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Interviews Q&A

Top 25 Interviews of 2014: No. 13 Dierks Bentley

There is no denying that Dierks Bentley’s GRAMMY-nominated album is his most personal. The country singer went through a lot while recording Riser, including the death of his father and the birth of his son. This hardship and joy can be heard within every track on the album. I sat down with Dierks in February for a very honest chat after the New York premiere of his film Dierks Bentley: Riser, which followed his journey during his recording process.

“It’s crazy with touring and family and your dad passing away and at the same time your son is born,” he told me. “As a songwriter, [you have to] keep that honesty and somehow put life into a three-minute-and-30-second song in different snippets throughout the whole album. That was the main challenge, and I feel like I was able to do that.”

His album Riser is a roller coaster of emotions, something Dierks is very aware of.

“Every album I make I try to make a snapshot of where I am at that point in my life,” Dierks said. “That’s the goal, to be able to capture that and put it on a record. And it’s really no different on this record– same process. It’s just that life is a lot fuller.”

Interestingly, the song that’s perhaps the most personal on the album, “Damn These Dreams,” almost didn’t make the cut. He explained that it wasn’t until he sent the song to his band that convinced him otherwise.

“Almost all of them wrote back and said, ‘That’s the best song of the whole deal. That song is so personal and you have to put it on the record.’ I’m so thankful we did. I’ve found the more personal that I write, the more universal the song tends to be for some reason. That song is strictly about me being on the road and being a musician and having a family. I had a lot of guys came up to me that travel for a living and said, ‘I sat down and played this song for my daughter who’s 14, and I had to travel a lot in her early years to explain what that push and pull is like.’ A song can really take a life of its own after you put it out there.”

For more of my interview with Dierks Bentley, visit Radio.com.

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Interviews Q&A

Top 25 Interviews of 2014: No. 14 Vince Gill

I’ve been lucky to have interviewed Vince Gill twice in my career. Each time, I am constantly in awe of how down to earth and humble he is. He is one of the most successful artists in the country genre and one of the most gracious. This year, I sat down with Vince and Paul Franklin (an incredible pedal steel player) who released their album Bakersfield last year. The album pays tribute to the Bakersfield sound, specifically Merle Haggard and Buck Owens.

In addition to interviewing Vince and Paul, the very next week I was headed to Nashville so they invited me to see their western swing band the Time Jumpers when I was there at 3rd and Lindsley. It was a concert I’ll never forget. I truly felt like I was being transported back in time. Below is an excerpt of our interview from earlier this year.

During our chat, Vince and Paul discussed the impact the Bakersfield Sound has had on their careers, and why it’s important to put the spotlight back on the music today.

For starters, they were finding that the music of Owens and Haggard still resonated strongly with their Time Jumpers audience.

“We were sitting there together every Monday night, playing all of the great songs that we love to play,” Vince explained to me, “and every now and then I get my belly full of swing music and I’d say, ‘Hey, let’s play ‘Together Again’ or let’s play ‘Holding Things Together,’ both Buck Owens and Merle Haggard songs, and the crowd would go crazy. I told Paul, ‘There’s something here. Maybe we can find a way to do something to honor those guys.’”

After Vince and Paul got together to work on the Bakersfield project, they agreed it was “ridiculously easy” to select which Owens or Haggard song to record.

“You couldn’t make a bad decision truthfully,” Vince said. “That’s why those men are iconic, and that’s why they’re arguably two of the greatest that ever came down the pike for country music. It’s because that legacy of songs is just off the charts. You couldn’t pick a bad Merle Haggard song. You couldn’t pick a bad Buck Owens song.”

Ultimately, Bakersfield was a passion project for each musician.

“It’s just important to me to play music from the heart,” Paul explains. “That includes all the pop stuff. We both love pop as much as we do the traditional. Everything has its place, but it’s important for me at this point in my life to play music that I really love playing, and this goes to the core of where I started.”

Read more of my interview at Radio.com.

