Dan Wilson

Dan Wilson is a songwriter, perfomer, producer and painter! You know him from Semisonic and "Closing Time" and "Secret Smile" as well as "Someone Like You," which he cowrote with Adele, and "Not Ready to Make Nice," which he cowrote with the (Dixie) Chicks, and many more. Listen for personal history, band stories and songwriting tips!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Podcast. My
destiny is Dan Wilson, singer, songwriter, producer, you know and
from Semi Sonic. You know, from the songs he's written
with a Del Josh Grogan and Dixie Chicks and so
many more. Dad, good to have you, Thank you, Bob.
It's good to be here. Okay. So what are you
up to these days in the COVID ever? Dare uh

(00:30):
making a lot of music and currently moving house, putting
books into boxes and getting ready to move. Okay, so
you're moving from where to where? From Sherman Oaks to
loose Felis stand in l a. Okay, and what's that about? Uh,
you know, it's the usual thing. It's uh school kids,
proximity to school, um, parenthood. You know, it's nice to

(00:55):
be up in the hills far from everything, but you're
also very far from the kid's friends. That kind of thing. Okay.
So your kids go to public school or private school?
They private school and one is is graduated from high
school and lives with us. How many kids you have
just to graduate from high school? What's the plans there? Oh?
Our older daughter is um cognitively disabled and the plan

(01:18):
is for her to just hang with us for us
as long as we all shall live, and she takes
music classes and various things. She's musically quite talented, but
essentially nonverbal, which is an interesting combination. So what will
happen when you and your wife pass away? Lord have mercy? Yes,

(01:39):
this is the the very very slow, white knuckles question
of of a parent with a disabled child. Yeah, we
laugh with our thirteen year old telling her, you know,
could come a time when the twenty year old lives
with her, but we don't want to press the issue
too too hard. Well, I know, I've another friend in

(02:00):
the identical situation, and he was commenting to me that
up to twenty one, they're all these services for these kids,
but once they reached twenty one, all of a sudden,
these governmental services fall away. Yeah, it's up in your experience.
Well yeah, and it also um in a way when
things are medically stable, which they've been for a while

(02:21):
for us. Uh, the you know, we've been able to
figure out ways to make make a life that's um
interesting and enriching for for the whole family, I guess
you'd say, but you know, just on our own. So
we haven't really needed specific services, but I do. I
see that the same thing. I know what you're talking about. Okay,

(02:41):
so you're moving. Are you a pack rot? Are you
guy who has no problem throwing things away? Um? I
am a pack rat and my um. I'm trying to
apply uh a metric or whatever, a rule of thumb
to this, of which is, if it's a book that

(03:03):
I brought to l A from Minneapolis ten years ago
and I still haven't read it, then how it goes.
If it's a guitar pedal that I brought from Minneapolis
to l A ten years ago and I have never
plugged it into my guitar, it's going on reverb dot com.
I'm trying to like, I'm trying to use the you know,

(03:26):
when you look in your closet, if you warn that
shirt seriously, even to a wedding, no, I think you've
got to get rid of it. So that's my little thing. Okay,
So how many books do you think you'll move like them?
And how many books? Is that? I'm a big reader,
so it's not a library full of books, but I

(03:47):
have a lot of books. I read a lot of books.
I don't know, I can't really have more books than
anybody that I know. The reason I mentioned this is
I moved about a year ago and I was confronted
with the same problem. And I have a lot of music.
I kept all my vinyl. I never you know, and
I'm never going to get rid of my vinyl. And
that's thousands of records. Terms of CDs, I cleaned those

(04:10):
out a few times, but a few computers with the
money I've gotten, and uh, they were you know, these
promo CDs are worth nothing there. Now they're worth nothing again.
But for a long time there it was astounding. Um.
But the books, it was interesting in terms of the
physical books. I all, I have the stuff I bought,
and I also have the stuff that sent to me.

(04:33):
And there was so much stuff that I didn't really
know what to do. And then I have another friend
who says, well, you know, once I've read a book,
what should I do with it? You know, I'm not
gonna read it again. I'm not a rereader, but I
certainly come from the background where you want to walk
into someone's house and see all the books. So I

(04:53):
started to throw things out, and then I said, I'm
gonna keep all the music books because a lot of
those were only innted once, and I may have the
only copy extent, but I literally tossed everything else. And
I'd like to tell you I miss him, but I don't.
The other things. I've been reading on a kindle for
about ten years, and I'm really into it. You know,

(05:14):
there's some physical books that are sent to me and
I see this the future. And I have a friend,
my close friend from college. He was in the book business.
And I go to his house and every room is
full of books, and he goes, yeah, my house is
a monument to dead treat media. I said, you know,
that's enough for me. But I'm a pack rat too.
But how much are you saving stuff for legacy reasons? Well,

(05:38):
I don't you mean, what do you mean by legacy?
Tell me that? Well, you know, I was talking to
Pete Wentz, a fallout boy. You know, he literally has
kept everything because at some point he's gonna die and
it's gonna be his museum. Bill why Bill Wyman did
the same thing. He kept one of everything, although he
recently sold a lot. Are you keeping it? Thinking? Well,
you know, I'm Dan Wilson, I've had some six says

(06:00):
the other thing you know. The other big thing now,
which you may or may not be aware of, is
you can donate your archive to UH colleges frequently for
seven figures. WHOA well, um, Bob. I love all this talk.
I I I my my relationship to all the books
is actually pretty selfish. At the moment, I'm not thinking
about my legacy. I'm just thinking I might want to

(06:23):
I might read that book again. If it's poetry, I'm
gonna keep it all. I have a lot of poetry books,
and I do kind of like I do like to
just randomly pick out a book from the shelf and
read it, or just be reminded of something and read
and read some poems. And but I probably I don't
think I will read most of the novels that I
that I've read again. I probably won't. I don't know.

(06:44):
It's it's a funny question. If you lend a novel
to somebody, do you insist to come back. No, I'm
actually I don't mind when I lend a book to
somebody unless we make a pact. At that moment, I
really don't expect it's gonna come back. I'm fine, I'm cool, Okay.
And if you had to pick two books out of

(07:06):
your reading experience of fifty odd years. Wow, what would
you recommend or what are the most important to you?
I can't really recommend, Like probably the books like um,
Labyrinths by or Hey Louis Borges is probably the most
important book, just because it was when I read it,

(07:32):
I had an idea what books were, and then this
was one of those books that just completely changes your
whole idea of what a work of art could be.
I just love that book Labyrinths, and then from my childhood,
I don't know what I keep. I was once at
this conversation with Matt Hale's a friend of mine who's
a great producer, and he, um, he said, what's the
most influential book in your life? And I said it's

(07:54):
probably Lord of the Rings and he said, no, no, no, no,
it's Winnie the Pooh. And I was like, Okay, that's
a closed call. So I'd probably keep Borges and Winnie
the Pooh or a load of the Rings. I can't tell. Okay,
let's jump back. So what are you working on career wise,
work wise, music wise these days? Yeah? Um, Well, the

(08:17):
big surprise of the other than everything going to crazy
hell in a handbasket. Uh is that? Um, Semisnic put
out My band, Semi Sonic put out an EP, and
the first single has been sort of floating in the

(08:38):
teens on the Triple A chart, which is not what
we expected. Is on the radio and people are hearing
it and sadly, Um, we had to cancel a whole
bunch of shows. We had a very fun um maybe
uh a lazy man's touring year planned and Uh, we're
gonna go to UK and play a bunch of shows

(08:59):
there and we're gonna hit as much of the US
as possible. That's gonna go. Maybe maybe they'll have to
happen next year. But even the fact that we've been
doing these ridiculous and great, um, you know, live from
home performances, and the fact that we've been talking to
each other aloud and and I'm still writing new songs
for Semi Sonic, That's like that's been a big focus

(09:20):
and I'd still write songs with folks like let's stop
stop with Semi Sonic. Semi Sonic a spense essentially broke
up or faded away and you put out albums independently.
What made you decide to work with semi sonic again.
I had the guys and I have been in touch,
like you know, close friends all this time. There's never

(09:43):
been like a fight or a falling out or a problem.
John and Jacob and I are pals. Okay, just one second.
Was it an actual agreement to break up twenty years
ago or suddenly you just didn't get back together to
make new music. I at that time are older, her
Coco was kind of emerging into like she was getting

(10:04):
She had been very medical as a as a as
a you know, we are our family was very medicalized,
you know, in from nine to two thousand and one,
and and yet I was also on tour a ton
and I found that conflict between having a little baby
on a ventilator, um, you know, an undersized PREMI toddler

(10:27):
on a ventilator at home while I was in Birmingham
or you know, Bristol doing shows. I found it painful,
and eventually it just seemed insupportable for me to be
gone so much so I and the guys and I
had been on the road for like eight years at

