Sister Hazel
Sand, Sea & Crash Debris
I spoke with the band Sister Hazel, specifically Ken Block, Drew Copeland, Jett Beres, and Ryan Newell. (Drummer Mark Trojanowski was warming up because they were about to go on stage.) We discussed:
Their new album... Sand, Sea & Crash Debris
Co-writing a song with Emerson Hart of Tonic
Ken co-writing a song with his daughter
Which member of the band is "the unwriter"
The songs "Hole In Your Life," "All Goes By So Fast," and "Lay Your Worry Down"
And more
Audio
Transcript
Cris Cohen: I was talking with Emerson Hart from Tonic, and he was talking about co-writing the song, “Hole In Your Life” (with Drew). He said that you guys had “this long, great conversation before we even wrote the song. We talked about what was going on in our lives, the places that were full, the places that we questioned, the places that were empty, all those things. That's what made it great. The craft comes later.”
What are the advantages to backing into a song that way?
Drew Copeland: I feel like people can tell when you're being honest or not. Not to say that there aren't a lot of songs that we've written that are not actual life moments for us. But I think those are the ones that probably connect more when you're actually putting something real into the song.
It's funny because, Emerson and I, we've been going back and forth over the past couple of weeks, and it's always fairly deep stuff.
Jett Beres: He's not very surface-y. [laughs]
Drew Copeland: No, he's not very surface-y, which I dig. I like that a lot.
But, yes, I do recall that. And I do think that that's the kind of stuff that people tend to gravitate towards… songs that are authentic and honest. You can feel it.
Cris Cohen: So it's like, “Let's try and get real with ourselves. And the better we are at that, the better the material”?
Ken Block: We should try that. [laughs]
Drew Copeland: No, surface is good. [laughs]
Adding Without Obscuring
Cris Cohen: Also, building off of quotes from others, when I got to talk to Dean Felber from Hootie and The Blowfish, I was matching you guys up instrument to instrument. He said what he liked about Jett and his playing, “He's everything a bass player needs to be, and then some. He adds to them without obscuring them in any way.”
How do you learn to add without obscuring? Because that sounds quite complicated.
Jett Beres: Hold on a second. I've got a tear that's coming down. That's beautiful. [laughs]
Well, bass players have to stick together, right? I could say the same thing about Dean. It's one of those instruments that you're gluing the bottom end, the rhythm, the feel, the heartbeat, with all the top end stuff.
You have a role as a bass player. I try to play that role when we record and when we're live on stage. I feel like it's one of those instruments that, if you notice it, you're probably playing a little too many notes, which has happened to me on occasion.
Ken Block: What? What are you talking about? [laughs]
Jett Beres: But if it's wrong, you really notice it.
Drew Copeland: You and Mark are always exposed to that.
Ken Block: I talk bad when you're done.
Jett Beres: Yeah, that's a great compliment. I love my role in the band. I love my role musically, and that kind of transposes into our kind of weird band family dynamic.
Cris Cohen: And we talked (in the past) about your love of being a team player, and you were always into team sports.
Ken Block: No. Teen. Teen sports. [laughs]
Jett Beres: Yeah, always a team guy.
Cris Cohen: And yet, the fascinating thing with this album is, at the beginning of “All Goes By So Fast,” the bass is very prominent. It establishes the groove. How did that come about, and how comfortable were you leading the charge?
Jett Beres: Well, I think it was one of those things, you're never really sure. That's not how the song came in. It came in completely different. And we were in one of those really cool creative flows with the song.
And to have the songwriter, Ken, open that up to us to go, “Hey, let's just try different things and see what works and what feels good, and chase that.” That was really where that came from.
And that was the coolest part about making this whole record is we did that a lot. We allowed the songs to kind of meander to where they felt good. And when they felt good, we all kind of looked around and went, “Oh, wait a minute.”
And so, you're not locked into anything. You're following your emotion. That's what translates to people, right?
So, we didn't set out to go, “This is where the song is going to start.” It organically grew from a groove. And then I started crafting this bass line. The guys were in the room, and they were like, “Take out that part,” and “Maybe this is a little better.” Then I had this little bass line, and they were like, “Let's just start it with that and build off of that.”
But once again, it was just very much following the room, following the energy. And that song is a perfect example of that.
