unfolded. And as it went, I delighted myself because
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: I'd be like, oh, I just, that idea, that, I
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: can do that. It's like playing with dolls, but not really,
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: like grown-up dolls.
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: But now tell me, because this is, I think this
• 14:01
  Speaker 4: is your first new album since the book.
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's right.
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: So having written a whole 350-page book, you're sitting down
• 14:11
  Speaker 4: to write a really focused, concentrated lyric again.
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 14:15
  Speaker 4: What was that like?
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: It's kind of very different, I think. Songs are more
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: like writing a poem or something, but you get the
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: melody part too. So that's like, wow, a double whammy.
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: So tell me about making this album. First of all,
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: what made you decide to make this album? You sat
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: down with some great, well, she's pointing at her.
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: Her fearless leader. CJ Camerari.
• 14:44
  Speaker 4: Tell me how this came about, this album.
• 14:46
  Speaker 5: Sue and I started making a different project, which was
• 14:49
  Speaker 5: kind of like a reimagining of her Bangles hits. And
• 14:53
  Speaker 5: we had such a great time doing that. She just
• 14:55
  Speaker 5: casually said one day, she was like, we should start
• 14:57
  Speaker 5: writing together. So I brought over some friends to her house.
• 15:01
  Speaker 5: And it was just this magical, I think we spent
• 15:03
  Speaker 5: 16 writing sessions and ended up with 12 finished songs,
• 15:07
  Speaker 5: which is like not how songwriting normally goes.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 15:11
  Speaker 5: And we would sit down and Sue would make us
• 15:14
  Speaker 5: coffee and she would just start telling us stories of
• 15:17
  Speaker 5: her life. And at a certain moment in all these
• 15:20
  Speaker 5: songwriting sessions, we'd all get out our phones and start like,
• 15:23
  Speaker 5: taking notes of these stories she was telling or get
• 15:25
  Speaker 5: out a little yellow legal pen.
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: It wasn't intentional.
• 15:28
  Speaker 5: She didn't know she was writing a song yet.
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: I was just like, something would come up and then
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: it would, anyway.
• 15:33
  Speaker 5: And we'd finish our coffee after like an hour or
• 15:35
  Speaker 5: so of hearing these amazing stories or just talking about,
• 15:39
  Speaker 5: you know, emptiness or how she was feeling or relationship
• 15:43
  Speaker 5: or anxieties. There's a lot of anxiety talk. Or a
• 15:46
  Speaker 5: list of past boyfriends or whatever. And we'd have so
• 15:49
  Speaker 5: many notes of these little nuggets of wisdom, nuggets of gold.
• 15:53
  Speaker 5: And we would just transition to the music room, to
• 15:57
  Speaker 5: the studio she built in her house, and we'd have
• 15:59
  Speaker 5: the song ready. And so it was this really easy process.
• 16:04
  Speaker 5: And I think by song two or three, we were like,
• 16:08
  Speaker 5: I think we're making a record. I think we're going
• 16:09
  Speaker 5: to forget about this other thing we were working on
• 16:11
  Speaker 5: for a while and concentrate here. Because I think that
• 16:17
  Speaker 5: Sue's lived an amazing life. It was a life well lived.
• 16:19
  Speaker 5: And the perspective of somebody who's 67 looking back on
• 16:24
  Speaker 5: her life and relationships and, you know, family is, is
• 16:27
  Speaker 5: a beautiful perspective. And then she still has her voice.
• 16:31
  Speaker 5: Like I think a lot of people who have had
• 16:33
  Speaker 5: a 40 year career don't have this instrument that sounds
• 16:36
  Speaker 5: like it did 40 years ago, but she sounds exactly
• 16:38
  Speaker 5: the same. And so it's, yeah, it was just a
• 16:42
  Speaker 5: really rewarding process. Yeah.
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: Thanks CJ for all that.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: Your father was a psychoanalyst. This just sounds like you
• 16:50
  Speaker 4: were in analysis. The way you're describing it, it's almost
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: as like you were having psychoanalytical sessions with your co-writers.
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: Totally.
• 17:00
  Speaker 5: Definitely.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: And then did you all work on the music together
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: or was that?
• 17:05
  Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah. And we turned Sue's house into a recording studio.
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: It was fantastic.
• 17:11
  Speaker 5: And.
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: You never had to leave. I never had to leave.
• 17:13
  Speaker 5: You just had to go downstairs.
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, just go downstairs.
