Writing Archives | Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

Behind the song: “The Story” by Brandi Carlile

June 28, 2018February 11, 2019

Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

Brandi Carlile's breakthrough song "The Story," the title track of her 2007 album, sounds intensely personal, even cathartic. Carlile must be singing from raw experience, right? Actually, no. Her bandmate Phil Hanseroth wrote "The Story" before they even started playing together. Since her debut, all of the music appearing under the name Brandi Carlile has...

Behind the song: “Lucky” by Jason Mraz and Colbie Caillat

February 13, 2018February 13, 2018

Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

"Lucky," the sweet, swaying duet written by Jason Mraz and Colbie Caillat with Tim Fagan, was originally released on Jason Mraz's 2008 album We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things. During an interview for Acoustic Guitar magazine (published in the October 2010 issue), Mraz told me that "Lucky"—like six of the tracks on the We Sing album—originated...

Behind the Song: “When the Master Calls the Roll” by Rosanne Cash

January 26, 2018January 26, 2018

Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

"When the Master Calls the Roll," a brilliant story song from Rosanne Cash's triple-Grammy-winning album The River and the Thread, has a back story that must be a rarity in the annals of songwriting: an artist co-wrote it with her husband and ex-husband. In the case of this song, Cash's collaborators were producer/guitarist John Leventhal...

Free Range Acoustic playlist

January 13, 2018February 10, 2018

Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

I'm lucky enough to spend my days and nights immersed in music—listening, writing about it, interviewing artists, teaching it, playing it. I just created a Spotify playlist called Free Range Acoustic to share songs that grabbed my ear lately—many from recent albums, but with some older gems in the mix as well. It's a kind...

Behind the song: “Sunny Came Home” by Shawn Colvin

November 22, 2017February 12, 2018

Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

“Sunny Came Home,” Shawn Colvin’s bright-sounding but lyrically dark song that scored Grammies in 1998 for both Song of the Year and Record of the Year, has a highly unlikely origin story. In 2017, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary release of the album A Few Small Repairs, Colvin shared the recollections below about...

Chris Thile on being a “serious, curious” musician

November 17, 2017November 17, 2017

Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

I think serious, curious musicians owe it to themselves and to the music-loving public to avail themselves of all the tools. You run into a lot of people who are consciously leaving vast swaths of their potential musicianship undeveloped in the name of staying pure. Those kinds of decisions don’t achieve the desired result, because...

David Rawlings on writing songs from tradition

October 24, 2017October 24, 2017

Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

[Poor David's Almanack] came out of 20 years of thinking about folk music and the roots of things, and seeing that so much beauty comes out of the fluidity of writing from things that move you. Sometimes I listen to songs that I love and I think, 'Wow, it’s like we’re all standing on the...

Into the Here and Now

September 7, 2017March 29, 2018

Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

Through the doorway and into the street, around the corner and past the groaning school bus and down the hill... I walk through the waking neighborhood but actually see very little because of all the clutter in my head—the lead of the article that I need to finish, the prep for my class and the...

Songwriting lesson: how to write a bridge

August 15, 2017August 15, 2017

Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

Think of the timeless ballad “Something,” from the Beatles’ Abbey Road, in which George Harrison muses on his lover’s allure over a wistful chord progression in the key of C. He sings a verse and loops back for another by way of the song’s signature guitar line, but the second time he lands not on a...

Acoustic Guitar August 2017 Joan Shelley

Joan Shelley on fishing for songs

June 21, 2017June 21, 2017

Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

The analogy of fishing has been used before. You’re just trying to be there at the right time, when your brain is in the right state for catching new images, new ways for words to come together. That’s what I think he’s speaking to. If you’re consciously trying to make it fit your form, you’re...

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