Ahead of his upcoming North America tour, Northern Transmissions had the opportunity to sit with singer-songwriter Pete Yorn and discuss the writing process of his newest record The Hard Way, the inspirations behind the album and how he feels as he starts his first tour since 2019.

Northern Transmissions: How did the start of the album writing process come about? Was it quite a natural process or did you set out with the intention to make a record?

Pete Yorn: I was kind of working on some other projects and as I remember it, gosh, I don’t want to say two years ago now but maybe a year and a half my old friend, who I’ve worked with once he mixed some stuff for me, this guy Josh Goodwin (who is all over the record), he texted me randomly. I haven’t heard from him in years. He was just like: “Hey Pete, I’ve been playing a lot of acoustic guitar and messing around with some song ideas. I’d love to bounce some of it off of you.” And I was like “Sure, man, send me anything.” And then he sent me a couple ideas and I thought they were really nice and then one night I remember he texted me he said “Send me some words.” And so I wrote out a bunch of words, just like in a flurry, and I texted it to him. And he texted me back kinda like a rough version of what would become this song called ‘Someday, someday’. And I heard it back and was like ‘wow, this is really cool.’ We ended up getting together and working on it some more and developing it some more and from that it kinda started this co-writing collaboration, creative relationship. It was really great and really just organic and it really came from him texting me out of the blue just saying ‘Hey I’ve got some ideas and I’d like to bounce them off of you.’

NT: So it was quite spontaneous?

PY: Very spontaneous. Very. I couldn’t have predicted it.

NT: Were there any specific songs on the record that took a while to complete and gave you a bit of difficulty at first?

PY: From a songwriting process – no. I think there was a lot going on – I think he had a lot going on in his mind and I definitely had a lot going on in my life. So it was pretty fertile for creativity. We were good partners in that we would help push things along but we never forced anything. It was never like ‘oh we gotta get this done’. We were on no time frame. But when the ideas came – there were a lot more songs and ideas that didn’t make it onto the record that we were still kind of working through. But we just kind of felt there were some songs that would look at certain themes again and I didn’t want to revisit anything. I just wanted to take the best representation of what each song was trying to get across. And so that’s why the record feels really succinct to me and really tight. It’s 25 minutes. Someone asked me why it was only 8 songs and I was like ‘It just felt like I said everything I needed to say on this one and that was that.’ While I was working on it I was also working on another record and I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to do with it as I am almost done with that. It was a very creative couple of years with a lot of music to share.

NT: The album itself feels like it exists in this unique, very fleshed out world. And I remember thinking as I was listening to the songs that they all feel really connected and that they are linked together as if they’re part of a universe. I was thinking that as you are in this very creative writing process, do you consider the links between certain songs and maybe the setlisting aspect of it as you write or is it something that comes about naturally throughout the whole process?

PY: I think it’s something more natural. I do think once we start recording the songs, a lot of times I’ll go into the studio with a song 60% written and I’d like to let 40% magic happen in the studio and let it develop there. I do sometimes use the studio as a writing tool within itself. These we really went old school where we just fleshed out the song and the lyrics and the arrangement on just an acoustic guitar before we would even attempt to record it. And once we laid it down we decided maybe we should move something around then we would do that but for the most part they were developed to be as strong as they can be just with a guitar and a voice. Once we started recording them, and we would do one at a time, we realised the palate of the record was more of a mellow, acoustic record with organic instrumentations and strings and those kind of flourishes. It didn’t go into the songwriting but once we started doing it we realised this was where the record is going. I have records where I look at and I was just indulging any sort of direction I wanted to go in. There could be a song that sounds like it was on The Hard Way and a song that sounds like it was on a New Order record. And that was fine with me because that was just whatever I was into in the moment. Somehow those work together too, but this is one of my more homogenous sounding records where everything feels like it’s of a place or a moment and has a consistency in the sound. I like that for this project. I leave for tour tomorrow and it’s the first tour with my band since 2019 and I noticed that it was so fun to play these new songs. Like right away, maybe because of the way they were written, they just come together live so nice. They feel very natural to sing and just fit right in with all the other songs from the years. Going back 25 years, they just feel like old friends right away which is really cool. Some of the bandmates I play with, guys I’ve played with for a long time, have been like: “This song feels like they’ve been in this set for years!” After the first time playing them. That was really cool.

