Jack, several years ago you were asked what the key is to success as a musician, and you answered that it involves finding the thing that brings you discomfort and sitting in it. What kind of discomfort is informing your work these days?
Well, to me, the core discomfort in my writing has always been reckoning with grief. What’s so fascinating about grief is how it changes, and it changes through the lens of life that you’re in. It changes. It goes on. Eventually you start reaching a point where the grief is not even with you every day, and it’s almost more sad. That’s always been the driving force for me as a musician because when I really was growing as a writer, when I was young, that’s when my sister got sick, and a few years later she died. That time period of my teenage years, that chunk which is obviously formative, that was the story… And a part of you freezes. The part of me that froze, I’m just trying so hard to drag into the present, it’s almost like there’s like two of me, and I’m trying to join it as one person. So I would say that’s the great discomfort.
And of course that kind of discomfort impacts every part of your life, not just your songwriting.
Right, how does that affect my relationships? How does that secondary me, that ghostliness affect my marriage, my family relationship, my friendships, my band, all of it. And so even a song like “dirty wedding dress,” from the new Bleachers album everyone for 10 minutes, which I think is pretty fun, even that is an expression of that discomfort because I’m saying that I don’t want to be casually seen; it’s about the past and the future, and trying to push forward as hard as I can.
What is it like grappling with that through music? Is it cathartic?
I think the act of writing these things into songs is hopeful, yeah. Writing it down and singing it and then putting it out, even if it’s the darkest thing in the world, the hope is inherent. The big connective tissue I feel is needing to understand something. What does this mean? Why do I feel this way? If I feel pretty happy or joyful about something — maybe this is like a glitch in me, but I’m not dying to explore it further. Because it feels like a nice thing I can just sit in. It doesn’t even make me want to write, it makes me want to just be happy. So often the things that I don’t understand, which are usually more dissonant things, are the things that come up in my songs.
“When you’re writing, it’s a skill that you can’t activate in a certain moment. It happens or it doesn’t, and it happens at weird times. For me, it’s almost involuntary, it’s all a gut thing.”
Does songwriting and lyricism come fairly naturally for you?
When lyrics come to me, they come more randomly. Most of the time, I’m just sort of like free associating, then I grab something that is really interesting to me and it gets me to the next stop, and then I get lost again. But it kind of happens in all different ways, sometimes you’re compelled to tell a story, then sometimes you just see what comes out of you. And what’s interesting to me is that I’ve never really settled on, “This is my favorite way to do it,” because once I get really acquainted with one way, it leaves and then you have to chase it somewhere else. When you’re writing, it’s a skill that you can’t activate in a certain moment. It happens or it doesn’t, and it happens at weird times. I’ve never understood this idea of anyone who has a process that they’re sure of or knows when the next one is going to come. For me, it’s almost involuntary, it’s all a gut thing.
It sounds like you’re really interested in capturing the purity of the moment.
Sure, I mean, I could sit down and write lyrics and make music all day long, spend a lot of time chipping away, speed it up, slow it down, play it live, program it, whatever it is… You do all these things that are learned skills, but they’re kind of irrelevant, because you’re just trying to hear that thing that you can’t really describe. So I just try to put myself in the position where I’m ready to grab it if I hear it.
Is that instinctiveness why you choose to do a lot of the Bleachers production and instrumentation yourself?
No, it’s whatever the song needs. Take “dirty wedding dress,” again for example, I want it to sound like that moment when we’re an hour into the show, and we’ve just transcended to this place with the audience and everyone’s sweating. I wanted it to feel like that moment, like a love letter to what we do live. But I was alone in London when I wrote that song and so I just impersonated everyone, thinking I would have the band re-record everything. But then me dreaming of the band was actually more powerful for this song than the sound of the actual band. I fell in love with the way it sounded originally, so that’s how we kept it.
How does it work generally for Bleachers? At what point in the music process does the band come in?
I’ve always written alone. I’ve never written lyrics with anyone else, and that’s still how it goes with Bleachers. The band comes into focus when we’re recording the music and when we’re playing live. But I do think we’ve recently come into our own, I don’t know, touring together and playing live together for so long… It just grows and grows. It’s a lived life together. It’s like a six-way marriage! (Laughs) This thing happens when you spend a completely inappropriate amount of time with a group of people. You just can’t fake that. You go through life together, and all corners of it, the happy, the sad, the weird, the great, and it comes out in your playing.
What about when you’re working as a producer, collaborating with other artists? Is that a totally different thing to collaborating with a band?
Well, the similarity is that it’s all good stuff, and it’s easy for me to know if this is working, or it’s not. When you’re in any kind of collaboration, you want everyone to be looking at the same thing, going in same direction. And if not, you can feel it, and it’s not bad — it just doesn’t work. Everyone feeling the same thing, it’s paramount. With the band, coming together to support the songs, it’s the fun part, everyone picks their lane of how to bring something to life and we do it. And then it goes out into the world.
We’ve been talking about a lot of big questions of life and self, but it sounds like all of that weight goes away when you’re playing and making music with your band.
The best way I could summarize how playing live feels is… I am a bit of hypochondriac. I am constantly stressed about things in my life, but when I’m on stage with the band, I can’t even remember to think about that. I could lick the floor. I could dive into the audience. I am so out of my head, in a way that I wish everyone could find a place in life to go. And it’s always been that way since I was 13, and first started playing shows. It’s incredibly good on my soul. I like surrounding myself with these people. It’s why I have such a joy to be on tour and going into the studio to record a new album.
Even after your multiple Grammy wins and numerous critical accolades, is it fair to say that you’re in it for that feeling, rather than the awards?
I’ve been doing this for so long, I mean, long before I had any of those kind of accolades. And I did it for a reason then, and I do it for the same reason now. So yeah, the Grammy wins, those things are wild and real and have effects, but when you go into the room and you close the door, and you’re just there for this one reason, listening to your gut and your soul. You’re making something that is so much bigger than winning an award or being recognized.