Sadler Vaden

“I need some kind of hopefulness to every song. There's just that element to pretty much everything I write.”

Sadler Vaden has a well of dark material to draw from, although he doesn’t like to write from that place. He may start there, but he usually doesn’t end there. Oh, and a lot of that material starts in the shower.

Sadler Vaden and I talked a lot about taking showers, and I’m pretty sure there’s a spot in our video interview where he says, “I’m the shower guy.” For context: we were discussing how many songwriting ideas come to him while in the shower. This is not unusual; many songwriters have told me the same thing, illustrating how boredom is a great conduit for the creative process. But in Vaden’s case it’s not just the boredom, it’s the water: he grew up on the South Carolina coast and spent a lot time in the ocean. Vaden lives in Nashville now, but when he goes home and swims in the ocean, the ideas flow. “When I go back home and I swim in the ocean, I get tons of ideas and inspiration. All the time,” he told me.

To be sure, Vaden’s songwriting process is not deliberate. He rarely sits down with the express idea to create. That’s a sure way to inhibit the creative process. “I don’t consider myself a dark songwriter,” he told me, but he has the material to draw from: growing up with little money, seeing the repo guys come for the family car, and both parents dying by the time he was 21. His songs, though, carry a redemptive and hopeful quality. “There's a large well of stuff to pull from if I need to start somewhere. But I don't tend to live there. I might start there, but I will pull the hope out of it,” he said.

You may know Vaden as the guitarist in Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit. He has a fantastic new album out called anybody out there? , his second solo album. The album showcases Vaden’s considerable guitar talent in a good ol’ rock record that Vaden also produced. Much has been made of the Tom Petty-esque sounds on the album, but I also hear Clapton and Joe Walsh. That variety in guitar styles makes this a great listen.

Read my interview with Sadler Vaden and watch the full version below. The transcription below has been edited for length and clarity.

Outside of songwriting, how much writing are you doing?

A

I do, but it's rare that I do. I keep telling myself, "I'm going to start journaling, but I'm going to wait until I'm back on the road because it's a little more interesting.” It's rare that I'll have the urge to just brain drain where I'm writing whatever comes to my mind. I think I do that when I'm in the process of writing songs and not happy with anything my brain is coming up with. That ignites the [creative] element. I probably should do it more; I know I'm a songwriter, but I don't see myself as much of a writer. Laughs.

Well, I can’t sit here and tell you that all songwriters write every day.

A

I'm always jotting little ideas down; I'm just not necessarily making a journal entry or trying to write poetry or a story. About once or twice a year though, I get these screenplay ideas, so I think I have a bit of that writer mentality. I think Neil Young said something about it once: he doesn't really write a lot of things down. He's able to just remember it, so he sticks with lines that are memorable and that are easy to remember.

So about these screenplay ideas...are we talking actual screenplays? Or are they thematic elements for for albums?

A

No, they’re totally like movies. Laughs.

Okay. Literal movies, so “screenplay” wasn't a metaphor for something else. It was an actual movie.

A

Yeah, for years I've had one that's more like a comedy. And then I had a dream on the tour bus a few months back that was a total sci-fi thing. I woke up with the entire outline. I wish it was like a song, but maybe I could turn it into a song.

“I don’t clock in and say ‘I’m going to write a song today.’ When I do that, there’s too much pressure to do it.”

Do you ever think about where you are or what you're doing when you get these ideas? Are they happening in some places more than others?

A

I haven't noticed anything around me in particular that that's worth noting. I think it usually happens after I've written a bunch of songs. My brain [doesn’t want to write], but it still wants to create. At that point, it's empty of songs. After I've finished an album, I don't write for a little while. I think it's good to take a small break.

John Oates told me a couple of years ago that he got a song idea after hearing two women at the table next to him at a Denver restaurant. How often do you get ideas like that, where you hear or see something and it spurs you to write a song?

A

It's usually not the title of a song, but it'll be lines in the song, like something maybe my dad had said or just something in the moment. And that's good. If you're using anything that's happened in your life, the chances are better that somebody is going to connect with it when they hear the song because we're not really all that different. So that's why Jerry Seinfeld is funny because all the things he talks about are just everyday occurrences. As a writer, I think it's a part of your job to look for those things that are happening around you.

Now listen to you: you started our conversation by telling me that you’ve never thought of yourself as a writer in the traditional sense, and you’ve just called yourself a writer several times. That’s a breakthrough.

A

Laughs. I guess I've done it to myself. I've conditioned myself because I've never really made a living as a songwriter. I've had it hammered into me that you're a guitar player, you're a guitar player. But I've written songs since I was 15.