(10:47):
that point. And it's not like we're mad at each other,
but there weren't a lot of things, and you know,
you couldn't really put on our plates something that that
we hadn't already done a bunch of like there was
it didn't really seem like they were going to be
like brand new. I'm not, you know, just being bigger,
like doing the same thing and being bigger. That was
the only thing that was sort of like on the menu,

(11:09):
and that wasn't enough of a draw. And I kind
of felt I needed to be a dad more more
of a dad in this you know, difficult situation. So
we just kind of slowed down, and I know the
guys didn't exactly know what was happening. Jacob started writing
his book. He wrote this wonderful book called So You
Want to Be a Rock and Roll Star? During those

(11:30):
those next like four years or so, um, but then
as time passed, you know, John bass player from Semi
Sonic would say to me, like we'd get together on
Christmas time in Minneapolis, or we'd have a benefits show
that we would do, and he'd go, have you written
any new songs? Let's let's come on, let's just do this.
It could be great. And I had to confess I

(11:51):
hadn't written any good Semi Sonic sounding songs during those
I tried, but I didn't have any. It was either
a bad song that sounded like my band or a
really good song that didn't sound like my band. And
I hadn't been able to figure out how to do that,
to to make a to to make a great song
that sounded like semi sonic. Again, I needed to have

(12:13):
a stroke of luck to get to that point. Okay,
first point, you've continued making a living from music. The
other two members of the band, what have they been
doing for the past twenties years? Essentially, Well, John in
Minneapolis has become kind of uh. First of all, he
has he has a jazz band called the New Standards,
and they they do they play pop songs and then

(12:37):
they shred. It's a trio h vibes piano and upright bass,
and they have become kind of a uh icon of
Minneapolis St. Paul Music um. And every year they put
on a big Christmas show with with all the artists
that they know, all the all the performers that they know,

(12:58):
and it's kind of become sort of it's like a
destination for families and and and fans every year. So
John kind of slowly turned into an impresario. He puts
on gigs. He you know, he's produced a few records,
not a lot, and then the new standards, you know,
go to Beijing and play shows or Alaska. They do
fun stuff like that. Jacob has been working on his

(13:20):
second book for quite some time. He has a punk
rock band in New York that plays loud and very fast,
so whenever he gets together with us, it's like our
tempos are that just the laziest thing, and he's got
absolutely no trouble, you know what I mean. It's just
like Semisnic is all this medium speed, you know, Lope

(13:46):
and Jacobs, you know, much more accustomed to hundred and
sixty beats per minute these days. Okay, but Jacob have
a slide gig because being in a drummer and a
punk band doesn't tend to pay that. You're gonna have
to get Sakeavon to ask him how he pays the bills.
But uh, I think the book helps the first book, okay,

(14:11):
and it was a great book. I certainly read it.
So you had problems writing semi sonic songs? What changed? Uh?
It really was a specific event. I had a really fun,
inspiring meeting with one of my favorite singers, Liam Gallagher.
We got together um at my place one late morning

(14:35):
and sat out on my my deck in the backyard,
and he just basically was a rock star, uh. And
we laughed and I got to ask him some of
my Oasis fan questions and not all but not all,
and we played him a few songs that I'd written, uh,
and he said, well, I'm going back to you know,

(14:57):
England tomorrow. Send me anything you have have that you
think I could do when we could, when we could
discuss that. And I was like, yeah, sure, no problem.
So over the next week and a half, I had
a bunch of ideas and I wrote like five songs,
thinking these are pretty good Liam Gallagher songs. I like
these songs. These are cool. So I sent them to

(15:17):
him and his management and they got back to me
right away and said, oh my goodness, it's the album's done.
You know, my mistake or whatever. I don't know if
they hated them or if they literally were like, oh geez,
Dan wrote a bunch of songs. So but when I
listened to them again, they sounded they bore Liam Gallagher songs.

(15:39):
They were just me. They were my songs. And a
couple of them sounded like Semi Sonic songs, and even
though we didn't use them on the EP, they were like, oh,
wait a minute. I don't know, maybe just meeting I
had met Liam before at festivals, at gigs, backstage and stuff,
but maybe seeing him again reminded me of that time
in a way that other things didn't. And I I

(16:00):
had told John and Jake, we're not going to update.
We're not going to upgrade our sound. We're not gonna
try to sound like you know, Post Malone does Semi Sonic.
I don't need that personally because I do pop music,
so I don't need to be updated. And I just
said to the guys, let's not let's just do what
we sound like and have it be fine. So we needed,
I needed to get back in that mood. Okay, so

(16:22):
you're back in the mood. But needless say, in the
twenty years since Semi Sonic was on the boards, the
music business has changed completely. Okay. It used to be
the big threshold was getting a label deal, and if
you had one of the label deals, they would give
you a shot in the marketplace, assuming they believed your

(16:44):
music was okay. If not they'd either drop you or
get your some publicity. So what was it like saying Okay,
I'm gonna enter back into this sphere twenty years later. Well,
I mean I think one, um, one thing that you
have to do now is piece together the whole thing,

(17:07):
like piece together, like as though you all the departments
that used to be a label and now separate people
working out of there, you know, home offices or or
offices or whatever, you know, as as subsidiaries of things.
We ended up getting distribution and some um uh services
from the Orchard. We did a bunch of things ourselves.

(17:29):
We have um, you know, publicists that have worked for
you know, worked for me, and they ended up also
working for the Semi Sonic record. We you know, it's like,
I mean, I'm fortunate enough to have these relationships, but
we we have. You have to sort of almost like
it's all all a heart. You just find this and
that and this and that and and then you have

(17:50):
your own temporary label structure or whatever you wanna call it.
And you mentioned the record the track is on a
triple A radio. How did it get there? Because nothing
happens by accident anymore. Well, um, I think there was
I think between the Orchard and Jim Grant, my manager,
I think they and everybody who was involved in like

(18:12):
the team, I think, um, you know, Mega Forest the label, uh,
I think they. I think they all thought that that
was a reasonable hope that we could get some airplay
on this kind of station. Like I knew. I knew
we could get played on if we got lucky, we

(18:34):
could get played on x RT in Chicago, and we
could get played on k XPN and Philadelphia, and we
could get played, um, you know here on k c
S n uh, you know in l A. I mean
I had this. That's the kind of station I had
in my mind. And those are all of what's called
triple A station. So that makes sense to me if

(18:55):
Mega Forrest and Jim and everybody else, we're going to
decide where to go. And I honestly though, I thought
if Casey MP and St. Paul played it a bunch
of times, a non embarrassing number of times in my
hometown and then it was over, I was I probably

(19:15):
would have been like, yeah, high fives, let's do that again.
So I didn't really think of it as likely to
be played all around the country like it is okay,
because you know, there's a lot of people making music,
however good that gets nowhere to play at all. How
are you the type of guy who's more of an
artist or are you also a student of the game.
If I were to talk about charts distribution, is that

(19:36):
you have expertise in that area? No, No, I'm I'm not.
I'm not that guy I had. Um. There was a
period when I tried to start, to some degree, out
of a sense of obligation or oldest son duty or something,
I tried to learn more about the business and try

(19:57):
to be very involved in like are very up to
speed on how Semi Sonic was doing, for example, or
what my what the songs I've co written are you
know doing? But I I kind of learned pretty early
that if I did that, I would just write songs
about money, you know, and like record sales and distribution.

(20:19):
It becomes it's like whatever you focus on in your
life is what you end up writing songs about. And
those are very very boring topics. And I really noticed
when I was really plugged into the business side how
much my songs would suck. So I kind of unplugged. Okay,
when before COVID when uh Semi Sonic was going to

(20:41):
play live dates. How many live dates was this? Well,
we would I mean we were going to play. I
would say the grandiose plan was something like thirty shows.
I think that's you know, I know that's not a lot,
but it's it's okay. But yeah, but that's the balance.
My question being that you've put out this track and

(21:03):
the track is more successful than you anticipated. We all
know that the old game doesn't exist. Nothing crosses over
from triple A to top forty, etcetera. So they are
not inherently lucrative. They're not inherently large in terms of
social cultural impact. However, when what it has s sccess,

(21:26):
it does light a flame or turn the gas up
a little inside. So now that you've had this success,
to what degreed? He say, Wow, I'm turned on, I
want to go further down this path. Well, i'm m.
We put out the EP, we we made the EP,
and we were done with that at the end of

(21:46):
last year. Maybe the last mastering was done in December
or January maybe, and the it was always a plan
to just do this EP and then get started to
make another EP. So I didn't I think we probably
would have done it, whether we've gotten any airplay at all.