• 17:15
  Speaker 5: Get pajamas on.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 17:17
  Speaker 5: And it just felt like this record is so personal
• 17:20
  Speaker 5: and all these stories are of Sue and how she's
• 17:22
  Speaker 5: feeling and, you know, this life she's led and having
• 17:26
  Speaker 5: the luxury of writing the songs and recording the songs
• 17:29
  Speaker 5: and performing them for the record in her home really
• 17:33
  Speaker 5: gave her the, you know, sort of the comfortable safe
• 17:35
  Speaker 5: space to tell these stories and to be really emotive
• 17:38
  Speaker 5: with the singing and with the, you know, sort of
• 17:41
  Speaker 5: the narrative of the record. And we were really fortunate to.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: Be able to.
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: Emotive is such a good word.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: You know, there's a lot of things I want to
• 17:47
  Speaker 4: talk about your writing, but there's one thing I've noticed,
• 17:51
  Speaker 4: and I know these were co-written, but I think really
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: from your days in the Bangles, you're such a natural
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: melody writer. You know, people will hear of None of
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: Them Were You, which is just a picture-perfect melody. It's
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: got that descending line. Yeah. It's perfect call and response.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 18:12
  Speaker 4: And the second time the descending line comes in on
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: a different beat.
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: It's really, like I was just, even when you're just playing,
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: I was listening, like, man, this is perfect.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 18:22
  Speaker 5: Thank you.
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: I think of a lot of your, when I think back,
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: November Sun, other songs of yours that I've really liked.
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: How do you see melody? I know that's a tricky question.
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: Well, I love melody.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: I love melody.
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: Melody, yeah, I mean, from my earliest childhood, I... I
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: was always singing and I was always mimicking what I heard.
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: But the more beautiful melodies have always been what I
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: gravitate towards. So I guess it found its way into
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: the songwriting once I became a songwriter too. Beyond me
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: as a little girl listening to Dusty Springfield and copying
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: every swoop every, you know, it's the, it's again, it's
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: the roadmap of it. It's like, uh, there's movement in
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: it and, and a design kind of, and also even
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: when I was just singing a few minutes ago, I
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: just want every moment of it. I just want to
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: be inside of it and like not thinking of anything else.
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: It's a singular focus, which is such a relief in life.
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: Like with all the chaos and the noise and the
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: thing we're worrying about and what's the day going to be?
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: If I just listen to a song, it's just like
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: peaceful and quiet and it's focused on the thing that
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: it's about.
• 19:54
  Speaker 5: One thing we thought about, we talked about a lot
• 19:58
  Speaker 5: during this writing process. is this great Paul McCartney quote
• 20:01
  Speaker 5: where he was like, we had to write hooks because
• 20:04
  Speaker 5: we didn't have a way to casually record. We didn't
• 20:07
  Speaker 5: have voice memos. We had to remember the song the
• 20:09
  Speaker 5: next day. Oh, that's so interesting. And I thought about
• 20:12
  Speaker 5: that a lot when we were writing these songs. It's like,
• 20:14
  Speaker 5: everything should be a hook. We have to be, you know, like,
• 20:17
  Speaker 5: let's pretend we can't record this and remember it the
• 20:20
  Speaker 5: next day. How can we write this song in a
• 20:21
  Speaker 5: way that we'll be able to remember it later? You know?
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: Oh, that's really interesting. That is so interesting.
• 20:26
  Speaker 5: And I thought that was like a really fun, you know, challenge.
• 20:31
  Speaker 5: And the other thing is, I was thinking the other day,
• 20:33
  Speaker 5: if you listen to the demos of these 12 songs,
• 20:35
  Speaker 5: you'll hear 12 folk songs. It's kind of how we
• 20:38
  Speaker 5: wrote them. And then we turned them into... pop songs
• 20:41
  Speaker 5: or songs that could be on the radio and, you know,
• 20:43
  Speaker 5: added all these other elements. But the core of all
• 20:45
  Speaker 5: of these songs are folk songs. And I think that
• 20:48
  Speaker 5: would be surprising when you listen to the record to
• 20:50
  Speaker 5: then think about these songs.
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: Well, those are all the old folk songs that my
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: uncle Carmi Simon taught me. And when he put a
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: guitar in my hand and showed me, you know, a
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: little batch of chords, and then I was off to
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: the races. But yeah, they were all like old school,
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: like hang down your head, Tom Dooley. They're all these like,
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: when you think about them, hang down your head, Tom Dooley,
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: one day you're gonna die, you know, or whatever. I
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: don't remember the lyrics exactly, but it was like, they
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: were all those songs.
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: So the lesson for songwriters at home, write melodies like
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: they're hooks.
• 21:28
  Speaker 5: Everything should be a hook.
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: Everything should be a hook.
• 21:30
  Speaker 5: Everything should be a hook. If it's not a hook,
• 21:32
  Speaker 5: it's probably a little bit lazy, you know?
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: Wow.
• 21:35
  Speaker 5: Okay.
• 21:35
  Speaker 4: That is great advice.
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: That is good advice.