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Interviews Q&A

Top 25 Interviews of 2014: No. 15 Jason Aldean

I sat down and spoke with Jason Aldean for nearly an hour earlier this year. While we talked at great lengths about his latest Platinum selling album Old Boots, New Dirt and career, we also discussed why he wants music fans to either love or hate his music and his honesty about it really struck me.

“I started playing clubs at 14, and by the time I was 21, I moved to Nashville. I didn’t think about a plan B,” he told me, before getting reflective. “That never really crossed my mind. Once you’re a musician it’s not something that you just one day go, ‘Oh, I’m not going to do that anymore.’ You can always play in a bar somewhere. You can always find an outlet to play music, whatever it is. I always knew I was going to do it some way. I didn’t necessarily know it was going to be on this level. The ultimate goal was I wanted to make a living doing it.”

Of his music career, he said it was important for him to do something he enjoyed and not have to get up every morning and dread going to work. And with that said, it is equally important to him that his music hits listeners at their core — whether they love what he does or hate it.

“I don’t want there to be any in-between,” he said. “I think one of the worst things somebody can say is, ‘Yeah, it’s OK.’ That means it has done absolutely nothing for you. I want it to hit a nerve one way or another. If you hate it, you’ll be talking about it, and that’s all I want.”

Aldean says that the worst thing would be if his music was just background noise.

“At that point it has done absolutely nothing for you, and it has done absolutely nothing for my career, and it’s a waste of time.”

For more of my interview with Jason Aldean, visit Radio.com.

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Interviews Q&A

Top 25 Interviews of 2014: No. 16 Eric Church

Eric Church

I’ll never forget the first time I interviewed Eric Church. It was in 2010 at Joe’s Pub after his performance at the CMA Songwriters Series. We were in a tiny dressing room backstage and it was a different side of the singer than I had expected. A few months earlier I saw him live for the first time opening for Miranda Lambert and he put on a high energy show that packed a punch. At the CMA Songwriters Series, he was stripped down with just a guitar telling the stories behind his songs. The entire interview, he’d answer each question with a “Yes, ma’am” and I was pleasantly confused. While I understand that’s a Southern way to show respect I was confused because I was quite a bit younger than him.

This past February, I was in Nashville for work and my colleague Kurt and I headed to a record studio on Music Row to sit down with Eric once again. Maybe because it was two of us, he never said “Yes, ma’am” but the interview was nothing short of insightful. Below is an excerpt of the Q&A. Read the rest at Radio.com.

You’ve said that the process of making an album is tough and takes a lot out of you. Do you still feel that way?

It’s brutal. It’s why I won’t make a lot of them. I think you have to put yourself there artistically, first of all as a songwriter [Church cowrote every song on The Outsiders not to mention nearly every song on his three previous studio albums, too] . That’s the most important thing, is you have to … go get em and write em. It’s hard. And the worst part for me, is after you know you got the songs, then you got to record them that way, you have to capture them. So what you wrote then has to turn into something that stands up to the lyrical content on the record.

And I’ve lost more songs that way, where you got the best song in the world, but for whatever reason you didn’t capture that magic. So that’s the maddening part. You lose that, song’s gone, and you’ve wasted it. And when you’ve written 121 and [edited them down] to 12, you don’t want to lose those 12. So that part’s maddening to me, and it’s the hardest part of what I do.

You really wrote 121 songs for this project?

I was shocked to learn that myself. We wrote about 60 for Chief, so we wrote twice as many. I don’t know why … it wasn’t something like, ‘let’s write twice as many.’ It just ended up being that way.

What were the ideas behind the cryptic video teasers you created leading up to the release of The Outsiders?

I wish I could take more credit, [but] my manager actually came up with that and shot those. I love a good mystery anyway, I love having fun. I’m not on Facebook or Twitter, never have been, and never will be [laughs]. So it’s a way to interact with the fans without that. It’s a way to have some fun [and] add some intrigue.