(22:07):
I just think it feels like the time, you know
for it, and we've done enough shows where you know
where we haven't forgotten how to be a band, but
we're all pretty excited about like kind of hitting it
a little harder and and also spending that time together.
There is a big part of this is just that
we're we cherish each other. It's kind of weird to say,

(22:30):
but we just because we love each other, we want
to do this. Okay, let's flip it over. So you
have this personal situation, you put the band on hiatus.
How do you become a song writer for hire? Oh man? Well,
I I had the picture in my mind because of

(22:52):
Carol King, who was my kind of one of my
childhood heroes. And she her name was on all these
records and she had hits of her own. So I
always thought that was one thing that someone who was
really cool could do. So I had that picture in
my mind, and the on the last Semisnic album, I

(23:12):
ended up writing a song by Crazy good Luck with
Carol for the Semi Sonic album. So I watched what
she did with me that was interesting and uh, well,
well let's slow down a little bit because Carol does
not write the lyrics. So what was interesting about the experience.
What did you learn about the experience? Well, I was,
first of all, I was super nervous to be with Carol.

(23:35):
I was We sort of imagined that we could be
writing a a semisonic song and we both were thinking that.
But but there wasn't It wasn't like this isn't a
label's idea of what to do when you're desperate, you know,
even like at that time, Carol wasn't a h you know,

(23:57):
the matrix or a Top forty you know, uh, one
of the villains of Top forty production. She she was
an icon. But we thought we'd write a semi sonic song.
And yet I had this idea almost like that. I

(24:17):
was that I didn't know if I was supposed to
be me or be her during this session. This is
a very early for me, like co write and she, uh,
she kind of guided me into a zone where we
were both having ideas that reminded each other of the

(24:38):
other one somehow, like I would. At one point, I
played a piano chord and I was like, uh, oh,
you know what about this cord. I'll show you what
the chord I played. Hold on, I played this chord.

(24:59):
I played that chord and I was like, how about that?
And she laughed. I said yeah, I said four over five.
You like that cord, Carol, And she laughed and she
said yeah, but it's it's not called four over five,
it's called c over K. And I was like, Okay,
you are a badass. Like I already loved her for that,
you know. But then at another point, she she had
an idea that was almost like tweaking closing time, like

(25:22):
she was sort of it was not satire, but it
was just her like taking the piss about closing time.
And uh, but we ended up using it because it
was awesome and I really learned from that. I learned
from this kind of like we found a kind of
a part of the playground where where both of us

(25:42):
were comfortable with the with the ideas we were having
and it was truly, uh collaboration. And that was like
almost like a masterclass. You know. That was like an
early moment when I really thought, oh, I could totally
do this. This is great because my hero knows. It
just showed me partly how to do it? Okay? So
then what happened after that? Then? Um, oh, I wrote,

(26:05):
I wrote a song that got I wrote a song
with Beck Runga, who's a New Zealander and she uh,
and I wrote a song that was in this movie
called American Pie that was pretty great. And then Semi
Sognic you were you were working with Semi Sonic. How
did you even get hooked up with this New Zealand? Uh?

(26:25):
Beck was signed to the same publishing company that Semi
Sonic was with, Warner Chapel, and Kenny McPherson, who has
been my publisher ever since, said, Hey, you know, I
have an artist who's like having a little trouble um
getting inspired and kind of stuck, and you wanted to
try to do a session with her. So we ended up.

(26:47):
We ended up. We got together and wrote a song.
And it's not like I knew how to do that
to like to help someone not be stuck, but we
wrote a real nice song. Okay, so keep going okay.
So then then Semi Sonic, Um, then I kind of
like somewhat cleared the decks and we stopped touring, and

(27:07):
I was putting out the word to lots of people
like in the Twin Cities, and you know where I
was from and where I lived, and you know locals
and other people. I'd like to write songs with people.
I want to I want to do collaborations. And I
just put the word out I want to write with people,
and um, the Minneapolis people didn't want to do it.

(27:30):
They were all very uncomfortable. They thought they're weird. Songwriting
method was unsuitable to show other people, which was already
interesting for me too to hear that, because it almost
becomes a universal like people are like, I can't write
a song with someone else because then I'd have to

(27:50):
show them the stupid way that I write songs. And
that that was kind of an insight for me, even
even to be refused on those grounds. And then um,
friend of mine who was an A and R guy
for Trip Shakespeare, my previous band, Steve Robowski uh contacted

(28:11):
me and said, I have an artist, Rachel Yamagata. I
think you would really get along great with her. She's
a she's a touring you know, rock musician, and she's
going to make a h a contemplative piano record and
and you guys need to write a song together. So

(28:32):
I wrote a song with Rachel. We had a great
We had a great time. She played it for Jason
Mraz and then a few months later Jason was at
my house in Minneapolis and we were writing songs, and
two of those songs we worked and ended up on Mr.
A to Z his the album that he was working

(28:53):
on and did did did it just likes it just
happened like that, like Pearson first and the person to person. Yeah. Now,
there are a lot of musicians. I know people musicians
who are dicks in real life, but they're unbelievable networkers
in music. They know how to relate to musicians. Are

(29:15):
you more the isolated type or are you heavily network
to begin with? And do you have any anxiety about
reaching out to people? Oh? I'm ah man, okay, Like
I'm I have a real hard time asking anyone for

(29:36):
a favor of any kind. I have a very Norwegian
American shyness and like bashfulness. I guess about about getting ahead.
And I I'm not a great networker in that sense

(29:59):
of once I have someone in my network, I don't
go all right now I'm gonna call Bob and ask
him for this, you know. But I do, but I
do keep in touch with people, and I do, and
I cold call people, but I cold call people because
I'm like, I love what you do. Let's hang out.
Like I like, A couple of my happiest musical relationships

(30:20):
are people that I just got in touch with randomly.
Somebody find me this person's email or phone number, I'm
just going to contact them. But once they're in my network,
I just it's not like they're there to be exploited.
I just I just love musicians. So I don't know,
I'm do you know what do you stay in touch

(30:41):
with people on the regular Banks you say I heard
from that person in a month, I say like, oh, okay,
so I'm not a month. I'm like six months. I've
never been a month. But I've always been like, oh
I haven't yeah, I haven't heard from them for a while,
or just like how you're doing, or I heard I
heard some news about you or whatever. I've always been
that kind of person, and I think there was a

(31:04):
time there was a sort of a turning point in
my life when I was doing a lot of painting
and I was selling a lot of paintings, and I
was like, Okay, I know I'm not cool enough to
be New York gallery artist, but I could probably figure
out how. So I was definitely thinking in those terms,
like what what do I need to do to be
able to just be a a painter and do that

(31:26):
as as my life, because I really love art and
I loved making art, and I was I was thinking too,
you know, how do I crack that code and still
be myself? And I was sort of thinking maybe a
little bit like if if I have to transform myself
too much, I'm not going to do it. But I
was definitely thinking, like, what is it about my work?
This is not cool? I don't know so. And then

(31:49):
in music, it was an interesting time because I was
also like the only two choices were to like try
to adapt and but that's never gonna work, or just
be yourself and see what happens. So I couldn't really
decide between art of music on on the basis of, well,
this one is obviously working better than that one. I was.
I was still puzzled what it meant to be an artist.

(32:10):
But once I had done music and art at the
same time for like two years, it was really obvious
that being a painter is like super lonely. It's just
really lonely work, and you can't have people come in
and bug you. You've gotta be alone. Like they could
come in for a little while, but you know, in
your studio, if you're if you're in a building, but
you bas you mainly have to keep them out. And

(32:32):
I realized, I'm just not that guy. I just I'm
not built for that. Okay. But when you write for
Semi Sonic, you write the songs alone. Uh, what's the
difference between doing that and inherently starting as a collaboration. Well,

(32:54):
I wrote Um a d of You're Not Alone from
the New Semi Sonic EP. But I wrote UM Basement Tapes,
which is very autobiographical. I wrote that with Mike Viola
and Jenny Owen Young's two friends of mine who we've
written a whole bunch of songs together over time, and
they they just played the part of the co writer

(33:19):
in that session. If we go back to the Trip
Shakespeare in initial Semi Sonic, Yeah, era, were you mostly
writing the songs alone? Yeah? Most like a Trip Shakespeare.
I was the finisher for for my brother Matt's unfinished songs,
so he would finish, he would do most like half
the songs all alone, and maybe a quarter of them

(33:39):
I would finish, and some small proportion we would just
write together as a collaboration. But when Semisnic came along,
I just knew what I wanted and I knew what
it needed to sound like, and I knew songwriting wise,
like what had to happen and also what I had
to access. And so I end up writing those songs

(34:00):
alone because I just knew what was necessary and I
wanted to a lot of times I was writing for
our shows, like we don't have anything for them. It's
like there's always this dead period in the middle of
the set. You know, what is wrong with those three
songs that we keep We're switching out all these songs
into that middle section of the set, and it's always boring.