• 21:38
  Speaker 4: By the way.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: Well done you. Yeah.
• 21:40
  Speaker 5: Thanks.
• 21:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah. We're learning here. So you were surprised an album
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: came out of it or that wasn't the aim?
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: I was just in for the whole experience, to be
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: honest with you. Like meeting CJ, all his friends. friends
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: who are all talented musicians. And it was just, you know,
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: I was just a little kid in a candy store.
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: I just like, what are we doing today? And then
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: I didn't even know that me mentioning some story or
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: something or that I sharing something would lead to this
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: suite of songs coming to be. But I just really
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: loved the process. And now we're even in another iteration
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: of the process by being here and talking to you
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: about it.
• 22:31
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, the aim wasn't like, hey, we should
• 22:34
  Speaker 5: write a record of original material. We just were, you know,
• 22:38
  Speaker 5: Sue's had this beautiful 40-year career and has built up
• 22:42
  Speaker 5: the most goodwill amongst the Los Angeles musical community I've
• 22:45
  Speaker 5: ever seen. And so, you know, I had the.
• 22:51
  Speaker 5: Immense luxury of just being able to call anyone in
• 22:53
  Speaker 5: town and be like hey do you want to write
• 22:55
  Speaker 5: a song with susannah hoffs tomorrow and they'd be like
• 22:56
  Speaker 5: yep see you there you know and or you know
• 22:59
  Speaker 5: the list of players you're greg lease you know john
• 23:02
  Speaker 5: bryan you know everybody jumps at the opportunity to work
• 23:06
  Speaker 5: for her and work with her and all of a
• 23:08
  Speaker 5: sudden we're like i think we have 12 songs i
• 23:11
  Speaker 5: think that's a record.
• 23:12
  Speaker 4: Well one of the people you called was rufus wainwright
• 23:14
  Speaker 4: yeah who plays on uh.
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: Well, Jay's movie, my husband's movie, The Roses, we did
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: a duet. I think it was a cover of a
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: Turtles song now.
• 23:25
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: Happy Together?
• 23:26
  Speaker 5: Happy Together.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: I do love the Turtles.
• 23:29
  Speaker 5: Jay wanted it to be a duet, a male-female duet,
• 23:31
  Speaker 5: because the movie was a duet. you know, sort of
• 23:33
  Speaker 5: a divorce comedy.
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman, two of the greats.
• 23:38
  Speaker 5: And I had, I played in Rufus's band for a
• 23:40
  Speaker 5: while and, and he wanted to be, the song to
• 23:43
  Speaker 5: be happy together. And I just immediately heard Rufus's voice
• 23:46
  Speaker 5: go happy together. Rufus's way.
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: And the vibrato.
• 23:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 23:51
  Speaker 5: So we did that.
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: His tone is amazing.
• 23:54
  Speaker 5: So successful. And their, their two voices just sounded incredible together.
• 23:57
  Speaker 5: And so we wrote the song bad case of loneliness
• 23:59
  Speaker 5: with Ryan Lerman.
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 24:01
  Speaker 5: And the idea of, A song about loneliness in a relationship. Yeah.
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: You can be lonely in a relationship.
• 24:11
  Speaker 5: The last line of the song is, this bad case
• 24:12
  Speaker 5: of loneliness is better with you here. And to have
• 24:16
  Speaker 5: Sue and Rufus sing that as a duet about being
• 24:18
  Speaker 5: lonely together just seemed really obvious and beautiful. He heard
• 24:22
  Speaker 5: the song and was like, come here, I'll do it.
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: You see, had you asked me, I wouldn't have guessed
• 24:26
  Speaker 4: your voices would mesh so well.
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: I think they do because we both have vibrato.
• 24:31
  Speaker 4: They do, but I wouldn't have thought that.
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: You know, we both sing, we both have a vibrato.
• 24:35
  Speaker 5: Well, they both are lead singers, which is like a
• 24:37
  Speaker 5: funny thing, you know.
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: Am I right about that? He has vibrato too.
• 24:41
  Speaker 5: Oh, yeah, tons, yeah.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 24:43
  Speaker 5: They're both like big emotive lead voices and, you know,
• 24:48
  Speaker 5: my thought was that it'll either work or not. really
• 24:52
  Speaker 5: not work uh and and thankfully.
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: We've done a couple things now yeah so it's a kind.
• 24:57
  Speaker 5: Of thing on this folkocracy record oh that's right i
• 25:00
  Speaker 5: think that was the first thing.
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah that's that's when i first encountered uh working
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: with him.
• 25:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah he also does or you guys do one of
• 25:10
  Speaker 4: my favorite things which is occasionally you hear this sometimes
• 25:13
  Speaker 4: in country music The male voice, he'll go above your voice.