NT: Do you consider how the songs will sound when you’re playing them live as you are when you’re writing the record? Or do you have that reflection when you’re preparing for the tour where you have to go back and you’re preparing these songs? Or do you think about the performance aspect as you write?

PY: I don’t think about it as I write. For some reason I almost feel like that could get in the way. I’m more about just creating what seems really interesting to you and then figure out how to present it (if it’s meant to be presented live.) Some songs as they are recorded, not on this record but on some other things I’ve developed, they just feel like unless I’m running tracks and pantomiming half the music then there’s no way I’m ever going to get it to sound just like how it sounds on the record. So my thing is I just want to pull together the essence of the song and have like a really interesting and the best version of that song live that I can get across. And maybe it’s not exactly like the record but it’s interesting and cool in its own way. So I don’t get too bogged down in that. I remember on my first record, and it was my first tour, I was very maniacal about every little sound has to be like the record and we have to pull it off somehow. And we did run sequencers for some of the percussion sounds and there was a lot of sequenced percussion elements and drums and extra keyboards and even though I had guys playing everything there was some things you just had to have be there on a track. And that was fun but at some point I remember thinking there was too much of that and I wanted to go super organic and the other way. We’d get off a click track and play just like a rock’n’roll band. And that was fun too. Now I’m kind of in that phase of I believe in just wanting to have really great players because I feel like there’s so many people too that go out there and they’re just playing to you as if they might as well just be doing karaoke. That works, people don’t seem to mind that, but for me I just want to have great players and go out and play the songs in a really interesting way. And that’s what we are doing right now.

NT: Is there a specific city on your upcoming tour or a specific song that you’re most excited to play?

PY: I’m very excited to play the new songs. ‘The Hard Way’, the song called ‘Different Roads’, all the new songs I really love singing. There are some old ones I am excited to pull out. As far as the cities, I have had good shows and bad shows in almost every city I’ve had. You think you’re going to New York and you think it’ll be the best one and then a sneak show in downtown Pennsylvania is like the greatest crowd ever. You never can predict it. My thing mainly is to be just out there and to not ride this rollercoaster and to approach each show and tailor it for each place I am in and each energy I am feeling. I’m not too big on setlists, I like to have a guide but I like to change things up and add songs or pull songs as I’m feeling it from the energy of the night. But like I said, I haven’t been on the road like this in a while so I’m just looking forward to the challenge of it. This is my first tour sober too – I stopped drinking like a year and a half ago. I was using alcohol, ever since I’ve been like 12-14 years, as a tool to get up on stage and do that so for me the few shows that I have played since have been very intense. It’s like going up there without that thing that would mellow, like my nervous system tends to get very over excited and I would have to tamp it down as it’s like my heart is going to jump out of my chest – it’s not normal. But I’ve worked on balancing that and I think as I move into this new phase of performing and such, I like the challenge of it and I believe that with repeated exposure to it and just to keep doing it then I will be free of that need to dull my senses down and get up there and be able to make it even better than it ever was. So I’m looking forward to that.

NT: Congratulations on being sober! You were talking earlier about how you had some New Order sounding songs and how you take inspiration. For The Hard Way were there any albums or artists that you listened to that inspired the album?