There’s a lot of mysteries and a lot of hidden messages that are in those cryptic things that talk about a lot of stuff that’s coming down the line, that [fans] don’t know yet. Maybe a single choice, maybe another video, maybe another character. And we put that in there just to see how many of them could pick it apart and find out. So that’s what it was, just a different way of interacting.

Is that also true of the story and characters that appear in your video for “Give Me Back My Hometown”?

Same thing. And we actually talked about that in the cryptic messages, we alluded to what was coming in the video. All the characters that are in that — light will be shed on them, as we go through this single process and video process. So throughout this entire album, that story line will continue to play out. And the ending is quite remarkable. So, we’ll get to that one day.

Are you planning to create a longer film treatment for any of the songs, the way you did with “Springsteen”?

Yes [smiles]. We are.

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Interviews Q&A

Top 25 Interviews of 2014: No. 17 Kristian Bush

Kristian Bush was such a delight to talk to. The writer behind many of my favorite Sugarland songs, I was excited to sit down with him and hear how being a solo artist is different than being in a duo and where his song ideas come from.

“You’ll notice that it’s me singing and that will really tie it together,” he said with a laugh.

The first single off of his debut solo album Southern Gravity is “Trailer Hitch,” which came to be after a writer friend of his walked out the door and said, “I’ve never seen a hearse with a trailer hitch.” Kristian knew immediately they had to work on a song that discussed that exact sentiment.

“As we went through it, it was very easy to walk into the shoes of, ‘Let’s write a song that’s fun that has a message that also matters. Let’s just not bang over anybody’s head with it.’ We probably have one too many things in our life. All of us. We can probably give at least one of them back or away,” he said. “You can’t take it with you when you go. It is a question and it isn’t an answer of a song. It’s just a question, why do we all want to die rich? Isn’t there something we can do with that?”

In addition to making the listener ask questions, Kristian hopes to cast a spell on his listeners.

“I would say the spell that I’m casting is love the life that you’re in. Stop wishing for it to be something else. Be comfortable with who you are and then watch dreams explode on you,” he said. “Anything is possible.”

Read more on Radio.com.

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Top 25 Interviews of 2014: No. 18 Christina Perri

The sign of a great interview is that it doesn’t feel like an interview. Instead, it feels like a conversation between friends. This is exactly how it felt to sit down and chat with Christina Perri. Extremely talkative, Christina told me her entire life story within 10 minutes of meeting her. And that’s always an enjoyable interview.

Christina titled her sophomore album Head or Heart because while looking back on her past relationships, certain times she used her head while others she used her heart. That combination proved disastrous so she used her music to try and figure things out.

“I don’t have the answer yet because I haven’t figured it out,” Christina told me. “Where I’m at right now is I’m still unsure. The album is a collection of my little stories and my truths over the past couple years of choosing between one or the other and in the end still not knowing.”

Christina told me that a major theme throughout her album is change. A song called “Burning Gold” is about her decision to move from her home in Philadelphia to L.A.

“I don’t know where you get that type of courage. It’s something that has to happen inside of you. I was 20-years-old and it was the week before my 21st birthday and my brother said, ‘Move to California,’ and I said, ‘OK,’” she recalled. “A lot of times our dreams aren’t where we grew up. We have to go find them…I would not stop until my life was burning gold, which I think it is now.”

At the end of our interview, I told Christina that “Burning Gold” struck a chord with me because I’ve been thinking of moving to Nashville for a while and I guess I could see myself in her song. Since I grew up in New Jersey and have been living in New York the past four years, the thought of moving away from everything I know is daunting. Her advice to me?

“Do what you’re afraid of. That’s what I do.”

Read more of my interview with Christina Perri on Radio.com.

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Top 25 Interviews of 2014: No. 19 Jason Mraz

If you told me back in high school that one day I would sit down with Jason Mraz for an interview I would have never believed it. But that actually happened this year. Looking back on it, Jason Mraz was also the soundtrack of my college years. My roommate had “I’m Yours” as a ringtone on her phone and even when her phone wasn’t ringing his music could be heard being played throughout our house.