• 25:18
  Speaker 5: Oh, yeah. Almost always on that song.
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: He almost always does. Yeah. Which is, I was so surprised.
• 25:24
  Speaker 5: And I was like, okay. That's just where you naturally went.
• 25:26
  Speaker 5: People don't do that.
• 25:27
  Speaker 4: I mean, it's such, you used to hear that, everything
• 25:29
  Speaker 4: but the girl used to do that a bit because
• 25:31
  Speaker 4: she had a low voice.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: But there's some country songs, of course, I'm blanking. If
• 25:37
  Speaker 4: you know Spanish Johnny. Waylon Jennings' Emmylou Harris.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you know that song.
• 25:43
  Speaker 4: He sometimes goes above her, and it's just a magic sound.
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: Well, the Graham Parsons, you just made me think of it,
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: Emmylou Harris thing was really amazing.
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's been some great duet singing.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: Back in the day.
• 26:01
  Speaker 4: I love the wordplay.
• 26:02
  Speaker 5: I love the.
• 26:03
  Speaker 4: Better With You.
• 26:04
  Speaker 5: Oh, yeah.
• 26:05
  Speaker 4: That makes it sound like an old, I'm name-checking every
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: country song I can think of, but like a Loretta
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: Lynn Conway Twitty song or.
• 26:13
  Speaker 5: Something like that. We were writing this song, we kept,
• 26:16
  Speaker 5: starting with the title, we kept, like, kind of Googling
• 26:19
  Speaker 5: to make sure, like, This hadn't been written already because
• 26:22
  Speaker 5: it immediately felt like a song that's existed, you know,
• 26:25
  Speaker 5: a bad case of loneliness. We're like, this has to exist.
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: No, we were just very clever.
• 26:30
  Speaker 5: We were just very clever.
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: And we figured that out.
• 26:33
  Speaker 4: But again, it's, you know, you mentioned it. There's lots
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: of songs about being lonely. Being lonely in a relationship
• 26:41
  Speaker 4: is a different kind of.
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: It's definitely different.
• 26:43
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 26:44
  Speaker 4: And I found that running, I mean, there's that, there's
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: Without You, there's This Island.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: A lot of these songs have that sense.
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: Shit, maybe something's going wrong in my life now. But
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: you know what? It's just part of life. It's part
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: of life. I don't think it's just unique to me
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: or you. I think loneliness is, I mean, think back
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: on the Eleanor Rigby, The Beatles, All the Lonely People.
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: It's like, It's been touched upon in songs.
• 27:17
  Speaker 5: I think what's unique is how open you are to
• 27:22
  Speaker 5: sharing all.
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: Of it with us. Yeah, because I'm an open book.
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: Maybe it was all the psychoanalysis or something like that
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: back in the day when I was in my 20s.
• 27:32
  Speaker 4: Maybe I should finish the interview and I'll say, we'll
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: discuss it next time.
• 27:36
  Speaker 5: No, we had the role of.
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: Let's pick up next time where we left off.
• 27:40
  Speaker 5: Me and whoever we were writing with kind of had
• 27:42
  Speaker 5: the role of psychoanalysis. We'd be like, well, why do
• 27:44
  Speaker 5: you feel that way, Sue? I know there's a lot of.
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: Questions that analysts do, being the daughter of one and
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: having done psychoanalysis.
• 27:53
  Speaker 5: But it was great.
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: It's a series of questions you have to answer.
• 27:55
  Speaker 5: So open and we'd be scribbling notes and, you know.
• 27:57
  Speaker 4: It also feels like a lot of, not just the
• 28:03
  Speaker 4: None of Them Were You song, there's a lot of Casablanca.
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: It feels like there's a lot of Ghosts.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: Oh, I love that.
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: That's so true. That's so interesting.
• 28:13
  Speaker 5: Casablanca.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: Well put.
• 28:14
  Speaker 5: Well, yeah, I mean, Casablanca was kind of exactly that.
• 28:17
  Speaker 5: It was through Bob Weir.
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: Tell me the story.
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: It was Casablanca. Oh, so I was doing my usual thing.
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: Who was there in the room that day?
• 28:29
  Speaker 5: It was me, you, and Dan Wilson.
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah. There was a special day because Dan is so brilliant,
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: and we had Dan in the room, and I don't remember.
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: Did I bring up my Bob Weir experience?
• 28:42
  Speaker 5: You did, yeah.
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: But did Dan already know about it?
• 28:44
  Speaker 5: No, and you had seen Bob at a Grammy event
• 28:47
  Speaker 5: like the night before.
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: Oh, is it that?
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay.
• 28:50
  Speaker 5: Thank you for.
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: Putting the timeline together.
