Chords for Dan Wilson talks about his songwiting process

_ _ _ _ Well, let's fast forward then to Free Life.
Cool.
The solo record, which _ you _ _ wrote like for seven years, recorded all that.
Bits of it, seven, six, five, and four years ago.
And then waited as same thing, label changed hands, label changed hands.
Let me share, let's talk about the song Free Life, because I want to, let's shift gears.
_ _ Oh, here, thank you for bringing my purse out here.
I have this device.
It was David.
He just asked me to bring a prop or a recording device or some kind of thing that I use in the studio.
A tool of some kind.
A tool, a creative tool.
I call it a prop because I'm a theater guy at heart.
_ So this is what I brought.
It's a business person's memo device.
_ And it stores 100 _ little _ clips.
_ With a microphone.
Sell a thousand shares of, you know, _ Google. _ _
_ _ Fire Bill.
Who _ _ _ _ _ [D] is that cute assistant? _
_ [Bb] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
But I use it for music.
I have ideas all the time and I sort of record the idea into this.
And then I, _ it's really, I'm going to like, it's really cool.
It's like, this kind of thing thrills me.
I can suck it into my computer with the, what is that called?
USB. USB port.
So I can suck those little things into the computer and then they get sucked into the _ _ _
iPod.
This thing.
So this has like a thousand song ideas in it.
And I have a huge playlist that's just like writing.
And I put it on random and I just play it.
If I have to do the dishes, I _ put it on random and I listen to, you know, seven or eight
or ten or fifteen song ideas of a thousand at a random.
Don't usually hear them twice.
And then every once in a while I'll get, I'll hear one and I'll go, oh, _ _ I think I can finish
that right now.
And then I turn off the water and I dry my hands and I go finish the song.
It's like, it's just really, _ I've always had different ways to do this, but this thing
is like, _ it's just fantastic.
It's been like, it's, you know, I mean, it's not even this.
I don't care about this because you can go into a businessman's store and buy this, you know, again. _ _ _
If you need to.
_ _ _ But it's a super cool process.
And so I made a little, a set of examples.
So that's why I played Free Life earlier in the evening in that _ _ key, _ _ _ that unfamiliar key,
because I just wanted to sort of remind myself what it was like when I first was thinking
of the song. _ _ _
So now, so you might have to turn this up, Dave, a little bit or whoever's, because these
are slightly weaker level.
But this is, this is me.
The first, _ usually what I do when I write a song is _ I have most of some chunk already
in my mind or I can just sing it out.
It happens in a flash.
_ _ _ And so this is the first kind of Free Life chunk. _ _ _
What you gonna [Gm] spend _ [Eb] _ _ [Bb] your _ _ _ _ [Ab] free life [Eb] on?
What you gonna spend [Bb] _ _ _ [F] _
_ _ _ _ _ _ your [Bb] _ _ [Eb] free life on? _ _ _
_ [Bb] _ _ [Bbm] What you gonna spend [Eb] your free _ [Bb] life on?
I'm literally, that's like for me going like, _ _ _ [Fm] _
_ _ _ _ _ _ this is later, like thinking about it more.
_ _ [Bb] _ _ _
This is really the birth of the song.
[Fm] _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ [Eb] _
_ _ _ _ [Bb] _ _ _ _
_ [C] _ _ [Cm] _ _ _ [Ab] _ _
_ _ _ _ [Cm] _ _ _ _
_ [Ab] _ _ _ _ _ _ [Eb] _
_ _ _ _ [Bb] _ _ _ _
_ [Fm] _ _ _ So now the melody is kind of there already, but I'm kind of mumbling, but it's in there.
_ [Cm] _ _ _ _
_ [Ab] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [Bb] _ _ _ _ _
_ [Gm] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[Fm] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ [Eb] _ _ [Fm] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [Bb] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ So pre-verbal.
I mean, there's a few words.
Sometimes it's all the words come out at once and sometimes the words aren't there, but
there's kind of a mumbling.
_ You kind of got to believe in your vowels. _ _ _ _
_ You know. _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [C] Kind of believe in those vowels and kind of worry them and worry them until a word kind
of slides into place.
But in this case, I knew it was called Free Life, so that was going to be, some of that
stuff was going to be pretty easy.
I had a