Ken Block: I'm an R.E.M. fan. And I actually emailed Mike Mills a couple months ago and said, “Hey, man. About once a year, I go through a one- or two-week all-R.E.M., all-the-time phase. I just wanted you to know that, something about the way your bass supports things, I want to sing your bass lines. It is an absolute fingerprint sonically in what you guys do, vocally too.”
Jett Beres: That's a different band, though. [laughs]
Ken Block: No, I know. But hold on. It got me thinking a lot about – especially when we first got together – Jett was very much the same way. You would bring in songs, and you'd write them on the bass. Like “Don't Think It's Funny” or “Space Between Us.”
And he also used to play the bass… he would hold it way up high like a medallion. He'd play way up high like that.
But he always had the ability to create a melody within there that made you kind of want to move, bounce, and follow it through the song.
Bass players… either don't notice them at all, or they're super flashy.
But then there are guys like Jett, like Mike Mills, like your dude (John) Taylor of Duran Duran, some of those bands. You follow the bass line through the song, and it's a lot of fun to do that.
I was thinking, “Oh, we've got a guy like that too.”
Co-Writing Songs With His Dad And His Daughter
Cris Cohen: And actually, staying with that song, so the fascinating thing is, Ken, you wrote this song with your daughter. And then listening back to the Live Live album, you talk about how you got to write a song with your hero, your dad. I'm curious, what were the similarities in those writing experiences, and how were they different?
Ken Block: They were very, very different. My dad was an accomplished piano player. Extremely talented. Two degrees in music. He called me one day and said, “Hey, I think I have an idea for a song.”
I thought, for sure, he would have this piece of music. But he didn't. He had, “If she's out there somewhere, somewhere.” He had this thing of lyrics.
And as soon as I heard him read it to me, I heard in my head how I wanted it to go. If you guys remember, it started out on the piano, remember? We were out in LA. Then we turned it into a little bit more of a rock song.
Having my dad even ask to do that… but I've got to say, one of the great joys of my life was seeing him get a check from Universal Records for royalties. He had it copied and framed and put on the wall. He was very proud of all of us and for him to be a part of it.
And with Alaina, my role in the relationship is different. And it was kind of coming to one of those milestones where I was getting ready to be an empty nester. This year. I mean, she just left for school. Andrew will tell you, not too far. She stayed pretty close in town.
But she and I are extremely close. We'd written a couple of little songs together before. And when your daughter walks in and says, “Hey, Dad, you want to write a song?”… It's like when a two-year-old hands you a fake phone. You answer it.
And I said, “Absolutely.”
So kind of like what Andrew was talking about, probably not as deep as he and Emerson got… we were just talking about our lives together and how quickly things kind of go by. And don't blink. Don't miss it.
She's got some good melody ideas. And she's more of a “Dad, you can beat that” kind of writer. Like when we talk about lines or I'd sing it, she’d go, “Nope” or she'd say, “You're too old to sing that line. Let's rewrite that.”
Jett Beres: We needed her around a couple of other times.
Ken Block: [laughs] She's a good editor.
But both of them were extremely rewarding experiences for me.
Cris Cohen: And, Ryan, the guitar sound on that is really cool and interesting. It reminded me of the story you told about the creation of “Mandolin Moon,” where you talked about how it was, “Let me just play something that feels good to play.”
And the guitar part in this (song) has that element of fun. I'm wondering if it was the same creative spirit that allowed you to create this… almost pinball effect.
Not Getting Stuck On The Demos
Ryan Newell: What I enjoyed the most about making this record is that we didn't get stuck on any demos. A lot of demos… you listen to them and you start chasing the demo. And if it's not exactly like the way it was brought in, then you end up going down the rabbit hole and trying to chase it.
But we didn't do that with this record. We actually said, “What if we went at it from a completely different approach and turned the song upside down just to see what happens? It might be terrible. It might be great.”
And we got lucky a lot of times on the song turning out to be a different thing sonically, that we've never done before. It was a lot different than the demos. It excited us.
We had a couple moments where we were like, “Should we go with the old version or the new version?” And every time we went with the new version. Because it excited us that we were doing something different.
And that was an example of – of course the song was written and the chorus was there – but I felt like it needed some kind of rhythmic driving guitar that was a part, not just strumming the chords. So it has a distinct rhythm to it. It just felt good.
Ken Block: If you remember, what was cool… there were more lyrics. It was more wordy. And I think it was you, Jett, that said, “That's too much. You're trying to squeeze too much in there.”