• 28:52
  Speaker 5: Yeah, you were like, what'd you do yesterday? And you
• 28:54
  Speaker 5: had both seen Bob Weir at that Grammy event. And
• 28:57
  Speaker 5: then I came home and I watched Casablanca.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, I do.
• 29:00
  Speaker 5: And so she had just casually mentioned that she had
• 29:02
  Speaker 5: watched this movie.
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: Just casually, I'd revisited Casablanca.
• 29:05
  Speaker 5: Because it's so good.
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: Here's looking at you, kid.
• 29:08
  Speaker 5: You told us your Bob Weir story, which is so beautiful.
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, the Bengals were on tour opening for George Michael.
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: It's 1988. We're realizing that on the routing of the tour,
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: we keep noticing all these kids in hotels and hotel
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: lobbies in tie-dyed shirts and So we go, we do
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: our George Michael gigs in New Orleans. There were a
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: few of them in a row and we were in
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: our hotel in New Orleans and I have a few
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: days off. I find myself wandering in the lobby and
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: then I kind of go towards where the, the, the
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: glass doors open of the Marriott or whatever the hotel
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: was at the time. And I see a van pull
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: up and I see a bunch of guys flow out
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: of the van and there's a definite tour manager guy
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: with the briefcase. And I realized, oh my God, it's
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: the Grateful Dead. I put it together. It was so
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: easy to identify Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir and whoever
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: else was in the band at that time. And this
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: is how I am as a person. I thought I
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: could say nothing or I could go up to the
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: tour manager and like before he got in the elevator,
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: I said, wait, I'm sorry. That's the Grateful Dead, right?
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: He goes, yeah, he was really kind and sweet and didn't.
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: blow me off. And I said, oh, I'm in the Bangles.
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: I'm staying in the hotel here because they were in
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: the same hotel. And I said, we're opening for George Michael.
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: And he said, oh, well, somehow it came up, do
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: you have days off? Or maybe I said, we have
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: a day off. And he said, oh, you have a
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: day off? Come to the Neville Brothers hang at Lake Pontchartrain.
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: And that's when I met Jerry and he had a baby.
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: And that's when I encountered Bob. And Bob was the
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: one who said, Do you want to go on a walk?
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: And I said, yeah, I love to walk. And so
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: we walked all around the lake. And then when it
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: was time to be back in New Orleans for their gig,
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: he invited us. I was so blown away by their
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: whole operation. They had like chefs and rolling tour cases
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: with spices in them. And then so we got to,
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: they were invited to sing harmony. And then people were
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: throwing Mardi Gras beads. And I think Vicky caught one. Vicky,
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: the lead guitarist of the Bengals. And anyway, it's what
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: predicated the song. It's what led to the song. It
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: was the stories that you, me, and Dan talked about, right,
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: that very day.
• 31:48
  Speaker 5: You know, she told us this tale. And what was
• 31:52
  Speaker 5: amazing was, yes, we hear the story from Sue, and
• 31:55
  Speaker 5: we write the song sort of about it and tie
• 31:57
  Speaker 5: in the movie Casablanca.
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: And....
• 32:01
  Speaker 5: A couple months later, we ran into Bob's old tour manager.
• 32:05
  Speaker 5: And I was like, oh, my God, you tour manager
• 32:06
  Speaker 5: Bob Weir. Sue, come over here. Tell him this story
• 32:10
  Speaker 5: of going on these walks with Bob. And he cut
• 32:14
  Speaker 5: us off. He was like, are you kidding me? That
• 32:16
  Speaker 5: was Bob's favorite story to tell. He loved telling the
• 32:18
  Speaker 5: story of when he got to go on a walk
• 32:19
  Speaker 5: with Susanna Hopps. It was still in my heart. Beautiful moment. Oh,
• 32:24
  Speaker 5: my God. I think there was a lot of, like,
• 32:28
  Speaker 5: was there something going on there? Was there a flirtation?
• 32:30
  Speaker 5: Was there a thing? And, and it was fun to
• 32:32
  Speaker 5: write about that.
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: If I had to say, say it, I think that
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: it was unspoken, but it was like kind of a, what,
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: what could have been, that's the Casablanca tie.
• 32:43
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: You know, when Humphrey Bogart says, he was looking at
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: you kid to Ingrid Bergman. It's like, they go their
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: separate ways. They've been through the war, you know, they've
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: done all this, all this stuff has happened.
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: And, uh, We'll always have Paris.
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: We'll always have Paris. You got the line. We'll always
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: have Paris. Oh my God, thank you for that.
• 33:05
  Speaker 5: I remember the moment when Dan was like, Casablanca, I
• 33:09
  Speaker 5: think that sings well. And we were like, yeah.
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: It is because it has that melodic quality to the
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: way that it sounds when it comes out of your mouth.