You mentioned the bus earlier, so I want to talk about the role of motion to your process. I’ve heard a lot of songwriters talk about how, when they’re on the bus and staring out the window, or when they’re in a van or in a car, or on a plane or a train, motion really helps with the process. Does that happen with you?

A

A little bit. I have a really hard time writing on the road, man. I am awful at it. Just terrible. I know a lot of people do it. They're like I got to get on the road where I can write. I think I write better when I'm at my house and I'm in the room that I'm in now. Usually at night it occurs when I'm just feeling like nothing needs to be done. There's no dishes in the sink and things are pretty cleaned up around me. I can be chilled out and not thinking about anything. And I'm just sitting with my guitar. I'm not trying to write a song, but I'm just sitting with a guitar. That's when I write a lot of things that ended up being songs.

photos by Bridgette Aikens

Let’s talk about that ritual. It sounds like you write better at night, and you said you liked that room. Are there certain things you need to have with you? As a writer, there are certain places I need to be, and maybe a certain pen gives me confidence. Do you ever think about that?

A

It's funny what our brains commit to. I know that the comfort of my room seems to work a lot, but I've been asked before on this process and my answer is always the same: I get it however I can get it. It just happens when it happens. Usually the idea will enter, and then I start to craft a bit of an outline. Then things get filed away for a little bit. I don't know if that's good or bad, but it's later when I clock in and finish the job.

So I don't clock in and think I'm going to write a song today. Usually when I'm clocking in, I'm clocking in on something that is already sitting there and it's unfinished. When I do the clock in bit, that's when I like to be in my element. Before that, it's kind of like here it comes, so I'd I better jot it down. But when I get up and say I'm going to write a song today, there's so much pressure to do it.

So if I have this straight: the idea comes, then you write the outline?

A

It's usually a musical outline, more of a mood. And then I'm notorious for getting a verse and a chorus and then filing it away. Sometimes I finish it, but sometimes I step away from it, thinking it’s a great start and that I can memorize it and come back to later. But I've heard Robert Earl Keen say the key to writing a song is staying in the chair.

I feel like if I come up with something good that I think is good and I try to chase it down immediately, I might be missing out on something that could happen in my life. The song could end up being forced if I don't put it down for a minute and experience some more life.

Hemingway said that he’d always stop writing for the night when he knew he had something else to say because he was terrified of starting the next day with nothing left in the tank. That takes tremendous discipline. How long do you wait? How do you know when to return to it?

A

That's a good question. I think it depends on my mood and my inspiration. I do believe in waiting for that moment where you're feeling inspired, not to finish the song, but to pick up the guitar and create. I wait for that moment. And then if I don't have anything to do, like playing on my record or on something else I'm trying to finish, I'll usually sit down and finish it. I've got two or three things right now that are waiting. I just know that I'll get to them; I'll have to clock in and bear down on it.

That’s impressive. I think that would give me a lot of anxiety knowing that they’re there and I’m just wondering when it’s going to happen. That takes a lot of confidence.

A

They don't give me anxiety, but every day I think about the two or three things I have right now. They're there saying we're back here waiting, you know, just nagging me, and I'm like, I'll get to you in a minute!

I interviewed Chuck Prophet earlier today and he told me a similar thing. I heard Don Henley interviewed not too long ago; he said he was amazed how many songs came to him when he was unloading the dishwasher. How many ideas come to you in times like that, when you're bored or preoccupied with something else? I’ve heard songwriters tell me that they get ideas while cooking, gardening, walking, showering.

A

I'm concentrating too much when I cook because I really enjoy it. It's relaxing; I'm not stressed out when I'm cooking. But I'm concentrating, so my brain is occupied there. When I'm showering, my brain is free, and I don't have to think about anything. I'm not concentrating on how I'm putting the shampoo in my hand and all that.

I also think water plays an important role in music. You can put water near any major musical trend or a melting pot of music, like rivers, lakes, and oceans. All music towns have water near them. And I grew up on the coast. So maybe that has something to do with it when I'm in the shower because when I'm swimming in the ocean, I come up with with song ideas. All the time. I don't have an ocean near me anymore, but when I go back home and I swim in the ocean, I get tons of ideas and inspiration. It could also be the rhythm of the waves. [Vaden grew up in North Mytrle Beach, South Carolina.]

That’s interesting, because water has always played an outsized role in the themes of classic Irish literature. Anyway, you mentioned emotion earlier, so is there an ideal emotion when you get your best writing done?

