Northern Transmissions: You’ve been writing music for a long time, whether that’s been with Pedro or your own name or other projects. Is there something about songwriting that took you a long time to figure out?

David Bazan: I think I’m still figuring things out. I was thinking in the van today about something, and I felt like something unlocked in my head about songwriting. It’s an elusive process, and I like to think I’m still honing my skills or whatever. Yeah, it’s endlessly fascinating hearing songs and how they work.

NT: In a couple of years, it’ll be the 30th anniversary of the first Pedro record, It’s Hard to Find a Friend. You guys still play songs off that album, and it’s interesting to hear how much they’ve changed from the recorded versions.

DB: Yeah, we like to play some of the old songs, certainly. They just find a way in the way that our hands and instruments are now, and I feel like we owe that to ourselves and the audience to find a new voice with which to sing.

NT: In 2019, you brought back Pedro after years of putting out records under your own name, and it seems like the name has meant many different things to you throughout your musical life. What does the name mean to you now?

DB: Well, for the first three records that I made under the name Pedro the Lion, it was the name of a process by which I made records. That kinda changed by Achilles’ Heel a little bit. It’s a process that I stopped doing or pursuing kind of deliberately after Pedro, and then I came back to that process to work under the band name again, but also, I knew I was making this series of records that are autobiographical and about different towns that I lived in. As I was starting to do the first one, I thought, “Man, I really wish I had a band name for this”, because I was still using my name. And then I realized, “Oh, I DO have a band name for this!” When envisioning the new project, I thought I could do everything in the kitchen sink in terms of production, and then I realized what I really love is figuring out three-piece arrangements for songs. So, I had already decided that that’s what it was gonna be, and coincidentally, that is what Pedro is.

NT: Do you think keeping that three-piece configuration helps to keep the sound fresh?

DB: I think it’s just economical. There was a period in 2002 when Control came out, and we were supporting Control when we were a four-piece, like 2002-2003. The band was playing bigger places, and I could afford to bring another person out, but only one of the arrangements on Control is tough to do as a trio, and we figured out how to do that on “Magazine”. So by 2004-2005, when we were touring Achilles’ Heel, we were back to a trio. You know, originally, the band was a five-piece on the first EP. Partly, a trio is just a really economical way- not just financially, but I also like the economy of having to write for that. It’s challenging in a way that I really enjoy. To get an arrangement that hits right and to get it up on stage with just three people is just really exciting. Everybody is like a solo instrument almost in a trio, because there’s nobody just holding it down. Everybody’s gotta be both holding it down and kind of animating things too. It’s easier for me to navigate and manage somehow. I could go on and on about this, but there are a lot of examples of classic rock being three-piece arrangements with a guitar solo in the middle part. It’s just how my imagination with songwriting has tended to work. Maybe it won’t always, and I’ve been in acts like Lo Tom and Overseas that are four-piece rock and roll.

NT: Would you say having that limitation with the trio forces you to be more creative with the arrangements of the songs?

DB: Yeah, it certainly does, and it can be tricky sometimes, too, where I’m like, “if I just had one more voice!” And that’s kind of what was going on with Santa Cruz, where I used synthesizer bass as a kind of workaround, because I got a bass voice and another synth voice that we didn’t go too crazy with, but at some key times, it added another layer. That was fun, and now it’s the challenge of figuring out if I’m not doing synth bass on upcoming records, how do we attempt to represent the complexity that we’re after?

NT: I had a question about the synth on the song “Modesto”. The latter half of that song lyrically talks about the band Grandaddy, and then there’s this arpeggiated synth in the outro that resembles the arpeggiated synth from “The Crystal Lake” by Grandaddy.

DB: Oh yeah, it’s just ripping off Grandaddy. I mean, I had heard an arpeggiator before Grandaddy, but the way that [Jason] Lytle uses the arpeggiator in that band is so classic. Yeah, it’s a dead reference to that.

NT: You’ve written a couple of autobiographical records since 2019, with Santa Cruz being the latest. When you’re writing from that autobiographical standpoint, is there a way that you decide which memories are worth writing about or turning into songs?

DB: There are certain ones that I hope make it. Like the “fifth grade in the lunchroom” on “Quietest Friend”; that little memory was one of the original ones that I wanted to try and write about. It’s funny, ‘cause I didn’t quite know how it could or would work to reference, so I guess I’d say it was the first memory that I wanted to sing, but that isn’t even how I think about it; it just so happens that’s what I’m singing. It also has to naturally show up, if that makes sense, and so I hadn’t forced it into any songs ‘cause that’s not how the process works for me. The last song on [Phoenix] that I wrote lyrics for was “Quietest Friend”; it was the last night of recording, and after 10 pm, I was really hosed because I was up against this deadline and had this song to write. I was so glad that memory really fit by the time I got to the second verse; it was like, “oh, I’ll just try to sing that memory”. I tried to scratch it out into rhyme quickly. It’s really just a feeling of regret if I can’t figure it out, or something that feels really crucial. The criteria is my own subconscious; it’s my own higher self or whoever summoned me to do this project in the first place, so in the end, it’s just a question of what will help me to heal my relationship with that part of myself the most. What memories do I feel the most shame about when I’m lying in bed at night? I don’t know if that is everybody’s experience, but all of a sudden, you just remember how you said that horrible thing to that kid in fifth grade, and it’s just swirling around. For me, it’s just trying to work and live through all of those things in a way that has been helpful.

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