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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: 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 so-and-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.
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“I look at the way [people say things] 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.”
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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 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 Juan Capistrano called Swallows with my band seven nights a week. There was a guy who would come in there every night drunk, and he wanted to hear "Ring of Fire" by Johnny Cash. And he would get so drunk, he'd come up to the foot of the stage with beers in his hand and scream, "Hell, yeah. Turn it up. Right on." If you've heard that song ["Hell Yeah"], that's exactly how I wrote it. I wrote it how he said it, and I sung it how he said it to me. I've never forgotten the way he looked when he said it to me.
Is his name on the copyright?
But, man, he really wanted to hear that song. Then he'd pass out drunk and never get to hear it. [laughter] Things like that, even if it's just like, "Hey, how ya doin'? To me, "Hey, how ya doin'?" is a great song title if somebody says it a certain way; you know, if there's sadness in their eyes, or if they haven't seen you in a while and they light up. I don't know if that's just something that I'm able to do, was born with or that I've learned. Maybe it's both.
Well, when you go back and listen to stuff you did 10 years ago—or even 20 years ago—do you think, "What an idiot I was for thinking that was good at the time." Or did you have that...
Yeah, about a week ago...the new song.
I remember when I was still working in the studio, I'd go back and listen to stuff I worked on a year later and go... At the time I thought it was brilliant. Do you have those moments?
Yeah. Well, and the crazy part is when they cut one of those songs, and they say, "It's gonna be the next single," and I go, "No, no, not that one. Noooo. Please don't let that one get out there."
Here's a recent example. I was in Nashville a few weeks ago with a buddy of mine, Kip Raines, who's a fantastic songwriter and a great friend. He's really been helping me through a lot of things in my life lately that have been changing and going on. He's just a wonderful guy. We write together all the time, and sometimes we just talk. We just sit and talk, and we don't write anything. We're just doin' inventory I guess—some sort of mental inventory. But he was at his house one day and we were supposed to get together. And the weather in Nashville—you've been there—it just changes on a dime, and it was a really awful day with really bad crazy storms...crazy storms. He apparently had a little tornado touch down in his neighborhood and knock down like five trees. So he took a picture on his phone and he texted me, and it just said, "Who needs tornados?" and he sent it to me. And, you know, when I get the text, I'm just goin', "Shit, who needs tornados, spinning around, touchin' down, breakin' homes and families, rippin' everything right up off the ground?" I did, I did, you know? I just started getting into this whole lyric about it. You know, who needs a broken heart? Who needs this? It turned into a song for me, because it was the way that he sent it, and they way that I read it. I was like, wow, that would be a great kind of thought-provoking idea if I could figure out what this is. You know, like tornado—the metaphor— in your mind twisting around. We have crazy lives, you know? So those things hit me in those ways, and I don't know if that is an inborn thing or a learned thing, or both. Like I said, I am just really aware of it, and I try to stay aware of it all the time.
In my intro, I talked about how I think that you see things that the rest of us see but we really don't... We observe them, but we don't really see them. We don't absorb them. And you're able to take that stuff, and take a common thought or common occurrence and turn that into something? My 12 year-old is a budding songwriter. She's getting really good, and she and I will spend time in the car, and "My Town" has been our song of the last month. She could sit here and tell you more about that song than you might even know anymore. Literally, I'll tear it apart for her and say, "Now, do you see why he went to that chord at this moment to emphasize that word?" Or, "See why he went up an octave on the vocal there?"
That is the crucial part to me. You can only get that from writing a zillion songs that suck. But you stumble onto things that are really cool. "That song really sucked, but that part was really cool." Or, "Man, the way that particular word fell over that D-minor chord." That just gets my wheels spinnin' big time.