(34:21):
Why what can I do? And I would write songs
for that purpose, or I'd write a song to close
the show, you know, very practical when you were not touring.
Uh did you miss it? Yeah? I did, I did.
I missed it when when you know there's something about

(34:44):
being on tour is like really really tiring. You gotta
get you get to a certain point of like what
a friend of mine calls maximum tiredness, and then you
just like cruise. You're just that tired all the time,
but you're also irresponsible and taken care of even your
food shows up in front of your face, and you

(35:05):
can party until someone comes through with a scowling face
and says, you know, hey, come on, we gotta go
back to the hotel. You need to get sleep. You
you you gotta get up early. Like that level of
like care free irresponsibility is amazing as an adult. Okay,
back in the day, did you take advantage of some

(35:28):
of the so called perks of being on the road, Uh, well,
in some ways, But I was. I got married before
any of this happened. Really like I like I I
my girlfriend and I who now my wife. You know,
we got together when we were in nineteen and twenty

(35:50):
or something like that, and we've been very uh deeply
intertwined ever since. So I didn't have like a phase
of like, uh, you know, sexual wildlife, you know, abandoned
and I I would have The road didn't offer me

(36:12):
any more drugs than my friends at home did, So
I don't I don't think I did more drugs than
I would have done if I had just been a
dude staying in Minneapolis all the time, I would have
done it either way. I think this is gonna sound
super dorky, but like when I look at pictures of
me and John and Jacob on tour, it's like it's
us in front of the Eiffel Tower, and it's us

(36:32):
on you know, Bondai Beach, and it's us, uh, you know,
like slowly walking through um Westminster Abbey, you know stuff
that's like we really really wanted to see the world
and and and uh you know. Um It's almost like

(36:53):
tourism was for us. That was the drugs we we
could we could have just been on the bar circuit
and then all the drugs wanted. So okay, let's go back.
You work with Mr aid On, Mr a to Z.
What is your first breakthrough success as a songwriter, collaborator,
writer for a hire? Wow, okay, let's see. I mean,

(37:16):
I think it's not ready to make Nice with the
Dixie Chicks. I think I was working on an album
that eventually was called Free Life with Rick Rubin. He
signed me to his label American and we were working
on that and he played a bunch of the songs

(37:36):
that we were working on for the Dixie Chicks when
he was producing them, and they they got excited about
a couple of the songs, but then also they got
excited about the possibility of writing us writing together. So
eventually Rick Rick put us together in in a in
a room after a lot of false starts. It was
like a lot of reasons why things got canceled, but yeah,

(38:00):
that was the first one. Okay, let's go back to
one of my personal favorites. How did you end up
working with Gabe Dixon? Oh? Gabe a friend of mine,
Ah who worked at m c A as an international

(38:23):
promo guy and had traveled with Semisnic around Europe. Um
Uh introduced me to Gabe and basically they were It

(38:43):
was before anything like really had happened commercially from my
form my co writing. But Gabe and I had a
very magical um a couple of weekends in Minneapolis writing
songs and we wrote UM five more hours and we
wrote all Will Be Well, and we wrote we wrote

(39:06):
five or six songs that I think of as like,
you know, possibly like lifetime type songs for for an artist. Together,
we really clicked. It was and that was before the
Chicks before I met Rick. It was early on. Okay, Well,
I'm a huge fan of that initial work and then
the live rendition of that work, and Gabe has never

(39:29):
been able to equal that since artistically or commercially, and
he's sort of a hired hand piano player. Uh. That
demonstrated to me that you had a huge effect. Why
have you not worked with him again? Well? We did.
We wrote another song called My Favorite that came out
on a record of his like ten years ago. But

(39:50):
I think, like I think sometimes, first of all, when
Gabe and I wrote All Will Be Well, he never
he didn't think it was all that it was, you
know he was he didn't think it was special, and
everyone else thought it was special, um except for him.

(40:13):
So it's possible that he and I just didn't make
I think I think we made things that were sort
of I was supposed to make the difference, and I
think we made things that were closer to home for
him than, you know, than farther away. And I think
sometimes when people are on the co Wright train, they're
trying to find someone that's going to take them farther

(40:34):
from home so they can be different and then finally
get some kind of recognition because that maybe they're not
doing the right maybe just being themselves isn't enough, you know.
I think somehow that's possibly in the back of a
lot of people's minds. And labels are that way too,
Like if I if you writes, If I write a
song with somebody and it's it's the quintessential them song,

(40:56):
labels are like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, But we
need something that's got that spark of difference to you know,
really like there's a mental block against just being essentially
truly yourself. Can you give us any examples where you
took someone further away out of their comfort zone and
it worked. Well, let's see, I mean it's got to

(41:24):
be uncomfortable to work. Uh adult kind of jokes that
I would, you know, make her weep. When we wrote together,
I wasn't mean I was never unkind or impolite, but
like it just was we had some very raw conversations

(41:44):
about difficult things. That was not easy. That was you know,
that was outside the comfort zone. But the songs are
they feel very very authentically adele, you know, and even
those chick songs to right, um not ready to make nice.

(42:10):
I kind of had to convince them that that they
needed a song like that, and that they felt like
they just didn't want to beat a dead horse and
be talking about the same thing again and again. And
I was like, no, you need we need at least
one song where you just go head on into it,
like just walk through the fire in one song so
obviously that no one will mistake what you're talking about.

(42:32):
That's got to happen. How did you get hooked up
with a Dell to begin with? Same thing? Rick Rubin?
That was like, that was incredible bit of matchmaking. He
kept saying, you gotta do this, and like and and yeah,
I kept getting postponed. I'm canceled. And he would call
him and say, I really think, I really think you

(42:53):
need to write a song with this with Adele, she's
so amazing, and like he just you know, and he
did the same to her until we finally like hooked
it up. Okay, So tell me about that experience where
it was raw? Was that something conscious? What did you
inject into that songwriting session that resulted in that. I
don't think I injected anything. I think she I think
she wanted to talk about this raw emotion she wanted

(43:17):
to talk about she wanted to make a breakup song
that sort of reflected what she the story she was
telling about her feelings. I I don't think I um,
I don't know. I think I'm a good listener. I
don't think I did anything like I like when we

(43:39):
were the next day we got together. At the first day,
we wrote two thirds of someone Like You, and it
sounded pretty great. The second verse was terrible. There was
a bridge that was kind of tangled up in the
second verse. You know, there were problems. The vocal was

(44:02):
not as cool as we probably I would have wanted it.
But the second day, when we got together, I said
to her, so, do you want to keep working on
that thing we started yesterday or do you want to
work on a new song? And she was like, oh
my god, of course we have to finish that song
from yesterday. Like I was very happy to be like, well,

(44:24):
I guess, let's work on something else, and and she
was like no, no, no no, no, no, no no, we
gotta finish that song. So it wasn't like I was
a Spengali guiding her to success. I was actually being
very loose and goosey about you know what to do? Okay,
So she reveals herself and you're listening, what was the
next step in writing that song? Well, I mean it's

(44:48):
almost more like yeah, it's almost like she had a
she had a bass riff. She has this very interesting
one finger way of playing the bass. She doesn't I
don't think she's ever maybe she performs it once in
a while. She's just interesting way of playing the bass.
And she does that on on the low strings of
a guitar too. So she had this kind of bass
or low string guitar riff and a couple of lines

(45:10):
of of someone like you no title, I don't think,
or no chorus. But she had that beginning and that
that low BASSI riff on the guitar, and at one
point she was like, I don't know, this is just
you wan't Why don't you play it while I sing?
So I played that same riff on the guitar while

(45:32):
she sang, and she and she was like, I don't know,
I don't know. Maybe it would be more inspiring if
you played it on the piano. So I played it
on the piano and we immediately just like, Okay, that's
exactly how the song needs. Like it was really clear.
Now we're onto it like now we you know, once
you feel like you're onto something, it becomes very easy
to like get become very dogged and intense about it.

(45:53):
And so I think that once we heard that similar
pattern on the piano that she had been playing on
the guitar, it we could imagine the record and then
then it gets easier. And did you have any idea
that the record would be as successful as it was? No?

(46:14):
I mean we played it for my wife when I
came home. We were staying in l a in Las VELAs,
uh for a month, and I was doing I was
writing with people and doing stuff, and I came home
and played it for my wife and she said, oh,
that's a beautiful song. And then, um, we never listened
to that, you know, didn't listen to it again. And uh,

(46:38):
then like a week later, I got a text from
the head of her label, Columbia saying, you know, basically like,
oh my god, Dan, this is a copyright. You know,
It's like okay, great, uh wow, Okay, let's go back
really way to the beginning. Okay, so you're from from

(46:59):
Minneapolis area. Did you literally were born there and grew
up there? Yes? I was born. Um, and when when
my parents were moving from the East Coast, where my
dad was going to medical school. My parents, my mom
moved back early to Minnesota. She had grown up in Appleton,

(47:20):
a very very small town in the western part of Minnesota.
My dad grew up in South Minneapolis, and his folks
were also from the western kind of small town Prairie
um area of Minnesota. So she my mom went back early,
and and I was born before my dad finished medical school.

(47:41):
We grew up in um you know, medical student housing,
my brother and I and then later my sister and
UM eventually ended up in a in a near suburb
of Minneapolis called Saint Louis Park. Okay, how many? So
there are three kids in the field. How does a hierarchy?

