Artist on Artist

Liz Durrett and Don Chambers Explore the Creative Process

originally published September 10, 2008

Michael Goethe

Liz Durrett and Don Chambers

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Every song has a writer, and every songwriter has many songs. Don Chambers and Liz Durrett, two of Athens’ more compelling artists, spend a lot of time and energy on lyrics, melodies and song structure, and their labors bear fruit this month with the release of a new album each - a spirited collection of Southern Gothic rockers laced with banjo and tent-revival fire on Chambers’, dusky and hauntingly evocative numbers on Durrett’s.

Chambers’ Zebulon was recorded with his band GOAT and co-produced with Drive-By Trucker Patterson Hood and local studio whiz Andy Baker; Durrett’s new album Outside Our Gates employs local treasure Ham1 as the backing band along with guest musicians like Vic Chesnutt and Tin Cup Prophette’s Amanda Kapousouz. Eric Bachmann (Archers of Loaf, Crooked Fingers) produced it.

Both albums hit the streets courtesy of local label WARM Electronic Recordings, and, in the spirit of collaboration, Durrett contributes backup vocals to some of Chambers’ songs, and this weekend they’re playing a joint show at the Georgia Theatre to celebrate the two releases. Flagpole played fly on the wall as the two came together to discuss songwriting. Durrett and Chambers talked about exercises intended to foster creativity, as well as sources of inspiration and forcing yourself to break out of habitual comfort zones. Chambers, for instance, has imposed a ban on words like moon, bird and devil that he thinks he overuses, while Durrett is avoiding over-reliance on a long-“a” vowel sound.

Flagpole

Let’s start out with what makes a good song. Are there any songs you love that you think are examples of really strong songwriting?

Don Chambers

I always go to Hank Williams’ "I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry," because I think it’s just perfect lyrically and musically. I mean, it’s dripping… it’s dripping with melancholy on both the melody and the music backing it up and the lyrics. I’m still trying to write another one.

Liz Durrett

Immediately I think of Otis Redding, Leonard Cohen. Maybe Otis’s “These Arms of Mine.” And that song “Crying” by Roy Orbison - I’ve been playing that a lot lately. It’s a great fucking song. Actually, maybe he just co-wrote that one. And of course Nina Simone has some amazing songs. A lot of amazing songs.

Don Chambers

There’s this song on T. Bone Burnett’s new record that I’m really fascinated with. It was co-written with Roy Orbison, and I’m really fascinated with the structure of the song. It doesn’t really have a chorus, there’s nothing fancy about the chords - I think it’s A, B and E, and there might be a minor in there - but the way it builds… it’s a two-and-a-half-minute song that never repeats itself and builds to this peak. The name of the song is “Killzone,” and it crescendos at the killzone, then plateaus there and kind of tapers off when it’s done, and when you think about the structure of it, it seems it couldn’t last more than a minute because of the way it’s built - no lead guitar, no chorus - but with a great amount of economy they get a ton out of the song. I think that most of it was Roy Orbison’s writing, because the melody is beautiful, sort of like a bird that soars up to this great place.

Liz Durrett

I like T. Bone Burnett a lot, too. There’s this record that came out in the ‘80s when I was like seven, maybe it’s just self-titled? And I knew every word to every song. I can’t remember what the album was called.

Don Chambers

Can you think of any song titles?

Liz Durrett

There was a song called “River of Love.” “Shake Yourself Loose.”

Don Chambers

It’s just called T. Bone Burnett.

Liz Durrett

You know that record? I don’t know anyone else who knows that.

Don Chambers

Yeah, I love that one. That’s a great record. He tried to record that record all live, like they used to do back in the ‘50s and ‘60s, but even with the best session musicians from the ‘80s they couldn’t pull it off, and had to build it up piece by piece.

The first time I heard Peter Case - T. Bone Burnett produced his album - I was in a record store, and this is the only time this has happened to me, but they put in the Peter Case record, and in the first 10 seconds I said “I don’t know what that is, but I want that record.” He hadn’t even started singing by then.

Flagpole

Liz, you worked with Eric Bachmann on your new record, and he handled a lot of the arrangements and production choices. When you’re writing a song, how much time or thought do you put into the overall structure? Are you focused on just the basics?

Liz Durrett

I guess it depends. Sometimes I don’t think about it at all. Most of the time I’ll just start writing something and see that what happens happens. But there are times when I’ll think “Y’know, I really need to write a song that has a chorus.” And so I’ll specifically try to do that because I feel like I need to have a song like that as part of my set.

Don Chambers

Did you demo the songs for the last record? How fleshed out were they, was it just you and a guitar?

Liz Durrett

They were a little more fleshed out. I put some really shitty drums on there, and I played melodica. I’m sort of limited by whatever was in my basement, so I would put melodica on every song and distort it or do something weird. So they were fleshed out, but nothing like on the album. No string arrangements or horns, obviously.