PY: Ever since I was a little kid, I remember I was always attracted to songs that made me feel sad or that could make me cry; like in a good way. I remember there was a jazz piece that just had this emotion to it that would just bring tears to my eyes – I don’t know what it was. But I always loved the way that it would make me feel. I could just picture myself in my bedroom in New Jersey, I was probably 8/9 years old, and I still gravitate towards that. I wanted to have that element on this record. I remember there’s this band called Bread and there’s this song called ‘If’. Some people might say it’s sappy or whatever but I remember the end of this song always made me cry. And I played it for Josh in the studio and he had never heard it, amazingly, and we listened to it and it got me in the moment (as it always does) and he was like ‘Cool’, he liked it. It didn’t get him in that way but I remember that was a touchstone for me to have that sort of emotion and to not hold back there. There was something that reminded me of Nick Drake a little bit and I wanted to have that, maybe in the production elements and in the instrumentation, a little bit of that feel. So that was something that we talked about as well. Josh is just an incredible, besides a great co-writer and someone to bounce things off of, he’s also just one of the greatest audio engineers in the world. And so to be able to record these organic instruments and be able to get the vocals so upfront without being too much, to be in his hands and be able to do that was a really cool opportunity.

NT: Leonard Cohen once said that if your “life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.” Did you find when writing the album you were reflecting on past moments or just moments in your life?

PY: Well stuff comes out for me, I’m never like ‘OK this thing happened in my life, I’m going to write about it.’ It doesn’t happen like that for me. It’s like stuff is going on and I just still do what I do and if I get inspired I’ll just write something or I’ll try to squeeze something out. And when I look back on it I can’t help but see the context of what was going on in my life in the context of those words. While I was making this record, a lot of crazy stuff happened. I had a crazy medical thing that happened that I am still dealing with that just changed everything in my life. And it shut us down for a while too actually. But when I came back, I had this sense of being reborn, about halfway through making the record. It changed my life so completely, and I don’t want to get into the details of it because it’s kind of nasty, but it changed my life so completely that I can never go back to the way things were before. It was one of those kind of things. With that, when I look at writing songs it totally changed my perspective – I could not look at songs without that experience being in the context of it. It’s been a gift. The other thing that I’ll say is that my dad passed away while writing and I’ll hear lyrics that maybe before I wouldn’t have attributed to that. There’s a line in ‘The Hard Way’: “I never got used to the idea of a world that still exists without you here.” Maybe I would’ve wrote that line before he died, maybe the same line would’ve come out, but I wouldn’t have thought about him and now I just think about him when I sing that. So there’s things like that where the context of stuff that’s going on kind of informs and kind of tells you what you’re singing about.

NT: My condolences. Music can often be healing and transformative and I wonder, do you have that healing effect when creating or performing music?

PY: Yeah. I think so. I think just being creative is a gift and I think that is one of the great things of being human is that we are all born with the ability to create. Whether it’s music or art or other humans or a shed in your backyard. It’s something that we all naturally are inclined to do one way or another. One of my favourite things that brings me joy is having a new song/creating a new song – super bonus if it’s something you really like over a long period of time, sometimes you get really excited about something and it fizzles out but sometimes you have something that you create that really resonates beyond yourself and you can carry it with you for years and years and years. Some songs are like that, that can fill you up. Sometimes I have to meet it half way – sometimes I go weeks without listening to music or picking up my guitar and then other times, when I force myself to put my phone down, I grab my guitar and start strumming something. And then every time I do that I am like ‘yeah, of course.’ But sometimes I forget about how important music is to me and how in my DNA it is. It affects everybody but I feel like it affects me in an intense way. When I do force myself to interact with it, it’s usually pretty rewarding.

NT: Just one more final question: Thinking ahead, do you have any goals set in the next year or two? You mentioned earlier about having some workings for the next project, can we expect another album to be released sooner than expected?

PY: I can’t say a time limit. I know there’s a lot of other music that I am really excited about, it just depends on how ambitious I am feeling. But I feel like either way it is lovely to be working on that stuff as well. My main goal is to just kind of, like I said there’s been a lot of changes in my life over the last year and a half, and I am looking forward to approaching my first time back on the road since 2019 with this new head, this new kind of outlook. I am excited to see how things are going to manifest from that. It’s really just a kind of personal challenge that I am really looking forward to.

NT: Thank you very much, it’s been lovely chatting to you and I hope you have a great time on the road.

PY: Thank you, it’s been lovely to meet you. Take care.

Order The Hard Way by Pete Yorn HERE