The song usually starts with a chord progression, either on piano or guitar then we’ll add vocals or melodies. I’ll just demo it real fast and bring it to the band, then we decide how to approach it. Sometimes we’ll try several different versions and we’ll talk about what the drums and bass should do. We’re not a live band at all. We’re a band because what you hear in the end is sort of a composite of all our ideas, but we’re not a live band in the sense that it’s very much a studio project. We’ve been doing this for a while so it’s always good to mix things up and not get too set in your ways. This was an interesting record because we had unlimited time and space. We didn’t feel the pressure in the sense that we were taking breaks between sessions. A lot of times the guys think about songs by living with earlier versions of them and saying “I like this” or “this isn’t working” and we’ll go back and try it another way. That was a good thing for us because with other records we were under the gun. No one was watching the clock or anything and I think the songs are better for it.
Conor Oberst on recording The People’s Key
(via natewalcult)
