it's time now for us to to talk in more detail now about this album to begin the journey around this album which is i mean it's such an incredible body of work i cannot tell you as a fan enough how happy i am to listen to this record and also how heartbreaking i find myself feeling and listening to this album and not necessarily because i'm feeling your pain because it brings back mine so it's the ultimate gift in that regard
but to get to that place where the music is as honest as it is you've got to find a willing partner you've got to find something we don't have to do it yourselves but that's going to be intense and you settled on a you know a brilliant young creative called jack antonoff so why what were the qualities in jack that made you trust him so quickly with these stories that each of you have experienced in
your lives but are so heartbreakingly told have you met jack before unfortunately yes i don't like the guys he's very easy to like and feel comfortable with right off the bat yeah but i get that and i'm not trying to obviously he's a wonderful human but there's hanging out with someone in a bar or whatever and going i like this guy i like this girl i'll be friends with him it's another thing to feel that
sense of openness in a room with an acoustic guitar knowing that you are charting new territory in the moment as well right it is different and we had written with a couple of other people before we got to jack um and of course everyone is nice and lovely to work with we should try to figure out what it is um about jack one thing i really liked is that you know a lot of people um are fans of ours but i think
a lot of times in the industry it's more who we are and probably our politics and so they're fans but they couldn't like name a bunch of songs probably they like your house they like coming around to your house they like the idea of us right that's interesting and yeah and jack really knew his stuff like he truly knew our music and you know and he's just so open and so verbal and vocal and just had just excitement
and enthusiasm but also really seemed to have a a sense of where all we could go he also didn't limit us like a lot of times too people have their idea of who you are but most times with us it doesn't match up like some of the stuff we would start writing would start sounding like what we call bro country um and jack just really got that we can sound like us playing anything because you know a fiddle and a banjo
and three-part harmony is uh nothing you can turn into something else you know but you can bring those things to songs that would not be what people think of as an automatic fit wow this is that this is that what a time to be a live moment because this is one of those moments where the intersection between influence and influence perfectly meets because these artists that you've influenced are now ultimately
influencing you because they've taken music in this space into new territory taylor swift being an obvious example of someone who absolutely reveres and loves the chicks but has found a space for pop music for all of that songwriting to exist and i guess in a weird way to some degree consciously i subconsciously influenced you hence the crossroads and i think jack having worked with so many female artists that didn't really play into anything
but it's evidence of the fact that he's able to be in that world and it's just the way we communicate other people can't understand it because there's a lot that goes unsaid but i think partially because he grew up with two sisters and he's just so used to being around women and how women communicate it just seemed very seamless seamless to me i mean just put aside his amazing musical talent and he can play anything under
the sun pull out any idea and put it down right away which is so inspiring when you're in the studio and he's a very confident person as well like he didn't hold back around us and so we loved that right away we always like if you can make a crack or make a joke about one of us then we're going to be friends for sure no he's a no he's a piss taker of the highest order that's why i love him and we give it right back and he can
take it hang on a second hang on a minute hang on hang on hang on hang on hello hello hello hello hello yeah can i i can't hear you but i can smell you people there yeah yeah the chicks are here bro the chicks are here hi hi what are you guys talking about you i thought that marty would be you know she would speak kindly of you but as it turns out she doesn't think much of you bro i hate to break it marty's been roasting me
more than um any like i thought natalie would i always knew emily was on my side i thought natalie would be giving me a lot of crap but my dad said that in an article marty said that like she didn't know if i was like out of touch or ironic or something like that well let me ask her right now once you can't hear it which one is it marty is it out of touch or is it ironic well i was totally i was only talking
about his fashion sense none of these three people you're speaking to should come for me because i have so much dirt on all of that good so we're gonna catch up with you on monday next monday return of jack antonoff we're going to do like a nice little we're going to do like a recurring show you can be like a resident on my show uh spell it spill the chicks it's called spill the chips yeah
just roast the chicks it's a podcast about the chicks just yeah all the dirt the sound of this record is um it's such a modern sound and you retain so much of the of the authenticity and the real sort of the comforting soul that the chicks can bring to their music um what was the inspiration behind that as producer why did you sort of encourage them to move into space or were you encouraged to move in that space or was it both
when we got in the room there was so much that they were all listening to and showing me and they were loving and a lot of it was really really modern like stuff that had just come out and so you know it wasn't quick but it was somewhat of a seamless process of just like starting to understand the language of like oh like okay you like this kind of sound and this kind of sound and then and then being able to
sew a line where it's like all right here's the authentic version to the chicks version of that sound you know we're not going to have let's say like 808s on the album but it was but there was a lot of conversation about low end and you know them liking a lot of the modern low end so it's like the chicks version of that is like we got so much out of that out of like even like low dobro stuff that um emily was playing like we would actually make