(48:02):
I'm the oldest, my brother's second, and my sister three.
Okay not traditionally all the hopes and dreams and pressure
around the oldest kid. Did you feel that? Yeah? Probably,
I don't know. Uh. I was like when I was little, Um,

(48:22):
I I can't I. I I tested as very very
very bright, Like I tested off the charts. And my
mom used to joke that every year they would, you know,
we'd get some somebody would come in with the school
and they'd assess me or whatever, and every year I
was slightly closer to normal and and uh, but there

(48:45):
was still a sense like I I was really bored
in school like many bright kids, I was bored in school,
and I distracted people, and I made remarks and I
talked while the teacher was trying to talk, and I
was very I was not only entitled, but I would
make the t your laugh while they were trying to teach.
And and eventually, like there was certain kind of compensatory

(49:07):
things that the school's tried with me, like an elementary school,
I had this. I had this. I went for part
of the afternoon to another teacher that taught me higher
level stuff and it's like having a tutor for being smart.
And also during that time, I developed a lot of
nervous ticks, like I just so maybe maybe I was

(49:28):
feeling the pressure to be sort of a bright kid
or like to be a successful, you know, fourth grader
or whatever. And my parents got very alarmed that I
started developed developing all these physical ticks, and um, they
they phased out some of that special treatment. So I
just got more and more normal as time went on.

(49:48):
But I think there was always a sense that my
parents had were like of that age where they were
both kind of artsy, but they're The step their generation
had to take was to was to do something like
measurably successful. So they you know, my dad became a

(50:11):
doctor because that was a logical next step for the
family to have a kid who was a doctor. And
then I came along, and my siblings and I came
along basically in the whatever makes you happy, you can
do whatever you're like, we still love you no matter
if you have a professional or not. That was our
next step. Okay, prior to the billionaire tech e's in

(50:35):
Wall Street. You know, doctors made a good living. Was
your father did he support your desires and whims or
it was like, go if you want that app go
out and make the money yourself. He Uh. My parents
were um, like they didn't have any toys. They they
they we had we built my my my my grandfather

(51:00):
other on one side was a carpenter and my grandfather
on the other side, um had done plumbing for a
while when he was younger. My mom's brother was an electrician,
and my dad was willing to carry heavy things. And
between the four of those dudes. They built this small
house in northern Minnesota, and that was the family's toy
that was like the one like what we had on

(51:21):
that on the lake that that we that the that
the house was next to. We had a canoe and
a you know, a fourteen ft h rowboat with an
upboard motor, and that was our toys. And and my
parents had this kind of very prairie Norwegian, anti um flash,

(51:44):
you know, uh, anti toy kind of attitude. And so
I kind of grew up with that too. But they
they they supported us in the sense like when when
I was in like eighth grade and I was doing
a paper out in the morning early mornings and I
was slinging ice cream at an ice cream shop and

(52:07):
the in the evenings. My dad offered to half pay
for a guitar and an amplifier for me if I
saved up. So I saved up, and I bought a
guitar in an amp in eighth grade. And okay, so
you were going to public school. Yeah, and what kind
of kid were you? Remember? The group and outsider, a
nerd someone? What what were you? I was? Um? I

(52:31):
was smart kid. Most of my close friends were really
smart nerdy kids. I also made really really wicked caricatures
of people. Uh. I had a I could get a
likeness with pen and ink, and so I would make
caricatures of the teachers and they would confiscate them, but

(52:51):
they secretly liked them. And I I would make caricatures
of of mean kids and kind of court disaster, but
you know, like making caricatures of bullies and and uh
So I was thought of as a smart kid. But
I had this sort of weird superpower of being artistic.
So I was I was given a pass to some degree. Okay,

(53:15):
what inspired you to buy that guitar? In the amph
My brother and I when I was summer before eighth grade,
I think my no, maybe before seventh My parents gave
my brother Matt and I one super cheap acoustic guitar
to own together. And we we co owned this acoustic

(53:38):
guitar for years, and we loved the Beatles. And the
summer we got that guitar, we got some books mel
Bay or whatever those books are that show you the
chord shapes, and we learned a bunch of chords, and
then we started to try to write songs of our own,

(53:59):
and I all my songs from that time. It's really interesting.
My songs were really I was really trying to sound
like George Harrison, like I was trying like I wasn't
trying to sound like McCartney, maybe because I didn't know
enough chords. It's possible. But my brother Um had a
little more unique musical style from the get go. Uh.

(54:25):
But we were both like trading back up. But we'd
have the guitar for an afternoon and we'd each try
to write a song the next day. Okay, but you
got the guitar, the electric guitar in the app then
was the goal to go out and play in bands?
And did you do that? The goal was to go
out and playing bands. I wasn't um. I wasn't good
at the guitar, but I was taking lessons and I

(54:49):
kind of um. I quickly abandoned. I sold that guitar
and I got um a bass because I had noted
that UM bands always needed bass players, so I got weirdly.
I also at the time was listening to weather Report,

(55:10):
so this is probably seventies seven. I was probably sixteen
or seventeen now when I switched from guitar to bass
and I got a fretless bass, so I could be
like Jacko Pastoria. So I learned how to play fretless bass,
and then I played this odd choice of instrument in
in whatever rock bands my brother was in. Essentially he

(55:31):
was a drummer. Okay, now you end up going to Harvard.
How does that happen? My grades were great. I was UM.
I used to go around to the magazine offices in
Minneapolis and show them my cartoons, and I would try
to see if they would buy my cartoons. And there
were a couple of magazines that were kind of youth

(55:51):
oriented magazines around Minneapolis that ended up starting to use
the drawings that I made. And so so when I
applied to Harvard, I had good grades and and not
insanely good grades, but really really good grades. And and
then also I just killed the s A T S.
I killed him. Okay, so what was your experience at Harvard?

(56:15):
I I loved it, I really did. I loved UM.
I studied stuff because I was interested, Like I took
a history of science classes because I I wanted to
know what This is going to sound so lofty, but
I wanted to know what knowledge is and how humanity
has gathered it and organized it and revered it or

(56:39):
or despised it, whatever the response. I wanted to know
about the meta of scientific knowledge. So I took sciences
history of science classes. I took some. I took a
couple of music classes, but I didn't like them. I
played in bands. I had a couple of bands that
played that basically took me out in Massachusetts on the weekends.

(57:03):
So I didn't party at Harvard in the on the weekends.
I drove out with the band too, two clubs in
various places, Peabody and hang Him and I know all
those places. My mother's from Peabody. Okay, But you know
you end up as a fine arts major. How does
that happen? I just think that was the most interesting

(57:27):
thing to me. And there was a big brief period,
or maybe a two year period, where I started thinking, well,
maybe I ought to become an architect. Maybe that's what
an artistic young person ends up doing when they want
to have a proper job. And so I got some jobs.
I got some jobs with architects offices. I studied for
a year or so at Harvard the History of Architecture,

(57:47):
and I took I took one applied architecture class, and
I was like, oh, I could do this, and my parents. Um.
The summer between my junior and senior year, my parents
kind of gathered me up and do you know what
we really want to know? Are you trying to become
an architect because it's a profession that would make us happier?

(58:09):
Are you trying to be a professional when you really
just want to be an artist? And I was like,
maybe maybe architecture feels like a professionalized way to be
an artist. And they said, well, don't do that for us,
because we don't need you to be a professional. You
don't have to have it, you don't need to go

(58:29):
get a graduate degree or do anything for us. If
you want to be an artist, you need to start
now and just do it. I wish I had your parents.
What wait, right, at what point does the music thing
become serious? I got UM. I went out to I
went out to San Francisco with my girlfriend and we

(58:53):
we went UM. Jacob Slicktor whom uh drummer and Semi
Sonic was our friend in college and he went out
there with us and lived with me and and so
the three of us were out there like trying to
make our way. Um, Jake and I wrote songs together.

(59:13):
We were thinking about being in being in bands. I
gotta I got a job at a graphic design company.
I made signage for for a law lawsuits. Okay, you're
now graduated from Yeah, we're out of college. We're out
in San Francisco, and my brother in Minneapolis is putting
together this band took Shakespeare and they made a record

(59:36):
there a trio and they made a record with bass, drums,
guitar and the left speaker and guitar and the right speaker,
and but they're only a trio. And my brother and
in this band had stopped playing the drums and he
was singing and playing guitar, so he he played both
guitars on the record. But they needed a guitar player.

(59:58):
And he asked me, when I was San Francisco, would
I consider moving back to Minneapolis and playing the right
speaker guitar uh for this band Shakespeare and I thought
about it. Um my girlfriend was heading to New York.
We said we decided to live separately, and I went
to Minneapolis to be in this band with my brother Matt.

(01:00:20):
And what were you doing for money? What are we
doing for money? Like in in San Francisco, I was,
I was doing graphic design. In coming back to Minneapolis,
I lived in a big house with lots of other
people in a dangerous neighborhood, and my aunt had my

(01:00:48):
great aunt had died and left left me a couple
of thousand dollars around. Then it goes a long way
when you're nothing to spend it on. It wasn't like
I was getting any and see dinners or yeah, so
I just basically had rent and food. So how do

(01:01:10):
you end up getting a deal with A and M
with crypt Shakespeare. My brother was really really smart about
the the hustle of music. He did a lot of things,
like he he made a zine that was devoted to
the band, but basically had a whole bunch of different
articles about different things related to trips Shakespeare in this zne.

