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MARCH 2010 TAXI Road Rally 2009 Jeffrey Steele — Road Rally Keynote Interview, Part 2 Interviewed by Michael Laskow Editor’s note: Normally, we’d put a bio about the interviewee here. This interview is so good we didn’t want to edit much out to create space for Jeffrey’s incredibly long and impressive bio. To see it, please go to his site. http://www.jeffreysteele.net/about/ How often do you and your co-writers walk out of the room after a writing session knowing that you’ve got a huge hit that you just finished? I’m always wrong about that. [laughter] I’ll think, “This is better than ‘Imagine,’ man.” “It’s really not, Jeff.” But it’s funny, any time I’ve ever thought, “Oh my God, this is going to be a #1 song,” then someone would call me a say, “We cut blah-blah,” and I say, “You cut that?” That seems to be the way it always happens … for me, anyway. It’s weird, too; I never sit on it. I don’t know if that’s just a habit or… You write it and walk away? Pffft … next song. Like someone’ll come up to me and go, “Hey, that song you’ve got on the soand-so record, how does it go?” I have this song out right now—a brand new song—and this woman came up with the lyric and wanted me to sing the song that night at the show. I’d never done it before, and I couldn’t remember how the song went. I said, “I’m sorry. I’d need a couple of days to go look for the demo and try to remember it.” [laughter] That’s sick, huh? Twisted. But when I’m singing them and I’m onstage, I’m in that song every time. I’m in that lyric. Do you write at targets, knowing which artists will be in the studio soon? I can answer that really quick: No. I get asked to a lot, and I have a few times. But as a rule, no. The next one relates to what you were just talking about. Do you write more from personal experience, or by projecting yourself into what you think is a more universal experience for the listening audience? Pretty deep stuff, huh? Yeah, that’s a good one; stayed up late? [audience laughter] I always try to bring in real stuff Jeffrey Steele gives it all he’s got during his post interview performance. as much as possible, and sometimes a hundred percent. Some of the time it’s just a moment you’re in and you have to write about it. It’s like therapy—you have to just write it and get it out. And then, you know, in a co-writing situation, where there are two or three people contributing ideas, you want to get your stuff in there the way it happened for you. I think that’s what makes co-writing so cool, is that you can—not really dumb down—but simplify your ideas and make them more profound as you do so. You’re kind of forced to have to edit those ideas you have. But a lot of my stuff is imagination and things I just come up with in my head. Do you do it most days? Do you wake up every day, and going to work for you is going off into a room in your house or going down to the Row. I go to my studio every day, and I write every day. If I’m on the road I’m texting an idea on my phone. My main thing is that I always listen to people when they’re talking to me. I always look at the way their eyes look when they’re talking to me, when they light up, and when they show emotion—just the way people say things in a conversation. It might be a random—certainly not a hook sort of line that you would say was a great hook—just a random phrase anybody would say in a casual conversation. I look at the way that they say that with their eyes and their expressions. Because when people say things there’s emotion coming out. To me, that’s the key to writing a great lyric—to know how to capture what those people are saying. So do you, literally, in that moment when somebody says something, remember it for 30 seconds after you’ve walked away from each other and then text it? Oh no, I’ll remember it forever. And I don’t have a good memory for the most part. I really don’t. But with lyrics and words, I’ll remember forever. Someone will say something and it will come back to me 15 years later. I tell the classic story for me … I used to play in a bar down in San Continued on page 43

http://www.jeffreysteele.net/about/

Recording - March 2010

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