that sound like sort of like a fuzzy mug or something so it was a really interesting idea of like figuring out what they were into understanding their sound it's crazy because you know in the first three seconds of sleep at night when the fill just leads into the drums it does have that sense of like like it feels almost like a loop like if it has that vibe that instant vintage real weightiness that came from like digging
in the crates or something that's i don't know you just nailed it you guys you've all nailed it well that's that's i mean one thing i'll say about sleep at night and just to show you how delicate that balance was so getting those drums right that's a combination of teddy geiger's drums natalie's son beckett playing live me playing live and then the brilliant chad smith playing live so you have so that
one thing that you hear on sleep at night that which which just feels kind of like a really cool marching job but it took all these different drummers and programs all put together to feel sort of authentic and modern all at once all right jack i got one more question right here um just any meanie mining mow this will quickly rattle off each of their funniest or most distinctive traits in the studio you got the dirt
now's the time to spill a little tea okay um well i would say everything happens after six o'clock because that's when the wine drinking starts right good i like that so you know it's like you know the whole day we're working and then come around six o'clock like everything gets like real loose and weird um i would say uh i will say this i do think one way to loosen up a room and make a great work is to uh let yourself take the fall and there
were many many times where i let the three of them just make fun of me for hours you have a deep understanding of that dynamic and you obviously speak the unique language that relates to the female spirit because you grew up with sisters and so you know you're able to take that beating yes very very happy to take it and uh important important uh to put yourself in a room with uh actual geniuses which they are because
then when you get the beating you you it makes you better it's worth it hey hey you're a good man love you jack thanks for stopping by and everyone happy jack love you love you bye what a sweetheart um kauai is is one of my special places and i've been lucky enough to spend you know a few a few times i've been out there and some the spirit of that place is is remarkable and it's it's on one hand
up there in terms of the amount of oxygen and energy you get in that place it's just so incredibly replenishing um i couldn't think of a better place to go out there and connect to some of the the harder side of this out this album the hardest stuff to have to get out was that where a lot of that came from did you lean into kauai as a safe space well i have a house on kauai and so it is definitely my safe space i wish i was there during
all of this quarantine that would be heaven um but we only i mean we only got to be there for three weeks but it was three amazing weeks and um there's three songs in particular on the album that i would say we consider that we wrote in kauai and that was i hope it's something good my best friend's weddings and set me free free so can i just say that yes there's the answer to that question here because
those are three very very honest and heartbreaking songs yeah and there's ukulele on the two ballads and you can also hear like if you were listening with headphones you can hear birds or a rooster uh maybe some ocean waves so yeah those to me those are the kawaii songs even though we worked on tights on my boat there and we worked on other songs there what's amazing about the record is that as as a child of divorce
and i know each of you have had the challenge of going through this in my parents life when i was a kid it was you know it entirely set the stall for me in a lot of ways in terms of how i matured how fast i matured and i watched my mother in particular go through this process the anger the frustration the confusion the grieving the acceptance and ultimately the space to move forward and to me it feels like
the album flows like that it feels like there is a sense start to finish of a almost a therapeutic concept to this it's just listening to it that's what i connected to as a person and i don't know if there's a question in there but if it strikes a chord with you any of you i'd love to hear your time thinking about that today like people say you know is this a divorce album or a breakup album and how many emotions you go through
during that process you know one day you're angry one day you're uh sad and you cry and then the next day you're horny so even though it's a breakup somewhat of a breakup album you you kind of touch on all aspects of emotion you know and so it makes some for some really fun songs as well as definitely what song was the hardest to get just right given that so many of these songs strike about such a perfect balance of
the personal and the universal we've talked about march march being one of the hardest ones to finish it went through many different iterations and when you're writing a song about something from like a perspective on the world i think it's even more critical that you get it right it was a heavy subject and it needed to have the appropriate heavy track so we we were willing to put in the time
and headspace to get that one just right yeah and that's one of those songs that will change shape over time too because the original inspiration behind it of course it can be applied now in so many different ways because to march for something is to believe in something and you have your own specific inspiration behind that song but you got to let it go at some point right you gotta let other people apply it
um what do you what are you hoping people are using that song for right now what's really close to your heart that you would love that song to represent right now i mean i think everything in the video you know um black black lives matter and women's rights and equal pay and um native americans and lgbtq and gun gun control all of it but i think so i think that's what's cool about the song is it's
not so much about all the causes i mean the video is and we definitely sing about certain things in the verses but it's really about the the listener and the person whatever it is that you're passionate about and that's important to you you have that power to be an army of one stick to your guns you know do what you believe is right in your heart unless you believe racism is in your heart don't don't follow your heart on that one you