A

I'm not a dark songwriter, and that's okay. Because hell, I work for a guy who writes pretty sad songs, you know? A lot of them do, and there are redemptive qualities to that kind of writing. But I need some kind of hopefulness to every song; there's just that element to pretty much everything I write.

It's hard for me to write from a place of sadness. Actually, I don't know that I find it hard to write from that place, but I find it hard to let it live there and end there. Everybody goes through hard stuff. I lost my dad when I was 18 partly due to alcoholism, and I lost my mom to cancer on my 21st birthday. We had really hard financial times. I've got plenty of stuff to pull from: addiction, men coming to repo the car, having to live in a house that the church provided for us, my dad waking with morphine dreams in the middle of the night. There's a large well of stuff to pull from if I need to start somewhere. But I don't tend to live there. I might start there, but I will pull the hope out of it.

When things aren’t working, do you try to push through, or do you set aside the songs with the hope that they’ll work later?

A

I often feel like I'm putting it off the inevitable. I know I have to finish them because they're good ideas. Usually I'll know that when I wake up in the morning, I’ll feel inspired, so I'll sit down and finish the things that are on hold. But I know that If I've had it for way too long, there's probably not a lot there. I'm not saying that I can't take a really old idea and finish it out, but I've got so many bits that I don't know if they'll ever get finished. There are two or three right now that are nagging me, so they're worth finishing. I've got a song called “The Real Thing” that I've had for two or three years, and I'm just waiting for that element to make it whole. I call it my “sword,” I'm still waiting to pull the sword out of the stone and say Ok, you got it.

I imagine that as a guitarist, the songwriting process typically starts with music, but does it ever start with the lyrics?

A

Yeah, sometimes they do, but I take it however I can get it. If it starts on the guitar, great, but sometimes it does start with a line or two and a melody. Then I'll sit down and go, What key is this in? What are the chords underneath? A lot of the time, I'm playing a riff and trying to put some words around it.

Is there a favorite line or maybe a pair of lines that you've written that you just think yeah, that’s pretty good.

A

My song “Good Man” on the new record. I worked really hard on that song to try to make it come across the right way without sacrificing what I wanted to say. My favorite lines in that song are "Through the clouds, I see clear water for all our future daughters/and I ain't givin' up the war, and I know what side I'm for/I want to be a good man." I like the imagery of seeing a bright future, and especially "through the clouds, I see clear water." It also puts you in the air, which I like.

What was the easiest song on the new album to write, and what was the most difficult?

A

The second song on the record, “Don’t Worry,” was the easiest. That took about 30 minutes. It was 9:30 at night and I was just rolling. I thought Don't worry and don't stop.

Probably “Good Man” was the hardest. It started off so easily. "Looking at my guitar and I want the song to shout" is the first line. It puts you in a completely different place from where the song ends up. But I thought that was cool. I thought it was almost like a Pete Townsend kind of thing. And then the writer is sitting there looking at his life and his perception of the world around him. I like the simplicity of where it starts.

But the second verse was the hard one to write. It was like, Well you've created the scene and we know what this person is seeing and what they're thinking, but now I had to tie in the bigger picture. The struggle was getting those lyrics right. Lyrics should be hard because if they weren't hard, everybody would do it. That is the hardest part for me. Melodies and music, and having the basis of a song, are the easy parts. But the second verse always kicks my ass. The first one comes a lot easier, and then I get to the chorus, although sometimes I work on that chorus first.

Last question: how much reading do you get to do?

A

I do some reading. My wife always gives me shit because I read a lot of rock books and stuff, but I'm like I'm still reading. She always tells me I have to read something. But I like these books because [if you're an artist and someone has written a book about you], it means you've lived quite the life. And you've probably had a lot of ups and downs. I like those books because they have an arc. The artist starts out scrappy, then they figure life out, then their wildest dreams come true. And then they come down the other side of the mountain and sometimes go all the way back up again. I like books like that. I just read The Alchemist, though I'm not much for huge books. I just like to be able to read something in a week.

What rock bios have you liked?

A

Greg Allman's book was really good. Another one, although he's not my all time favorite, was Eric Clapton's autobiography. That was really tough to read; I mean, it's a heavy, heavy burden. But that's someone who went to the top of the mountain, jumped off, then slowly climbed back up.

So what would your wife wish you to read then? What books is she pushing on you? That's what I want to know.

A

Laughs. Just anything that's not nonfiction or rock and roll stuff. She wants me to read The Prince of Tides since we're from South Carolina. There was a book called Rule of the Bone by Russell Banks that I liked a lot. He also wrote The Sweet Hereafter. I like his writing a lot. His books have a grit to them. They're a little dark, but there's always a silver lining to them.