Adam Granduciel

I like that kind of classic-type sound. A lot of my favorite albums were tracked live, with a four-piece band. I love the way those albums sound, but I want to make records that sound like that in the way I like to make stuff.

If I improvise vocals at an early stage of the song, I just kind of listen to the roll, and then I kind of have a little vocal hook.

I love when things can repeat and you can make things slightly different each time and just react to the music and react to the recording.

When I learning to write songs, I never really was interested in the chorus.

I think where a lot of the stuff came from is that it started as something else and then it was transformed into something that worked in the context of a song that I might have been working on.

That little window like 2004 through like 2010 was probably the most, like most inspiring time of my creative life, for sure.

I try to just keep chipping away at, you know, this little idea you may start with and then work on something for seven, eight months. Eventually it just kind of turns into something.

I've never set out to do anything other than get better at guitar and record and have fun. I feel like the Jazzmaster's just your comrade on that journey. It can be really subtle, it can be angry, it can be chill. It can be anything.

Every show with my Jazzmaster is like a new show.

I'm still undisciplined in the fact that I'm not writing anything down. I just get these lines and start piecing it together and then going back.

I love Tom Petty the way a lot of people love him. He's got so many amazing songs, and you know them by heart. They're classics.

When I was a kid I was definitely into Neil Young.

All day long you write little ideas on the piano and the guitar, but sometimes all you have to do is come in, set up the mic, press record and start the process.

I just want to make that my life: recording music and trying to write a good song every day.

I ended up renting a studio in L.A. for about 15 months. Starting in January of 2016, some of the guys in the band were coming out once every five to six weeks for like five days a time.

I would spend about eight months on a song, leaving it alone and going back to it later on. I just kept layering things on, building them up in to epic songs. I let the songs evolve - it's really daunting.

No I don't play bluegrass harmonica or anything like that. I don't listen to country or bluegrass records.

I don't like drums dictating the song; like when you hear a fill and then you know the chorus is coming up.

Sometimes it's hard for me to just be the guitar player and lose myself.

I'd love to do denim merch sometime, though. That's pretty much the mainstay of my wardrobe. I have a bunch of denim jackets I wear all the time.

With 'Slave Ambient', I was writing things on top of loops. Now I really get the structure of the song down, but I leave room for improvisation in the studio.

I don't know how it is for people who write fiction or literature, but for me, when I'm writing music, especially with this album, I felt compelled to hold up my end of the conversation. I want people to connect deeper with it.

In high school, I was head of the lab. I dumped a whole five-gallon bucket of D-76 on my head once. It ruined all my clothes.

I'm really picky about stuff like videos or even pictures of the band, but at the same time, I don't really know what it is I want; I just know what I don't want.

Not everyone who writes about you is going to be a fan of your music.

I started guitar when I was like thirteen. I had a friend whose dad had an electric guitar. In sixth grade or seventh grade I went over and played it and immediately I was super excited by the whole thing.

In terms of tone and style, I've always been influenced by a lot of different players. I love Nick Drake, Mike Bloomfield and Sonic Boom. I like those three a lot!

I usually know the general emotion of a song, or the general feeling of it, and then I think I just get so excited by the act of recording. I love that process so much that I feel like if I knew exactly what I wanted I'd arrive at something too soon.

I tend to think about so many different things on a recording. I'll be trying to tune into what the drummer's doing, trying to keep everyone playing the groove and other things like making sure the piano's in a nice pocket.

In the past, we never really had that kind of spontaneity on record. When you start touring, you play songs in a certain way and then I start to feel like it's tough to really get lost in my playing.

It's cool that our stuff is received as it is, and our stuff is fairly long. But from a songwriter's purview as well as an exercise, I'm trying to write shorter material and find ways to condense ideas.

Everyone hears a song a different way and hears timing a different way.

When you make a record, you get to live in an imaginary world where you have the best kind of band on every song.

You can't really take it for granted that people listen to your music. I want to write songs that are on par, at least in my mind, with the ones I've loved for my whole life and that will be around forever.

I work off of my early demos. I'll keep adding on top of that, but I usually gravitate towards whatever that original idea was.

As he grew older, his material was just as relevant and just as exciting and the band's just as killer... It seems surreal that there's no more Tom Petty, in person.

I've just grown up. Respecting yourself and your art means taking an interest in the other responsibilities.

I don't know what the sound is or the song is until I've spent a lot of time on it. I'm always chipping away at it, rethinking it.

I can't just go into the studio with one idea and be all in on that, 100 percent. It takes me a while to arrive at something that feels like it's finished.

I remember that in the past I was overwhelmed with the mystery of anxiety, or the mystery of depression, but now when you feel that feeling coming on you no longer go into fight-or-flight mode. You go: 'Oh, I know what this is' and you ride it out.

I've seen people who like a certain song write on their Instagram what they think the lyrics are - which they aren't. I'm like, 'Oh, that's interesting - you can create your own adventure with some of these songs.' Which is really cool.

With 'Under the Pressure,' I just found two chords I liked, and built it up, did like a ten-minute drum pattern.

I love playing guitar every night, and to be at this point where it's like, the songs are done and I'm happy with the way they are on record, and I get to hear them be reinterpreted by the live band? That's kind of the icing on the cake. It's the best.

Touring is a rough thing. You don't have any time to look around or stop and think if what you're doing is making you happy. The more you tour, the better the band gets, and you get caught up in a lot more things than just traveling.

I like to work hard and I like to work for somebody. I like to stay late and clean up the back and show the boss in the morning.

I learned Neil Young songs, Bob Dylan songs and older songs. It wasn't until I moved to Philly that I had aspirations to maybe forming a band.

There are so many great records that when you grow older, you're like, 'Oh man, this is the best record ever made.' And you're like, 'Oh it didn't get nominated or win a Grammy.' It's countless, how many amazing, classic American records haven't been knighted or whatever.

I was a bouncer, if you can believe it for a while in a sports bar. I let everybody in.

It was definitely strange to come home and all of a sudden have to shift gears into creative mode. I kind of had to figure out what it was about music that made it exciting, and question what it was that made it worth sacrificing all the other parts of my life that weren't as satisfying.

I try to take whatever I can from the songs I grew up listening to, these vibed-out pop numbers, and make them my own in some weird way.