(01:01:31):
And for a while he just um stapled the zine
to uh telephone poles around the city. And then eventually
it got to the point where he would as they
would also like fans would take them at shows and stuff.
But at first it was literally just a zne that
appeared on telephone poles, and my brother was I don't
know sort of in charge of like having a being

(01:01:53):
driven and having the idea of having a band that
did well. When I joined the band, I had a
very anctional role. I was playing the second guitar and
singing harmonies, and I got a digital piano and I
played piano and some songs. But my brother was in
charge of us being successful. Okay, you get a deal
with A and M Records and it doesn't ultimately work out,

(01:02:16):
why does the band break up or what happens there?
It was just really frustrating that the the label signed
us out of enthusiasm. They came to the shows and
they saw how much people love the band and how
hilarious my brother's raps were and how um improvisational and

(01:02:38):
crazy we were on the musical side. And then you know,
it's the very familiar thing of how do you capture
that on a recording? And we never did crack that code.
You know, who knows why, but we never did figure
out how to make records that sounded the way are

(01:03:03):
spontaneous sometimes you know, overblown shows felt and I we
got were very Eventually, I got really frustrating, and I
think that that's why the band stopped and I kept
I kept writing these songs that my brother Matt would
teasingly say that I was listening to the radio too much,

(01:03:24):
But in my mind, I was like, I want to.
I want to write things to get played on the radio.
I want to. I want to write short, concise things
that that catch your ear and our you know, unforgettable,
and I want to. I want that to be what
I do. So how do you form semi sonic? Jacob
had been in um Minneapolis for a while. He moved

(01:03:48):
several years after I left San Francisco. He moved, and
you know, we continued our friendship and we wrote songs
on the side together and made recordings. Then when when
Trip Shakespeare kind of slowed down and like that, uh,
my brother wanted time away from the band and wanted
to do something else. We asked John from Trip Shakespeare

(01:04:11):
to play bass and start a trio and we called
it Pleasure and we were like, we were not going
to work too hard. We're we're I made a manifesto
which was if a song isn't sounding good after an
afternoon's effort, then I'm going to throw it away and
write a new song. That was one, Uh, if we're

(01:04:33):
having a bad time in rehearsal, we have to go
down to the lowering bar and have a drink. And
that was too And I think the third I think
there were three, and the third one was life is
more important than music. Okay. Having said aled that, how
do you end up with a deal with m c A. Uh?
You know, we we had a bunch of true believers

(01:04:55):
in the music business by that point. I Karen Glauber
had been kind of indie rock or alternative rock um
expert at a m for a little while while we
were there, and we got to know her there and
then she went off to I think she was working
at Hits magazine or something like that at that point.
And I called her up and I said, I have
some I have some new songs with John and Jacob.

(01:05:17):
I want to send them to you. And she was like, yes, yes,
please send them. And she goes out they good and
I said, I said, oh, yeah, I think they're really
really good, and she goes, do you want to start
a bidding war? So I guess that was how it
was done. Wow, And who is the manager at that point?
Were we without manager? I think we were without a

(01:05:38):
manager at that point okay, so you make a deal
with m c A. Well, we made a deal with Elektra.
We made half of a record. They dropped us when
Sylvia Rhne came, Sylvia Rown said, we said, can we
have these recordings? Will go somewhere else? She said no, no,
you can't have them, and uh, basically we've completed and

(01:06:00):
then um when and her reason for not needing us
anymore was that they are they the label already had
Third Eye Blind, so they didn't need Semi Sonic as well.
So so eventually though, when we organized for m c
A to buy the record, the half record from Elektra,
Sylvia Rohne relented and took the money, and then we

(01:06:22):
finished the rest of the record on on m c A.
So they got a free look at what it was
going to be. And you end up having a couple
of big success is Closing Time and Secret Smile. Did
you know those were going to be successful? Was there
something else you thought would be successful before that? I
m hm, similar similar to the story I told you

(01:06:45):
about someone like you. I I thought that Closing Time
was a really great song to to wrap up our shows,
and we had already put out Great Divide the album before,
the one that was made for two different labels, and uh,
I had I had this. I sort of had some
gaps in the set list that I wanted to fill
and Closing Time was one of them. And and secret

(01:07:07):
Smile arrived in a dream I had a dream of
I would say three quarters of the song. And I
quickly wrote it down and went back to sleep. And
then the next morning I got up and played it.
I had written it down, I played it. I was like,
this is this is great? Wow, I wonder what this is.
So I asked a lot of my friends what is
this and they were like, I've never heard this before.
So that song was like not part of a master

(01:07:30):
plan of any kind. And when we did when we
finished the record, I asked Nick Lawnay, our producer, what
do you think the single is. I think it's Closing Time?
I said, but what I'm curious what you would say?
And he goes, oh, no, no, no, not closing Time.
That's that's for the punters. You don't want that, never
you mind as a as a better song you you

(01:07:50):
Closing Time is? I don't. He didn't say it was
too dumb, but essentially he thought it was too low brow,
which I didn't under dand I didn't get that. I
thought it was great and then ore and then are
um like. I played the record to my wife and
said what do you think? Like, what do you think
the single is? And she said, well, it's time to

(01:08:10):
go big And I said, okay, but you have to
tell me what that means. She goes, well, if you're
going to go big, that means you have it has
to be secret smile or a closing time. Then we
sent it to m c A and they were like,
we're sorry, we don't hear anything. There's no singles. If
you want more money to record, we'll give you more
money to record. But now we don't hear it. It's
not gonna happen. So what happened? So I was like,

(01:08:33):
I called up my manager Jim. We talked about this.
That was it was. You know, they didn't hear it.
They didn't hear it hit, they didn't hear a single.
We weren't, but they'd give us more money to record.
And Jim's like, well, what do you think? And I said, well,
I love the idea of I could write some more songs.
That sounds cool, and he goes Okay, wait, wait, let's
just think about this for a minute. And I'm like okay,
and he says, all right, they send you fifty dollars

(01:08:57):
to go record like four more songs or whatever it's
going to be, so you have to write them. So
you're writing that, you know, four new songs, three new songs,
four new songs. Can you guarantee me that those are
going to be better than singing in my sleep closing
time and secret smile? And I'm like, well, no, of
course not. The three songs you just named are really great.
How can I guarantee that these new songs are gonna

(01:09:18):
be better? And Jim's like, well, well, so you imagine
you're the person at the label who commissioned the new songs.
Which ones are you going to choose to be the
next semi sonic single? One of the songs that you commissioned,
or one of the songs that you rejected earlier? And
I'm like, oh, I guess if I'm the label, I'm

(01:09:38):
gonna select one of the songs that I commissioned and
not one of the ones that I refused earlier. And
Jim's like, okay, right, so, but what if you don't
beat the songs, what do you think they'll do? And
I said, they're still going to pick one of the
new ones even if I didn't beat the old songs.
Jim's like, right, do you want that? And I'm like no,
and he goes, okay, then just don't answer your phone

(01:10:00):
for a couple of weeks. So they called and called
to get me to relent, and we ignored them and
ignored them, and then eventually they got a new head
of radio promo, woman named Nancy Levin, and she's like,
what are you doing with this? This closing time is
a smash? What's what's up with this? Like? And they're like,
oh no, we you know, we we we we rejected
that already. She's like, wait, give that to me. I'll

(01:10:22):
make it huge. So it all worked out. You have, oh,
just back the secret smile. Tell me about the dream
and how much of the song came from the dream. Dream.
The dream was the first verse. Nobody knows it, but
you've got a secret smile. And the dream was so
use it, improve it. It was that that was in

(01:10:46):
the dream. Uh, there's no no, And then it looped
back and I it was no second verse, and there
was no bridge. Okay, so the dream was the actual
songs or the dream was a woman who had a
secret smile. No, the dream was the total the song.

(01:11:07):
I you should know by now, I'm not dreaming about girls.
I'm dreaming about songs. Okay, speaking of songs, you had
a Vine series six seconds of basically information on songwriting.
How did that come to be? That was? That was?