Don Chambers

I did more of that with this album than I have with any other one. I have demoed before, but it’s always just a quick vocal-and-guitar sketch to get the idea down, and I’ll just give that to the band and let them fill stuff in on their own. With this one I used GarageBand…

Liz Durrett

Yeah, I used that too.

Don Chambers

…and some of the guitar parts I would try to turn into piano parts, or put drums in. I’m kind of interested in both ways of putting together songs, and playing around in the studio, because now that I did one that was pretty structured going into it. I knew where the parts went, but I didn’t know exactly how they were going to happen. But now that I’ve done that, I want to do another one where we just go into the studio, press play and say “Okay, it starts in E, let’s see what happens!” That’s definitely not the way Andy Baker works, though.

Liz Durrett

I wanted to bring people in and see what happens, but Eric was more structured, he wanted to have all the parts written down and planned out in a script. Which is great, because you can’t get certain things - the kind of things he got - out of a song by just bringing people in and saying play what you feel. There are positives to both.

Don Chambers

If I could get the amount of air that’s in these recordings by doing it the other way with a full band and by not planning stuff out, that’d be ideal. It’s just tough to have five people in a room and ask them to play the song five times, and when they’re just standing there they feel a need to play, and so it ends up being everybody at once and there’s no air in the songs. It just becomes really dense - which is its own thing.

Liz Durrett

What was Patterson’s [Hood] part in your record?

Don Chambers

Patterson is like a shark, I’ve decided. After I did the demos, I didn’t give them to the band. I brought Patterson, Andy Baker and Andy Cherewick over to the house. I’d given them copies of the demos. They listened to them for about a week, then we went through them and made a list of possible ones to go in with. Pared it down from about 50 to 18 or 19 we wanted to try. So Patterson was part of that process, but in the studio he was really quiet, but, like a shark, if you know there’s a shark in the water you act differently. And every once in a while, when something was going either very right or very wrong, he would surface and let us know. And then he’d go back down deep and just hang out. But Eric [Bachmann] wrote out parts for your album, right?

Liz Durrett

Yeah, he was a lot more hands-on, but he would let things happen, too. I think there was an interesting push and pull between his ideas, my ideas and the players. But we had the bones there so there’d be some structure. That was great, because I’m so disorganized so it was good to have somebody with me who was really focused and organized and confident, because I don’t have that. I don’t feel confident that I could get everybody together, but I guess because of all his experience and how long he’s been doing things, he would just have this sort of confidence. And that made me feel confident that we could make stuff happen.

Don Chambers

Did you think there were going to be horns on your record?

Liz Durrett

I hadn’t thought about horn parts on specific parts. I’d been playing with Ham1 backing me up, and Chris [Sugiuchi] was playing trombone, and I knew I wanted him to contribute to the album. But then Eric started writing trumpet parts and cornet parts, and I was like, “I don’t know people who play cornet,” but he had that confidence to just say, “Oh, we’ll find somebody.” So a lot of things happened that were outside my imagination, which was cool.

Flagpole

Liz, it seems like you had a lot of new collaborators on this album, while Don, you’ve settled into a group of reliable hands who’ve been with you through a few recordings. When you’re writing songs, how much thought do you put into the people who’ll be playing on the album?

Don Chambers

I’m usually so concerned with what the lyrics are that I’ll trust I’ll get a group of actual musicians in there to make it sound like actual music, because otherwise I would just be a very bad poet. That’s always in the back of my head, but when I’m writing I’m thinking about some really simple musical ideas maybe, but I trust the musicians I work with and that they’ll bring themselves to it.

Liz Durrett

In the past, I’ve never thought about that, probably to a fault. Writing a song was just about getting out what was in my head, regardless of what it sounds like. I would never think about what it would be like for an audience to hear a song, whether it’d be bearable or boring. But in the past year, since I’ve been playing with Ham1, I started thinking about that – I wanted it to be fun and interesting for the guys who were supporting me, so I started to think, man, I’ve gotta write a chorus, or songs that are a little uptempo… and that forced me to do that – I mean, for me, uptempo by Liz Durrett standards - a little more upbeat, which is still not really.

Don Chambers

I think that makes a lot of sense, to consider whether your band’s going to be bored or not. I definitely, when I’m writing, if I can come up with something that’s really rocking, I do think “This’ll be fun for the band to play,” because that’s what GOAT likes to do – they like to rock. And I don’t always want to do that, and this record has got a few rockers on it, but there are also some mid-tempo ones and slow ones. We’re figuring out the songs for the live show right now, and they’re not as bored as I thought they might be.

Flagpole

Do you enjoy writing songs?

Liz Durrett

Mmm… sometimes. Don, do you?

Don Chambers

I love it.