So, I’ll admit when I sat down to chat with Jason Mraz I was nervous. Strangely enough, the most nervous I’ve been in quite some time for an interview. Once I asked the first question those nerves went away thankfully. Throughout our entire 30-minute chat I couldn’t believe how relaxed he was. While he talked, he had this calmness that I couldn’t help but think he would make an excellent yoga instructor. An excerpt from our chat is below and the video above.

Jason Mraz is calling his fifth studio album Yes! his “first acoustic album,” but he promises it packs a pretty big punch with eclectic instrumentation that includes cello, sitar, ukuleles and other small stringed instruments. But even though Jason may have broadened his sound for this new one, he still stays true to the songwriter he’s always been.

“The themes on the album are very much the same themes I’ve written about: optimism, hope, love, joy, healing, faith, acceptance, gratitude,” he explained. “This is a conscious decision because I always feel a song should be an affirmation of some kind. It should get you through the present moment and into a more loving or realized future.”

From “I Won’t Give Up,” off his previous record, 2012’s Love Is A Four Letter Word, to “I’m Yours,” off 2008’s We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things., Mraz has always found his sweet spot writing about love. And his upcoming release is certainly no different.

“I always had this idea that love was this really strong thing and I needed to find exactly what it was. Sometimes I thought I had it and then I’d actually end up screwing someone over and realize, ‘Oh, that’s not it,’” Jason, who broke off his engagement to singer, Tristan Prettyman in 2011, admitted. “Music for me has always been my first love. It’s always been a way for me to shut down the rest of the world, shut down the mental chatter and really connect with one voice. I think I’ve just wanted others to have that same experience where they would lose that mental chatter and they just feel loved.”

And what about that infamous song, “I’m Yours?” When asked if he ever wished he changed lyrics to his songs when he heard them on the radio he admitted he does, specifically with “I’m Yours.”

“There’s a lyric in ‘I’m Yours’ that says, ‘It’s our God forsaken right to be loved.’ That was written very quickly and basically just turning a phrase. Over time, I sing it now and I say, ‘It’s our God-intended right to be loved.’ I’ve been singing it that way for years and years but of course the audience still sings the lyric that’s been recorded.”

For my complete interview with Jason Mraz, visit Radio.com.

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Interviews Q&A

Top 25 Interviews of 2014: No. 20 The Wild Feathers

The Wild Feathers

(Credit: Sonia Dasgupta)

As you can probably tell, I love interviewing artists. I would interview someone every day if I could. When I first started this blog, most of my interviews were over the phone or before a band’s show in New York. Now that I’m at CBS, most are done in the studio. Truthfully, I miss getting out of the office to chat with a band because a studio space doesn’t provide the warmth and laid-back vibe that other locations have. Especially, a bar with a few beers. So, I started a feature called Beers with the Band.

One of the bands I interviewed this year over beers was the Wild Feathers. The Nashville-based band spends most of their time on the road and Ricky Young and Taylor Burns opened up about what that’s like, their latest self-titled record and songwriting all over a few beers. Here’s an excerpt of that interview.

“We all drink beer, just a couple before the show to get the anxiety out,” Taylor told me. “Especially a big show. We don’t try to get too drunk where it affects our performance, just enough to loosen us up and get ready to play.”

While Ricky said it used to be fun playing drunk, now it’s a nightmare. “I hate the way it feels.”

Wild Feathers released their debut album last year, which Ricky likens to a Long Island Iced Tea.

“Something with a lot of liquor because there’s so much variety. I was thinking that but I hate that drink. It’s kind of a lame drink. It’s what high school kids order because they think they’re going to get the most f—ed up and it works,” Taylor said, but he finally agreed with Ricky’s pick. “It has so many different genres and influences in it that I think it would be a good analogy.”

That Long Island Iced Tea variety album has helped earn the band comparisons to My Morning Jacket and Neil Young, two artists they’re more than okay with as both are fans: Taylor was even wearing a Neil Young T-shirt.

