Episodios

  • Nebraska, Bacharach, and Adam Sandler: How Milk Carton Kids Write a Song

    Nebraska, Bacharach, and Adam Sandler: How Milk Carton Kids Write a Song

    · Before Your Very Ears

    Joey Ryan and Kenneth Pattengale, the songwriters and musicians behind indie-folk favorites Milk Carton Kids, don’t cut corners when it comes to songwriting. Everything gets held under the microscope; everything is subject to change. There’s no ego in the room, just pure service of the song.

    Ryan and Pattengale join hosts Sean Watkins and Peter Harper to talk influences—what gets through into your songwriting, and what do you block out?—before digging into a downtempo plucker built around a timeless, folk-country melodic convention. Once the basic pieces are in place, though, things get interesting. The gang calls this “Burt Bacharach-ing it up;” lashing the essential elements tightly to the deck. Word choices are analyzed and tweaked, melodies are shifted ever so slightly, and chord progressions are optimized, note by note.

    The quartet settles on a simple, memorable lyrical composition (“An Orbison, one-nugget snapshot”), but that doesn’t mean there isn’t space for some Adam Sandler vocal influence to counterbalance the Nebraska-era Springsteen solemnity.

    This episode is sponsored by Berklee Online: https://online.berklee.edu/

    Join our Patreon: http://patreon.com/beforeyourveryears

  • Madison Cunningham

    Madison Cunningham

    · Before Your Very Ears

    On the second episode of Before Your Very Ears, west coast folk musician and songwriting powerhouse Madison Cunningham engages in some anger management.

    Along with hosts Sean Watkins and Peter Harper, Cunningham, whose 2022 record Revealer won the Grammy for Best Folk Album, digs into the nature of artistry and truth-telling: What are the social and professional costs of telling it like it is, or simply sticking to your artistic guns instead of appealing to the masses? Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot got them dropped from their label—then it went on to become their most celebrated record. Who’s to say?

    Invoking her upbringing in the church and subsequent alienation from it, in part thanks to the ostracizing that came from questioning the rules, Cunningham leads the group on a writing session rooted in expressing anger and frustrating. “I write because I’m trying to hit something instead of someone,” Cunningham quips. What takes form is a folk-rock “rage song” about transmitters and receivers, about the incessant flow of information and the resonance, dissonance, and white noise that we’re all hooked up to. It’s also an expert lesson in subtlety and the expression of complex ideas: “Talk about the summer, passing the time/Your guess about Jesus is as good as mine,” Cunningham conjures on the verse.

    This episode is sponsored by Berklee Online: https://online.berklee.edu/

    Join our Patreon: http://patreon.com/beforeyourveryears

  • ¿Faltan episodios?

    Pulsa aquí para actualizar resultados

  • Theo Katzman

    Theo Katzman

    · Before Your Very Ears

    While plenty of songwriters are happy to give a post-mortem review of how they write a song, the actual process happens behind closed doors. What goes through their heads while they decide on a specific word choice? Who hasn’t wished to be a fly on the wall while professional musicians hack together the pieces that make our favorite songs?

    That’s the experience of Before Your Very Ears, a new podcast hosted by guitarists Sean Watkins and Peter Harper. On each episode, Watkins and Harper are joined by a different guest musician, and together, the three of them have one goal before the mics stop rolling: They have to write an original song. Before Your Very Ears is a fun, insightful exploration of the mysterious, ever-elusive “Songwriting Process,” and a real-time demonstration of the twists and turns that result in the music we love.

    This debut episode features Vulfpeck founder and guitarist Theo Katzman. The trio starts with a gentle acoustic idea, envisioned as a sleepy-time lullaby. But as each player introduces their perspective on the concept, it soon turns into a profound, heart-felt meditation on death and grief, and what it means to lose someone.Step right up, and witness the creative brain in motion Before Your Very Ears!

    This episode is sponsored by Berklee Online: https://online.berklee.edu/

    Join our Patreon: http://patreon.com/beforeyourveryears

  • Before Your Very Ears

    Before Your Very Ears

    · Before Your Very Ears

    There's only one rule: Finish the song.

    Join Sean Watkins and Pete Harper as they meet up with their favorite songwriters, set up some mics, and write a song—in real time.

    Head over to our Patreon at http://patreon.com/beforeyourveryears for TONS of bonus content, early access to episodes, and much more.