Liz Durrett

Is it compulsive for you? Do you have to do it all the time, or do you have to work at it?

Don Chambers

It’s like exercise. I like to walk for exercise, and when I do that, I always feel really good. Getting to the place where I’m going to walk is the hard part, but once you get there and start, you feel great and you feel great afterwards. And you know that in your head, that it’s a good drug, but it’s really easy to fall off of that wagon and in your head you’re thinking you should be walking… songwriting’s the same way.

I used to just write songs kind of whenever, really hit and miss. But a few years ago when I lived in Berlin, I had all the free time in the world. No job, and some friends, but not a lot of social obligations, which was great and kind of scary because then you’ve got to structure your own day and be productive. That was kind of when I taught myself to go into the studio for five days a week. On average, three hours a day is enough to get me to some place, four is better, and five hours is probably about the limit. Now it’s a habit and if I don’t do it, I feel like I’m missing a part of my self. I’m totally addicted to it.

The new stuff I’m working on, I have no idea what I think of, but I’m just doing it. I remember reading a while ago about Flannery O’Connor and her habit of being, which was to write for two hours a day or so. But every day she would write someone a letter just as a warm-up to using language. Some days at work she’d get pages and pages, sometimes she’d get a sentence.

I don’t wait for inspiration, I believe in doing the work. And if something comes off as inspired, it’s because I spent six months doing a bunch of stuff that was complete crap. It’s like making shoes - you get better at making shoes the more you do it. And if you do it for long enough, eventually you come up with this shoe, this amazing shoe, that people are like, “That is the shoe!” And it didn’t come out of nowhere, it came out of knowing how leather acts, and how feet work. And I like drinking coffee, sitting around, and fiddling with words.

Liz Durrett

I’m not very disciplined. I want to be like that. I know it’s true for me, too, because when I sit down to write I wonder why I don’t do it all the time. It feels great, and it gets easier and better. Most of the time, though, I’ll go through phases where I’ll have a really long dry spell. I won’t write for a long time, and then 10 songs will come to me. For me, it happens in spurts. And a lot of times when I try to write, I get frustrated and I feel really forced, and it starts to make me feel bad about myself. I’ll feel like I can’t do it and that I’ll never write a good song again, and then all of a sudden it’ll just come, and you’re so grateful.

Don Chambers

That’s the Merle Haggard way, I’m jealous of that. He claims he never had to try to write a song. Bruce Springsteen never has had any kind of time set aside to write songs. And I’m like, that’s great you guys, good for you.

Liz Durrett

Do you do this, Don? I was talking to someone the other day about it. Sometimes I’ll listen to a song really low while I’m in my car, and try to write lyrics on top of it.

Don Chambers

Uh-uh, no. Hmm… the closest I’ve done to that is at practice with some people is try to play a cover of a song you don’t really know, and you don’t know the words, and there’ve been times I’ve done that and it’s become a song. And by the time it’s a song, I don’t remember how it started. Back in the Vaudeville days, there was this Pixies song we’d play in practice, except none of us knew a lick of it, and it went on in there and became its own thing.

Liz Durrett

I’ve taken a poem before, like when I’ve got a melody I like but haven’t come up with any words yet, just singing sounds, so I would get a poem to sing to my song and think that I’ll go back and write something later. And that does something interesting, too, establishing a lyrical rhythm that you can kind of push yourself into so that there’s already a structure in place. When I was going through a really severe dry spell I would try all kinds of things like that, but lately I’ve just been like, well, fuck it, when it happens it happens. So if it doesn’t happen, I’m not going to sweat it.

Don Chambers

I’ve taken lyrics and put them onto old folk songs, just forcing them into that form to see if they work. Dylan talks a lot about that… the most straightforward I’ve ever heard him talk about songs is when he’ll find an old folk song that he likes and listen to it over and over and over again, and then stop listening to it and start playing it over and over and over, and then start to change the meter, then the time signature, then put words to it eventually. It’s like that Johnny Cash song about stealing auto parts from the factory, how if you take a piece a day, eventually you’ve got a car. But you didn’t steal a car, just the pieces.

Flagpole

As songwriters, do you feel you appreciate other songwriters and songs on a different level? Can you still stop focusing on the technique and the nuts and bolts?

Don Chambers

I appreciate it on a different level, and it doesn’t steal the magic for me at all. If someone’s so good, I’m still just wondering how in the hell they did that.

Liz Durrett

And everyone does things so differently, that you can appreciate everyone’s process. I still think, "God, where did that guitar part come from?" Or, "How did they put that together?" When you hear a great song, it’s amazing. Really great lyrics, really great melodies… knowing how people work doesn’t detract from those at all.

Chris Hassiotis

WHO: Don Chambers + GOAT, Liz Durrett, The Arcs
WHERE: Georgia Theatre
WHEN: Friday, Sept. 12
HOW MUCH: $7