(01:11:28):
That's kind of fun because that's that has continued in
in the most lovely way. My manager Jim had seen
um a vine series by a screenwriter named Um Coppelman. Uh,
Brian Complan. Yes, I was basically on his first name,
Brian Coppleman, and he had this things to be in

(01:11:49):
the music business, right, So he had this thing where
he was going to do a hundred days of six
second screenwriting tips and I think he called it like
writing a screenplay in six seconds or something like that.
And my manager, Um, Jim, linked me to this on Vine.
So you got to look at these. So I looked
at them and I was like, this is amazing, and

(01:12:11):
Jim goes, you could do this in music and I
was like, yeah, you think so, and he said, just
give it a try. So I was very resistant, and
then I did like six or seven and I was like, oh,
this is really fun. I really like this, so I
I started doing that now. Actually, right now, I'm in
the midst of like, okaying, I've made a deck of
cards based on this, and it's it's like each one

(01:12:34):
has one of these six seconds comments on it and
it's called words of Music in six seconds. But it's
a deck of cards. Then what is the plan with
the cards? Um? To have people give it to their
niece who's a songwriter as a gift. Okay, how come
until your manager told me about this, I didn't know

(01:12:55):
about it. Not the cards but the six seconds. Um.
That will have to be a question for people who
understand the marketing and getting the word out. Well, the
reason I mentioned this his most sheet is crap and
I was unaware of this and I checked on it
and it was brilliant. You know, it's funny you mentioned

(01:13:17):
Rick Rubin. Rick Rubin is a Twitter feed You used
to be very intermittent, now much more active, which is
essentially this. But he ran out of things. It's you know,
they don't always say yours is better than his. Uh,
it's funny because yeah, I've noticed him kind of starting
to do this, and I'm I'm curious if he's seen mine.

(01:13:40):
I'm curious, but his the vibe of his are very different.
Obviously it's it's very rick, but but I'm what I'm
trying to do with with mine. I'm thank you for
saying that you think it's cool, because I love it
and I think I have a community um on you
know social media that like I'm often here from people
that are that will say, you know, when I have

(01:14:02):
when I have a session, we we look online to
see what your latest words of music in six seconds is,
just to see if it inspires us. And to me,
that feels like a role that's amazing that I can
play in my songwriting community. So I hope, I hope
we can make more of it. But why why didn't
you know about it until my manager told you? I
don't know. Let me ask you a different question and
I'll get back to that. Okay, give us some of
your greatest hits, you mean, in the in the six seconds? Okay,

(01:14:27):
if you like it, then it's good. If it sounds
good to you, then it sounds good. Okay, how do
you come up with the since you're doing them on
a regular basis. It's it's it's like it's like writing
a song or being a writer. I'm like, oh, it's
been a while since I've didn't I've done some. I

(01:14:47):
could spend an afternoon and write a whole bunch. So
I'll write like thirty or forty, and then they'll always
be like three that are good, Okay, so you'll discard Yeah, yeah,
a lot a lot of them are because because it
has to be pithy. It has to be a little
it can't be just what you expect to hear. It
can't be preachy. It's got to be um. There's gotta

(01:15:08):
be a ray of hope and it. You know, it
can't just be like never do this, you know, because
that's just a drag. It's gotta it's gotta be. There's
a lot of things that there's a needle to thread
in my mind of how to make how to give
first of all, how to give good advice. It's not easy.
You don't want to bump people out. What's a secret
to good advice? Well, I mean, it has to be actionable.

(01:15:30):
It's got to be open ended. It's gotta it's gotta
leave the person room to solve the problem. You know,
it can't be the solution to the problems. It can't
be like an algorithm to a Rubik's cube. It has
to be it has to be like, you know, a
guide for finding algorithms to Rubik's cube. You know, it can't.
You can't just solve the problem for the person it's

(01:15:50):
It has to be um. It has to leave open
ended the possibility that the advisor is wrong. There's a
lot of things that that you know, people try to
give advice. It usually sucks, it's usually terrible. Well, I find,
generally speaking, when people don't listen to the advice anyway,
so it's great and they do what they want. They
just wanted you to say that you're that their thing

(01:16:12):
was great. I can also spot that if someone's like,
listen to my song and tell me what you think,
and I listened and I talked to them for ten seconds,
I can tell if they really want me to say anything.
Usually they don't. They just want me to say, you
are fucking amazing. I love what you've done. I got
in a couple of bad experiences because I feel bad
for people. I've literally sat there with a and our

(01:16:32):
people say you know, listen, I told this guy's version,
but I'm never signing his act and I've talked to
the actual Oh I'm gonna make a deal. Okay. So
I used to be honest. Okay, and not only do
people not want to hear it, they go on Vendetta's.
I mean, I've had some really bad experience on a

(01:16:52):
macrobe up okay, you know, and therefore I don't pretty
much never respond to anybody in the quality of their
music because the way you know you said it exactly
nails it. But going back, we talked about Rick. His
tweets are basically Graham Puba like he produces record. Let
me get you in the head space so that you
can be creative. Most of the people who are giving advice,

(01:17:17):
especially in the music business, which is a dumb business,
they're doing it because they want to write a book,
to make money or to improve their image. Okay, anybody
who does it out of a genuine care. Okay, they
don't even see this appen. So as soon as I
saw them, I really had no idea. It's talking like

(01:17:39):
IM blown, smoke up your ass, But I was really stunned.
I just figured it being you know, some craft but
not only was it correct, you could get a vibe
for the person who was doing it. It was quite
definitely you. That's that's it's like a it's writing. It's
a piece of writing. It's not just words, and it's
not just a functional it's a piece of writing because

(01:18:00):
that helps. Like if it was poorly written, how could
the advice have any teeth? It's got to be like
beautiful because otherwise people would would would understand subconsciously that
this sucks. I can't listen to this guy. Well, you
open up a real can of worms there, because most
stuff does suck, and and most people are playing to

(01:18:22):
the audience. So to do it your way and to
show some identity. This is one of the things you
know in music forget you know, people say, don't make
it too general. People relate most when it's specific, when
you talk about a specific example in your life. So
there's a whole business of people giving advice, and your
advice and your six seconds was better than any of

(01:18:45):
the advice that uh that I've come across. Now, one
thing I've learned is people, as I say, end up
doing what they want to do. But if you know,
if this songwriting thing didn't work out for you. You
could create a business with this advice. You can have
a weekend seminar with this advice. Do it Rick style.
Give the advice and then don't be too involved until

(01:19:08):
the end. Don't be hands on in the middle. Whatever
you know, try try to get the people inspired. I
think the fact that you're doing the cards is really good,
but it's a little still, a little too inside baseball
and the But the other thing is there needs to
be stories, like there should be a blurb on this

(01:19:28):
in the off duty section of the Wall Street Journal.
It's on Saturdays, because people with money, they're frequently frustrated artists,
and they buy this for their kids. Okay, you put it.
You put it in a music magazine that people are
too cheap to buy it. Wait, I'm gonna write this down, Okay,
And you know you should also certainly get it and

(01:19:50):
if you can with a story and best bets in
New York magazine, how do you reach a thinking audience,
because since music gets no risk back from the other
art forms movies and books, it's certainly books. They think
they're high falutin when you bring something somewhat intellectual where
they have to come to you. That's advantageous, but I

(01:20:13):
don't want to go too much more down that because
that's our that's between you and me. How does how
does someone end up being able to write a song
with you? Well? People, Um, the way it works is, uh,
my publisher or Jim or the world will um put

(01:20:34):
an idea in front of me, like I might see
somebody online, or I might I might think I'd love
to meet that person or whatever, and or um, my
publisher will say that we've got this you know young artists,
that's so good and would you have coffee with them? Um,
or you know, my manager Jim will say, there's a
there's a in our and our person is going crazy

(01:20:57):
about this artist. They really really want you to listen,
and I'll listen. So I listened to a bunch of music.
Usually if I have coffee with someone, it's already decided
because I usually like everybody. So I'll be like, oh,
that were they were great, that was amazing, Like, for sure,
I'll write a song with them, But but there's a
lot of effort that goes into just not like during
COVID you can write a song on zoom, you know,

(01:21:18):
but it's twice as exhausting as it was in person.
You know, you're you're depleted instead of inflated at the end.
And it's it's it's a it's got its limits, I
would say. So I'm doing like two sessions with people
a week, maybe three, but probably two. I like to
have two days with a person. I like to sleep
on it and come back to the same song. That's

(01:21:40):
harder to do during COVID, but it's been doable, and
it's harder for me to do because that means I
really only would be writing one song a week, but
I'd rather I'd rather have that second day with a person.
And uh, the main thing I listened for is like,
is you know raw songwriting? Like are the words cool?

(01:22:01):
Is there something unique being said in the words and
the and is the melody getting me? It's more like
the words and the resonance of the person's voice, just
the shape of the sound of their voice, Like is
it when they go for a note, is it bigger
because of their resonance? You know when they say a word,

(01:22:24):
does it shine a little extra because of their literally
just the tone of their head, you know, the way
they sound. And that's kind of what I'm looking for
is like that resonance and a person who has something
to say, okay, is it a slog or you're just
building to that moment of inspiration and it writes itself
half half and half like I never find it to

(01:22:45):
be well. I find it to be a slog if
the person is too uncertain, if my collaborator is too unsure,
if they're so unsure that they're also secondhand smoke unsure
of my ideas as well. I find that to be
a slog. And sometimes a person's insecurities or uncertainties or
wish to be great makes it hard for them to

(01:23:05):
recognize a great idea in front of their nose. And
and that is to me difficult. If I feel like
I'm like, if I'm like channeling something really good right now,
and you're like, I don't know, maybe should be working
on something else, I immediately start thinking, Okay, this is
a slog because I just saying something really great. And
I'm not a total egomaniac, so I I know when

(01:23:27):
i'm like really on, and I know when I'm okay, okay.
Desmond Child, who's written a lot of very successful records
the Internet era. He's saying, you know, the economics have changed.
If it's not gonna be the emphasis track, shall we
say the single? He doesn't even want to start because
you know, in terms of you got the fourth song
on the album is to be carried by the CD.