I had that song for Montgomery Gentry, which was a big hit for him. So now they say, "Well, let's get Jeff to come in and write some songs and produce the record. Then we'll get a bunch of songs. It'll be great." So they call me up, and I was happy to do it because I love the guy. I've known him for a while. So the first thing I asked the label was, "What are the guys looking for, for this record. What kind of stuff are they looking for?" And the guy at the label goes, "Man, you know what we need? We need 'My Town Part 2'" And I look at him and I was like, "What? That's like Jaws 2." You know what I mean? [laughter] I said, "I don't know about that. I can't do that. I wanna write something I'll be proud of." And I caught myself saying that. I caught myself saying, "I wanna write something I can be proud of." So I hung up with the guy, and I wrote down the title "Something to Be Proud Of" and called one of my buddies, Chris Wallin, and said, "Anybody every write a song called 'Something to Be Proud Of'?" And he goes, "Man, I'll meet you in 30 minutes." [laughter]
When you guys walk into the room and you're on a mission; you know what you're gonna do—you're not like scratching for "What can we do?" How quick does it come together, and do you walk out of the room from that session with a song?
Well, what I think you need to do is look... Especially if you're writing a title, which everybody does. Everybody gets a line—they want to write the line. I don't do that all the time. I try to find the lyrics in the music; | |  | | | Jeffrey Steele giving long-time TAXI member and friend Diane Waters a hug shortly after receiving his Lifetime Achievement award. |
I wait for the lyrics to come out to me in the music, whatever that music is. I really truly believe the words will show themselves to you, you know what I mean? But in a situation like that, as a general rule, once you get any song started, what is your title? What is your title? So for me, that particular title... I probably have a better song reference I can use than that one, but it still applies—"Something to Be Proud Of." So everything I'm gonna write about has to lead me to "Something to Be Proud Of," if that's gonna be my title. So where do I go with that? I start thinking about my dad. My dad was a hard-working guy, and I was proud of him. I started thinking about him, and the first thing that came to my mind—the first line of the song—was there's a story that my daddy tells religiously, like clockwork every time he sees an opening in the conversation. (I write a lot of words when I write.) But I started writing about something he was always proud of telling these war stories, which we always claimed we really didn't want to hear. But I loved hearing them, you know? So everything in that song led me to that hook.
I wrote a song with Chris Wallin called "Speed. We had the title, which was "Speed," so the first line of the song is "I'm tired of spinning my wheels. I need to find a place where my heart can go to heal. I need to get there pretty quick." Every line in the song somehow pointed to that hook.
Do you go back and fine tune. Like, "...a pale-blue water tower, with 'I Love Jenny' painted in bright green"; do you go back and add green, or does that come to you in the initial inspiration? And later in the song "My Town," and Jenny's in the car with a kid. Do you have to go back and add detail later to make it more interesting, to paint better word pictures? Or does that come out in the first draft?
Well, it'll just come out in the session when we go to record the demo, when we go to record the song. I'll be singing the song, and all of a sudden some lyrical change will pop up to me that I'll go, "Hey, that sounds better if I sing it like that, because the way that the consonants and the vowels get inflected when you sing is a huge deal over the course. And sometimes but sings better than and—something stupid like that. Sometimes a certain word will fall a certain way and you don't realize that until you're in the process of making the recording.
My song is never done, man. You go in there with what you've got, and then I go into the studio with these great musicians that are just dying to make their statement, you know? So I apply the same technique—I'm making it sound like a science; I don't know if it is or not; it's just what I do. Like when the guys are in the room playin' and a dude picks up his guitar and he's strumming, screwing around getting his guitar tuned, and I've got this song on my brain that I'm about to cut, and wondering how am I gonna make this song sound great? Then I go, "Hey, what are you playin'?" He might play something that just hits me. It might be some stupid thing while he's tuning his guitar. I just did that the other day in the studio. This guy was just goofing around on a lick that was in the same key as the song that we were cutting, and I was like, "Man, can you do that, except maybe change that last note. Can you play that lick goin' into the chorus?" It was like, wow, it's a hook. Huge, you know? And then the musicians, man, use 'em. Thank 'em, love 'em. I owe so much to so many musicians in the studios that have loved my songs, and when they hear my songs, they want to make them better, or they get ideas of their own. Like, a lot of times people will shut them down and go, "Hey, don't be puttin' stuff in my song." You know, let them throw a guitar lick in that's gonna be a great hook. Let that happen! Let it happen all the time. And then what I do is too is you gotta pay some of that back, so I'll write with them. I'll set up writing appointments with all of those guys, and get in rooms with them and write songs with them. I want to see if they've got stuff in them they need to get out, or haven't been able to get out.
Don't miss Part 3 in next month's TAXI Transmitter!
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