Jett Beres: You sure that wasn't Andrew? He's the unwriter.
Ken Block: He is the unwriter.
Drew Copeland: Somebody has to be.
[laughs]
Ken Block: I went to pick those out and let you fill those holes with hooks. And we took what I had there, and it ended up being part of like a bridge section later on in the song. But it was really a change.
Jett Beres: But I'm glad you're bringing this song up, because the collaborative nature of this really encouraged us throughout the making of this record. And how this one in particular came together. We were encouraged to take chances and to trust each other and to…
Ken Block: Have fun.
Jett Beres: Yeah. And it was fun. It was a fun record to make.
Lay Your Worry Down
Cris Cohen: Building on that spirit and taking chances… what I thought was very different, but really brought all of your talents together, was “Lay Your Worry Down.”
And I encourage people, get the freaking CD. Get the vinyl. Because the sounds that you guys create, both as you fade into the track and then also fading out of the track, there are all these great harmonies going. There's all this organ. Again, it's this very Beatles-esque immersion.
And it's got this really heartfelt message that, especially nowadays, I think is very necessary. How did all of that develop?
Jett Beres: I actually brought that song in. It was one of those things… I've read about this happening to some of my heroes, and it actually happened to me. It came to me in a dream.
The refrain, “Lay your worry down,” was my mom talking to me in a dream. I woke up and could see her face. I waited until the family left, I sat down at the piano, and, within about 15 minutes, wrote probably 75 - 80% of that song. It just kind of channeled from this dream.
I brought it to the guys. They gave me some rein. We have this thing… when you bring in a song, you're the captain. You're steering the ship. But we've all recorded enough with each other to learn that each one of us has gifts that they can bring to make it a better piece.
So we got in there and started working it up. What we ended up with was a very bare-bones way of delivering it with piano, vocal, and strings, a beautiful string arrangement. Then I really pushed to have this big… let the band take it out. Let Ryan take it out and deliver emotionally what I was trying to deliver vocally without the pipes to do it.
I have the words, but I'm the bass player. I'm not a great singer. But I wanted him to deliver what I felt. And Ryan, I'll let you take it from there. But I pushed him pretty hard on this one. I made him do a lot of takes.
Because I've been with him for 30 years, and I know what he can do. And a lot of times, Ryan can just… he'll just play something, and it's the first take. But I was looking for something a little more.
Ryan Newell: If we're talking about the outro solo, that was something that I did in the studio with Jett and Ben (Jackson), our producer.
It's a long outro. So it's kind of hard to keep it a cohesive thought, where it was lyrical and it made sense from beginning to end. It could start to get repetitive at some points.
I did a solo in the studio. At some point, we all got on the phone, and I was like, “I can beat that.”
I have a studio in my basement at my house. And in a lot of ways, that is my favorite way to record, because I don't have to embarrass myself. I can take chances and mess up and do it over and over again if I have to. So I really took my time with that to make sure that it had a beginning, a middle, and an end. And that it was lyrical instead of more of the flashy thing.
Cris Cohen: Yeah, it had a very David Gilmour, “Comfortably Numb” kind of plaintive wail to it.
Ryan Newell: That's a huge compliment. He's definitely one of my favorite players of all time, so that's a massive compliment.
Jett Beres: This is one of my favorite solos of Ryan's from all of our records.
Ken Block: Two things. One is that intro bit that you're talking about that kind of swells into it. I had made a suggestion about making it the end of the track before, remember?
Kind of like a segue, so that if you wanted to listen again, that it kind of started on that downbeat. So, it's just that compromise.
He's like, “No, man.” He (Jett) goes, “I hear it a certain way. I hear it build like that.”
But we had conversations like that.
And the other thing is, I went in the booth to sing it first. And it wasn't my song. It's his song.
And I got to, for the first time with you, kind of coach you through the whole session of singing a song. “Try it like this. Try to have it come out like this.”
Some of it was weird to him. Like, “Are you sure that's good?”
I think you went in and fixed a couple of things.
Jett Beres: It was a pretty great moment. Because throughout our career, I've been on the other side of the glass for Ken. On nuances, I hyper-focus on that stuff in the studio.
He was the best coach for me, delivering this song. Really got the best out of me.
Ken Block: I think it's an amazing song. It sounds great.