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: Lucky you didn't watch King Kong that night. I can't
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: make this into a song. That's what I mean. There's
• 33:24
  Speaker 4: sort of like ghosts a little bit. So tell me
• 33:28
  Speaker 4: about There's a couple of songs I do want to
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: talk about. This Island.
• 33:32
  Speaker 5: This Island, another song about loneliness. And we wrote this
• 33:36
  Speaker 5: one with a great songwriter from Topanga named Nayo, who
• 33:40
  Speaker 5: makes beautiful records. And I remember writing this song. We
• 33:45
  Speaker 5: were talking about loneliness and feeling like you could do
• 33:48
  Speaker 5: it on your own and sort of like female empowerment.
• 33:51
  Speaker 5: I remember her sitting cross-legged on the floor looking up
• 33:53
  Speaker 5: at Sue and just really probing her and really doing
• 33:56
  Speaker 5: the psychoanalysis thing. I love the lyric, moored on the shore,
• 34:01
  Speaker 5: but I love the view of me, my loneliness, and you.
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: I think it was that. It was like you could
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: be so lonely under the same roof with your beloved
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: partner or spouse.
• 34:11
  Speaker 5: Lonely but happy. Lonely and strong.
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: Lonely but happy.
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: Well, I think there's a mix within the song. Because
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: you can feel like you're on an island all by yourself,
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: even though the person is there. It's not like. a
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: complete downer or anything like that, but maybe I'm missing
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: the part.
• 34:32
  Speaker 5: You were talking about. No, no, it's exactly right. Like
• 34:36
  Speaker 5: just being like, sort of like comfortable in your loneliness
• 34:41
  Speaker 5: and like realizing there was like opportunity there. And like,
• 34:45
  Speaker 5: what am I going to, what am I going to
• 34:46
  Speaker 5: step forward and do with this feeling and this sort
• 34:49
  Speaker 5: of how do I fill this time? How do I
• 34:51
  Speaker 5: fill this, you know, how do I use this feeling
• 34:54
  Speaker 5: and harness it and use it to push myself forward? Yeah.
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: Loneliness is a thing.
• 34:58
  Speaker 4: A related song for me is time.
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: I know. That's a tearjerker.
• 35:04
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: I mean, my kids have been out of the house now.
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: I don't know if you have kids or what their age, yeah.
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: So the emptiness thing is really interesting and kind of
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: melancholy in its way, but it's... It's the cycle of life,
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: not to do the Lion King thing, but just saying,
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: I don't know why that popped into my head, but
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: it's beautiful to see them become grown humans, mature humans.
• 35:33
  Speaker 4: That's your job, to set them up to leave.
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: And I think I did a very good job.
• 35:39
  Speaker 5: We wrote that with a songwriter named DeJure, and I
• 35:42
  Speaker 5: have a almost five-year-old and a seven-year-old and he had
• 35:46
  Speaker 5: a six-year-old boy. And so we were talking about just
• 35:48
  Speaker 5: them growing up and, you know, you know, you sort
• 35:51
  Speaker 5: of like can't remember life before them and all of that.
• 35:54
  Speaker 5: And then Sue started talking about her kids being grown
• 35:57
  Speaker 5: and the empty nest thing. And it was just like,
• 36:00
  Speaker 5: I remember it was just, was crushing to think about
• 36:02
  Speaker 5: like this inevitable day when you're back to an empty
• 36:05
  Speaker 5: house and they're not there anymore.
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: You got such a long way to go.
• 36:08
  Speaker 5: We've got a long way to go, but I think
• 36:10
  Speaker 5: it sneaks up on you. And it was, that was a,
• 36:12
  Speaker 5: powerful day of, you know, just thinking about that circle
• 36:15
  Speaker 5: of life. It's funny how.
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: The, it's, it's funny how songs work. I was just
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: thinking there's like the joy mixed with the melancholy. There's
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: something about the rub, you know, I don't know. It's,
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: it's partly why it works in a song, isn't it? Like, yeah,
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: it's not that straightforward. It's a little dash of this
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: and a little dash of that.
• 36:38
  Speaker 4: I guess it's the same way you need dissonance to
• 36:41
  Speaker 4: make the, The melody.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 36:43
  Speaker 5: Conflict resolution, you know.
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: Because what would it be if it was just all,
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: you know, up with people? Whatever that song.
• 36:50
  Speaker 4: I don't remember what that was.
• 36:53
  Speaker 5: I played Time for My Mom and she, you know,
• 36:56
  Speaker 5: totally broke down and started crying. And I looked at her.
• 36:58
  Speaker 5: I was like, what's wrong? She was like, that song's
• 37:00
  Speaker 5: not fair. And I was like, well. It's true.