“Obviously we’re Neil Young freaks,” Ricky said. “Especially our drummer, Ben, is a freak fan. He’s gotten us into live, crazy unreleased stuff. We actually got to meet him at SXSW and hang out with him for a little bit.”

Despite popular belief, being in a band traveling the country isn’t all glitz and glam, as both Ricky and Taylor explained.

“We love each other and we have a lot of fun but it’s really hard,” Ricky said. “Everyone thinks just because they see a picture on Instagram and we’re at the Grand Canyon or something that it’s the most amazing life, which it is. But that’s like a couple minutes or seconds of the day. The other hours we’re driving or we’re hoofing heavy stuff into the venue. It’s definitely work. More work than I ever thought it was.”

For my complete interview with the Wild Feathers visit Radio.com.

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Interviews Q&A

Top 25 Interviews of 2014: No. 21 Brandy Clark

 

When I interviewed Kacey Musgraves last year, she raved about Brandy Clark. Brandy was Kacey’s tour opener and songwriting partner and she told me that her album 21 Stories needed to be heard. And she was right.

Earlier this year, I finally sat down with Brandy and having had success on writing singles for Miranda Lambert and Kacey in the past, I was fascinated with the stories behind her songs and how she goes about writing a song. Brandy filled me in on everything (read an excerpt below) and I have a feeling you’ll be hearing a lot more from this country singer-songwriter. Today, she was nominated for two Grammy Awards, one for Best Country Album and the second for Best New Artist. I’m keeping my fingers crossed she wins both.

Long before Brandy Clark released her excellent debut country album 12 Stories, she had a publicist in Kacey Musgraves. The two songwriters penned several hits together, including Miranda Lambert‘s 2014 ACM Award-winning “Mama’s Broken Heart” and Musgraves’ recent single “Follow Your Arrow.” Naturally they formed a tight bond.

“Kacey Musgraves was a publicist for this record before we had a publicist,” Brandy told me. “So much of what she’s doing artistically is really opening major doors for a record like mine. Had Kacey’s record not come out when it did, I don’t know if my record would have been received the way it was. I feel like she’s really opened the door for a different kind of song and for some of those topics that are a little bit more taboo.”

Lead single “Stripes” is an example of Clark’s unique storytelling. What started as an idea to write a song called “Orange,” about a woman who wants to kill her cheating husband, transformed into a tell-all tale of what would happen if she didn’t hate stripes and looked good in the color orange.

“For me, to really sink my teeth into a song, I do have the characters in my mind, and they grow,” she said. “When I’m writing a song, I can picture the kitchen they’re sitting in and what their TV set looks like. Those are the things I have to do, just getting into that spot in your mind where the story is taking place.”

For my complete article, visit Radio.com.

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Top 25 Interviews of 2014: No. 22 Phillip Phillips

I never quite fathomed an artist not enjoying being the center of attention, that is until I sat down with American Idol winner Phillip Phillips. Instead of reveling being the frontman, Phillip told me that he made sure to take a backseat on his sophomore album, Behind the Light, released earlier this year.

“It has a very band feel,” he told me, “which I like because I don’t like being the center of attention…I let those guys shine and put their own personalities in the song.”

As much as he’d like to hide behind his band, he confessed that he can’t help but write songs that read like they’re straight out of his diary.

“It was scary for me to put out the first album because it was so personal,” he said. “This second album is even more personal.”

While he prefers to not go into great detail of what each song is about, he says he will never stop writing honestly.

“Fans know when something is not really honest,” he said. “I want people to know I’m not just singing. I’m a guitar player first and I love to write. I want people to see that. If they like it, that’s awesome.”

For more of my interview with Phillip Phillips, visit Radio.com and watch the video above.

Had a lovely chat about songwriting with Phillip @Phillips yesterday at our station Fresh 102.7. #100happydays #day39

A photo posted by Annie Reuter (@yousingiwrite) on