(01:23:48):
Now there's nothing right, So do you make any choices
based on that? Well, um, I mean yes and no.
Like often enough, a song that I work on gets
the emphasis, so I'm not discouraged about that. I also
don't necessarily at this moment um want to just I mean,
it sounds like Desmond would be willing to just stop

(01:24:10):
making music. If he doesn't isn't getting any emphasis track
on somebody's record. But for me, that's no. He's you know,
like many people, he's evolving Broadway shows. It's not like
he's not busy, but he's not always going to song
writing sessions with a person. That makes sense to me. Yeah,
So you know, I can sometimes tell when you know,
if an artist and a label, uh want to work

(01:24:33):
with me? Oh. This is sort of weird to say,
but I feel like sometimes a label will think, oh,
this artist needs to hang out with Dan because then
they'll get their mojo back. And I'm fine, with that.
But but I don't want that to be my job
getting people's mojo back. I want to make I want
to make great songs. Okay, you talked about secret smile

(01:24:55):
coming to you in a dream? Are the best song
songs like that the come to you in a flash?
Or can it be a song equally good if it
had been a slog? Well, it's more like you can.
You can duke it out with a song. You can
be like in a session with somebody or alone, and
you can be trying and trying and trying, and that's
usually not if you just if you're only doing that

(01:25:18):
all the way to the end, it's not going to
be great. But sometimes you know, during the slog, you
accidentally take a wrong turn or you you leave the
path you know, and you're suddenly you're in a wait
a minute, something is is good? Now, something just happened
that was good. Then if you have the balls to
to cut out the previous three hours of work and

(01:25:42):
just work on the one line that is it obviously happening,
that can be the flash of inspiration that comes out
of a slog. I'm definitely a believer and like I
had a painting and printmaking instructor who said, um, you know,
go to the studio every day even if you're not inspired,
And I'm like, why why should I go to the
studio if I'm not inspired, I'd rather go to the bar,

(01:26:04):
and she goes, yeah, But if you go to the
bar and the muse visits your studio, you're not gonna
be there. So I'd rather have the slog because sometimes
in the middle of the slog, like lightning strikes and
you're like, oh shit, this is amazing, you know. So
I find usually the best this is solo work. In
my case, the best inspiration usually comes in the shower

(01:26:24):
or when you know, I'm completely distracted by watching a
movie or television show, when my head is sold so
out of it. In terms of the work in the office,
I find I have to slow down enough well you
just kind of drift him and then all of a
sudden something for the muse to me to reach. Yeah,
I get that. That makes sense to me. And that's

(01:26:45):
like that sense of aimlessness is hard. It's hard to
kind of even the word achieve is the right word.
It's hard to achieve that kind of aimlessness. It's hard.
It's hard to fake you cannot get yourself. Okay, how
did you end up working with Chris Stapleton? Stapleton, I
can't remember who saw him first. There was this clip

(01:27:09):
that I saw online of Stapleton playing, Um, it wasn't
whiskey and you it was another song of his playing
a song at like a state fair and he was
it was with the steel drivers, Oh it was. It
was if it Hadn't Been for Love? And uh, he

(01:27:30):
was singing this song and there's people talking and someone
holding their phone, and there's people talking, and there's noise
and he's playing in one of those kind of like
the the tractor part of a semi trailer with the
side flipped up that does a temporary stage, you know,
and uh, he singing this song. It's all this background

(01:27:50):
noise and he's singing if it Hadn't Been for Love,
And I'm like, this is unbelievable. This guy is amazing,
Like I can hear it through the noise. And so then, um,
my manager Jim and I, Uh, every once in a
while he would he would send me, like we'd send
each other the same clip like you having a bad day,
you got to hear this, and and we'd send each

(01:28:12):
other the same clip, and uh, eventually there was this.
I was asked to write with the Preservational Jazz Band.
I was like, something, we gotta someone has to come along,
who can like bridge the gap between like me and
the Preservational Jazz band who's good at lyrics? And Stapleton
was like, maybe maybe he'll come. So basically, oh, and

(01:28:34):
I had done and in the round with him where
I sang after him at an ASCAP show, it was
like four writers. It was like Ingram Michaelson and Johnny
Resnick and Chris Stapleton and me. So every time we
went around, I had to sing after one of Chris's
crazy amazing like soul full, you know, like what do
you call this? Like blockbuster, you know, hit songs. So

(01:28:57):
I and we had a fun time on that show,
and we we talked all of that after, right, So
I called him up. I said, can you come down
to New Orleans with me and write with the Preservational
Jazz Band? This is before Traveler And he was like yeah,
but Dan, you know, I don't know anything about jazz.
I'm like, yeah, I know, but I think it's gonna
be cool. So we had we in the band, the
you know, the Press Hall band, and and Chris and

(01:29:18):
I had an amazing long weekend, like four days of
songwriting and laughing and fun. And then when Chris would
come to l A for one thing or another, he'd
come by my house and we'd write. We'd write a song,
not really first particularly a purpose. And then that one
of those songs was when the Stars Come Out and
he and he put it on Traveler and one of

(01:29:41):
the best songs on that album. Okay, in the twenty
odd years you have left, what do you want to do?
What do you want to achieve? Oh? Man, I'd like
to go to Paris again. I want to keep and
I want to keep making music. I want to um see,

(01:30:01):
you know my middle schooler grow up and graduate and
have a life. I want to keep meeting amazing brilliant
artists and see if we can't make something incredible together.
And where does a painting fit in. I don't really
paint anymore because it takes a lot of like infrastructure,

(01:30:24):
you have to have a house that's with an extra
room where you can be very messy, and I haven't
had that for a while. And I guess maybe I
haven't like prioritized it. I always try to do visual things,
like you know, I'm I did. I did the design
on this book of cards. It's you know, it was
a fun exercise for me. I do. I make um
drawings in my journals and I keep that part of

(01:30:46):
myself alive. But it's it isn't really part of my
vision for the future to like retire from music and
be a painter. Nothing of the sort. Not like Joni Mitchell.
Why Paris. I just the couple of times I've been there,
I've just enjoyed it so much. I just I just
love that place. I want to go back to. Speaking
of art, I want to go back to the Louver,
and I want to see the tweeries and I want

(01:31:07):
to see um l Entrelie, you know, I want to
see those places again. Well, you know, it's twenty I
hadn't been for a long time, and I went five
years ago, and the one thing I noticed was the light.
The light really is different in Paris. I mean, you know,
it's like it's hard to fathom until you're there. You go, okay,

(01:31:28):
I can tell why the artwork, etcetera. And certainly you know,
going to see all the museums. You know, I pretty exhaustively.
It's pretty astounding. Yeah, yeah, it's definitely that's I mean,
it's not really a do you know, I've had a lot.
I've had a lot of good fortune, So it's not
like I it's not like my my list has more
success on it. And what do you think you moved

(01:31:50):
from Minneapolis l A. You're cool with l A or
I love it? Because I love it. I have It's
with me about a year and a half to realize
that when I moved here that I didn't need to
change who I am. I could just stay being me.
I already had a circle of friends, I knew the
people that I wanted to play on the records. I

(01:32:11):
didn't have to become some sort of pop version of myself. Um.
And once I realized that, like, it was almost like
l A just opened up to me, like, oh no,
now you can meet some really smart people. Okay, here's
here's some neuroscientists for you to talk to. Here's you know,
someone to have lunch and talk about that. Like, I
just like the It's like l A has so many

(01:32:32):
brilliant people and there's a level of even though it's
got a bad rap on this score, there's a level
of idealism that I really really resonate with. Okay, and
going back to the muse, do you create every day? Yeah?
Pretty much Like even if I have like a crazy
chocolate block day and there's no room, I've probably played

(01:32:53):
piano for like forty minutes that day, or guitar something.
Try to think of a riff or think of a
phrase ease. And prior to going this covid era, if
you went on vacation, would you take a hiatus or
create then too. I kind of have an agreement with
my wife that I'm not going to bring a guitar
and play guitar all day long in a vacation. That's
not fair, So I actually do take breaks on vacations. Yeah, Okay,

(01:33:18):
this has been wonderful, Dan. I think we've gotten a
lot of insight into your life in your process, and
I could and I could tell why you're successful. And
thanks so much for doing this. A total pleasure, really
it It is a really nice conversation and it's good
to giving him until next time. This is Bob left
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