• 37:02
  Speaker 4: It's kind of true. I have a friend who always
• 37:04
  Speaker 4: said his kids are a little older than mine. And
• 37:07
  Speaker 4: he said, having kids is the longest breakup of your life.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: That's a good quote. I mean, because it's so interesting
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: and poetic.
• 37:18
  Speaker 4: You're thinking of using that in your next album, right?
• 37:21
  Speaker 5: Mm-hmm.
• 37:21
  Speaker 4: It's yours.
• 37:23
  Speaker 5: Somebody told me that when my daughter turned six, my
• 37:26
  Speaker 5: older daughter turned six, they were like, all right, there's
• 37:28
  Speaker 5: some really depressing statistic that was like, you've already spent 90%
• 37:34
  Speaker 5: of the time that you're going to spend with her.
• 37:36
  Speaker 5: You've already done that. Because now she's going to go
• 37:38
  Speaker 5: to school and then she's going to move out and
• 37:40
  Speaker 5: then she's going to live the rest of her life.
• 37:41
  Speaker 5: But you got to be there for like every moment
• 37:43
  Speaker 5: of those first years. And it just like floored me.
• 37:46
  Speaker 5: I think we were talking about that statistic too when
• 37:48
  Speaker 5: we wrote this song. It was like, you know, she's
• 37:51
  Speaker 5: six years old and I've already, most of the time
• 37:53
  Speaker 5: I'm going to spend with her has passed.
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: But I'm here to attest to the fact that it's
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: kind of great too.
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: When they've done all their... they're all the school stuff
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: and then they've moved on to jobs actually. And they're
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: adult humans and it's kind of good. I don't worry
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: about it. I'm here to tell you that you can
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: feel really proud. And if, and especially if they've been
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: raised in a way that was cool and, and they
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: enjoyed it, they enjoyed their childhood with, even with all the,
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: you know, once they're in high school and there's girlfriends
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: or boyfriends, you know, you know, the breakups and all
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: the things that happen. It's just the, it's the part
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: of the whole journey.
• 38:39
  Speaker 4: See, I would think being a girl dating your sons
• 38:42
  Speaker 4: would be.
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: A girl dating, wait, a girl dating my sons.
• 38:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 38:46
  Speaker 4: You'd be like, well, I can't be cooler than your mother.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: So.
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: No, it's not like, I'm so, I'm so happy that,
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: I mean, You'd be happy.
• 38:55
  Speaker 4: I think it would be tough for them. Like, oh,
• 38:57
  Speaker 4: your mom's a rock star. Great.
• 39:00
  Speaker 5: It's true.
• 39:02
  Speaker 4: I did want to ask you about Fool.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: Oh.
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: What would you say? What's your first thought?
• 39:10
  Speaker 5: We wrote that with the great Jesse Harris.
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: It's a very suave song.
• 39:14
  Speaker 5: It's a suave song, like the suave songwriter he is.
• 39:16
  Speaker 4: Like a bossa nova.
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 39:17
  Speaker 5: Sue just immediately, when we got there, was listening to
• 39:20
  Speaker 5: all those great Dionne Warwick, Burt Bacharach songs.
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: I grew up on that stuff. That's another thing that
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: I learned to sing.
• 39:26
  Speaker 5: And she was like, do you think we can write
• 39:27
  Speaker 5: a song like these? And I was like, well, no,
• 39:30
  Speaker 5: but yes, we could try. So that was just sort
• 39:33
  Speaker 5: of a direct... Maybe that's the only song on the
• 39:37
  Speaker 5: record that was like, let's try to emulate this style
• 39:40
  Speaker 5: in this song.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: A Dionne Warwick song.
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: Those Burt Bacharach records, I still have them.
• 39:44
  Speaker 5: And the arrangements are unbelievable.
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: They're unreal.
• 39:47
  Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
• 39:47
  Speaker 5: Yeah, that was trumpet.
• 39:48
  Speaker 4: And you were like, yeah, they always have good trumpet parts.
• 39:50
  Speaker 5: They always have really good trumpet parts. I was excited.
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: Oh, you're right.
• 39:53
  Speaker 5: I very embarrassingly, as a trumpet player, thought Burt Bacharach
• 39:57
  Speaker 5: was a flugelhorn player for like the first 15 years
• 40:00
  Speaker 5: of my life. Really? Because everybody would be like, oh,
• 40:01
  Speaker 5: do this, you know, can you play a Burt Bacharach thing?
• 40:04
  Speaker 5: And I knew what that meant, and I had heard
• 40:05
  Speaker 5: that music, but I just assumed, like, how could he
• 40:07
  Speaker 5: write these melodies and not be a flugelhorn player?
• 40:09
  Speaker 4: I do want to ask you about the last song
• 40:10
  Speaker 4: on the album. Oh, what's... What Are Wings For?
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: Oh, okay. That's one... CJ and I wrote with Edie Brickell.
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: So how did that come about?
• 40:21
  Speaker 5: I work with Edie a lot, and we're writing a musical,
• 40:25
  Speaker 5: and she loves writing, you know, for theater and for
• 40:28
  Speaker 5: the stage. And we were working on this other project,
• 40:31
  Speaker 5: and at the end of it, when I left, she's like,
• 40:32
  Speaker 5: bring me more musicals. And I was like, I'm never
• 40:34
  Speaker 5: going to come up with an idea for a musical.
• 40:36
  Speaker 5: But sure, if anything comes up. And I was talking
• 40:39
  Speaker 5: with Sue about her novel and stuff, and she was like,
• 40:42
  Speaker 5: I feel like I should just turn this into a musical.
• 40:43
  Speaker 5: And I was like, oh. Ding, ding. I do have
• 40:45
  Speaker 5: an idea for a musical. And that process was incredible.
• 40:49
  Speaker 5: So we went down to the ranch they have in Texas.
• 40:53
  Speaker 5: And Edie is this incredible improviser. She improvises these songs.
• 40:57
  Speaker 5: It's just mind-blowing. You can't really explain it because no
• 41:02
  Speaker 5: one would believe you. But she literally just will improvise
• 41:05
  Speaker 5: a full song. So we had this great process where
• 41:08
  Speaker 5: I would sit at a piano and Sue.
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: Had her novel.
• 41:09
  Speaker 5: Had the book.
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: And I was just, yeah, you go.
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: No, no, no.
• 41:13
  Speaker 5: You would earmark different passages. parts of the book that
• 41:15
  Speaker 5: could be like inspirations for songs. So Sue would just
• 41:18
  Speaker 5: read page after page after page of the novel. And
• 41:21
  Speaker 5: in a certain moment, Edie would go, stop. And she
• 41:25
  Speaker 5: had a song in her head.
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: All written already in her head.
• 41:28
  Speaker 5: Already written in her head. That was the.
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: Freakish and brilliant thing. Like it was, it blew my mind.
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: I was like, she just channeled some.
• 41:35
  Speaker 5: This song is a full on Edie Burkell improv. Wow.
• 41:39
  Speaker 5: With me kind of playing chords based on Sue reading
• 41:42
  Speaker 5: this novel and And I remember we finished sort of
• 41:46
  Speaker 5: hearing Edie improvise the song. I looked over at Sue
• 41:48
  Speaker 5: and she's just sobbing.
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: It was really amazing.
• 41:53
  Speaker 5: To witness it. It was incredible. Because she hadn't read
• 41:56
  Speaker 5: the book.
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: She hadn't read it, which is fine.
• 42:00
  Speaker 5: No, but she was encountering this inspiration like in real
• 42:03
  Speaker 5: time and having it feed her imagination and just going.
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: Me reading a few passages that might work for a
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: song moment that you would want.
• 42:12
  Speaker 5: Watching her process is unlike anything.
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: Have you buried the lead here? Are you turning your
• 42:17
  Speaker 4: book into a musical?
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: Well, it's on the, it's, it's, it's a plan.
• 42:22
  Speaker 5: Yeah. It's a plan.
• 42:24
  Speaker 4: So this is, it was a song written from the
• 42:28
  Speaker 4: character in the book. Yeah.
• 42:29
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: Amazing. Yeah.
• 42:31
  Speaker 5: It's sort of the, the book is kind of a,
• 42:34
  Speaker 5: you know, redemption story where she, the protagonist is a
• 42:38
  Speaker 5: one hit wonder. And then she finally like, you know, uh.
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: Oh, and the person, I don't want to say it's
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: based on Prince or something, but it's a guy who's
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: like a huge icon in the music world. And she
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: had only ever covered his song because she revered him.
• 42:56
  Speaker 5: So it's kind of a redemption moment where she's like,
• 42:58
  Speaker 5: this is my time. She sheds that baggage and stands
• 43:01
  Speaker 5: on her own.
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: She finally writes the song that is her own song,
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: not the cover of the Prince song or whatever.
• 43:08
  Speaker 5: It would be. Okay.
• 43:09
  Speaker 4: But when you're... out there selling this musical, mention Prince.
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: I will.
• 43:14
  Speaker 4: Thank you so much for coming in. This is a
• 43:16
  Speaker 4: wonderful album. It's a wonderful sounding album. Thank you so
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: much for coming in.
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: It's our treat.
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rhodes with
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: is Ben Talladay. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries.
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: that offers bonus content and ad-free listening.
• 43:42
  Speaker 5: For $ 4. 99 a month.
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcast Subscriptions. And if
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: review us on your podcast app. Our theme music's by
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Richmond.