And The Writer Is...with Ross Golan

Today's guest is the drummer who took punk out of the garage, put it on your radio, then on MTV, then on your body. But his real story isn't the discography. It's what he did with everything that was supposed to end him.

From a four-piece kit in Fontana to the center of the album cover, Travis carries three things simultaneously that most musicians never figure out how to hold at once: the craft of writing a drum part as a hook — singing it in his head before his hands ever get there; the conviction that no genre gets to own him, and no one else gets to write his ending; and the contrarian edge to ban Auto-Tune, editing, and drum samples from his own studio at the exact moment the rest of the industry is sprinting toward machine-clean.

And The Writer Is... Travis Barker!

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CHAPTERS

0:00 Intro
1:51 Why the documentary sat for nine years
3:18 The producers pitch an ending: "Can you just walk onto a plane?"
4:51 Survivor's guilt: "They wouldn't want me to sit here and not fly again"
6:33 "The doc was dead to me" — and living your life like it's a movie
9:41 "I don't make beats." "Now you do. I need it in two days."
12:23 Beastie Boys, Bad Brains, Buck Owens — refusing the box
15:28 The drums are a hook, not a timekeeper
15:54 "That's not music" — the teacher who wouldn't teach him rock
17:25 How he actually writes a part: "I sing it in my head"
18:21 Learning the whole blink-182 set in an hour
21:29 Trash men in Laguna, and one store that sold their tape
22:52 The untitled album, and the day the process changed
25:57 The lyrics he wrote: "We'll have Halloween on Christmas"
27:15 "I Miss You" — the loop he had to convince them to keep
28:07 "You have to put your ego away to be a drummer who's a songwriter"
35:46 The burn center: "How am I going to play drums?"
36:25 The hand he couldn't feel, and why he told no one
43:20 "Too heavy for blink" — Boxcar Racer, and Mark
56:30 "There was no therapy for what happened"
1:10:19 What drummers should actually practice
1:19:29 AI: "I hate it" — no Auto-Tune, no editing, no samples
1:31:20 "All the Small Things" — the day Tom told him to open the valve
1:33:33 "Where's all the hits?" — the note that made Rock Show and First Date
1:35:15 "One More Time": writing about your own band breaking up

Credits:
Hosted by Ross Golan
Produced by Joe London and Jad Saad
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's guest is an artist most people meet through the bit: the deadpan internet, the cowboy suit, the one-sided war he's been waging with Harry Styles for a year that Harry Styles knows nothing about.

So this is the other version of him. A kid in Pittsburgh with a borrowed mic and beats ripped off YouTube, broke and failing out of school, who gets a message that Mac Miller loves a song off his first EP — and uses those three days in LA to convince his parents to let him drop out.

It's also one of the more honest conversations we've had about what the industry's upgrades actually cost you. Not the version where getting signed is the happy ending — the version where the nice studio, the engineer recording your vocals, and the A&R in your ear slowly make music that isn't yours. Chuck Timely & The Hourglass is what's on the other side of that: a record about time, made by someone who spent years trying to get his own back. And the only person who ever told him not to make it was his mother.

And The Writer Is... Role Model!

A special thank you to our sponsors for making these conversations possible.
Our lead sponsor, NMPA — the National Music Publishers' Association. Your support means the world to us.
And @splice — the best sample library on the market. Period.
They are also maybe the only ethical ai-integrated sample library and they pay creators for using their work in the new Variations update and beyond.

Chapters
0:00 Intro
2:00 The year-long war with Harry Styles that Harry Styles knows nothing about
2:41 Mac Miller and Odd Future on Vine are why he finally said yes to TikTok
3:33 The message about "Stolen Car" that came while he was failing out of school
15:01 "Did you scrub the internet?" — "Yes. Because I was embarrassed."
16:13 "I was trying to impress a label. I just made shitty music."
24:16 A 16-year-old in Portland, Maine, and an EP made entirely over email
25:44 The labels start calling: "I was a sitting duck"
27:01 The studio trap — how nice rooms take the music out of your hands
28:01 The two EPs he's blocked out: "I don't remember making that music"
28:54 Why he won't pitch songs to other artists
31:06 The 80s synth album they made for two months and scrapped
34:33 The two rules: no synths, no drum machines
35:06 His mom: "There's country in it? Your fans are gonna hate that."
37:39 "Sally," written in the 30 minutes a session ran short
42:09 "But who is Chuck?" — inventing Chuck Timely
47:12 Ross defines a good song: "This will piss off a lot of people"
53:10 What he'd say to Mac Miller
54:44 "Look at That Woman" started as a joke — and why the loose ones win
56:27 The permission Kansas Anymore gave other songwriters

Credits:
Hosted by Ross Golan
Produced by Joe London & Jad Saad
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

And The Update Is…a weekly beat on the industry . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's guest wrote "The Climb." She also wrote "I Drive Your Truck," "Mine Would Be You," "Don't Think Jesus," and "Ain't No Love in Oklahoma." But her real story isn't the hits. It's the ten years before the first one, the five years after it when the phone stopped ringing, and what she figured out in between about how to actually last in this business.

From a dropped record deal and years as what she calls a washed-up artist nobody would write with, to Song of the Year, a Grammy nomination, and a run of hits she wrote while raising three kids under three. She carries three things at once that almost no writer figures out how to hold together: a working method she can actually teach, a conviction that this is a calling and not a job, and a refusal to write the safe version of anything.

And The Writer Is... Jessi Alexander!

Hit subscribe and turn on notifications. Every week, we go deep with the most interesting creatives in music.

Follow us on socials: @andthewriteris

A special thank you to our sponsors for making these conversations possible.
Our lead sponsor, NMPA — the National Music Publishers' Association. Your support means the world to us.

0:00 Intro
0:48 Her favorite non-songwriting songwriter trick
1:54 "How do you make unavailable country men emotional?"
5:33 The five songs on her Hall of Fame plaque
11:07 Pool halls and stick shifts: "that color is what I draw from"
12:42 The artist deal that fizzled — "I wasn't the artist type"
13:31 No man's land: "no one took me seriously, I was a washed-up artist"
14:01 The insane story behind writing The Climb: "just another damn day"
20:11 Bud Light, a guitar pull, and a British director
22:07 Being told The Climb would change her life "Sir, that doesnt happen to people like me"
28:08 Nashville still said No
30:38 Getting men to sing: long notes and the falsetto flip
31:44 "What part of their tool belt have they not used?"
34:32 The professor who told her to quit school
36:18 Her album, the mergers, and Redneck Woman
40:27 New mom: "they'll just put someone else in my spot"
45:30 Good mom or good at work — never both
46:16 2015 to 2020: "the water just turned off"
48:23 Advice for the writer whose phone stopped ringing
50:24 The song that rang every bell
57:21 Concept-first or melody-first: "I'm the director"
61:16 Songwriters own it. Screenwriters sell it.
64:16 Imposter syndrome and the Billy Strings answer
65:24 What makes Morgan Wallen great
69:46 "I don't like to not know where all the bodies are buried"
71:43 I Drive Your Truck (Crazy story)
74:37 Her granddad's truck in the driveway
75:44 "Call in the third. Call in the fourth. Call in the 10th."
76:46 No #1 party until they found him
80:36 The truck-song traffic jam they were worried sick about
85:38 "Keep your head down." Still the only answer.

Credits:
Hosted by Ross Golan
Produced by Joe London & Jad Saad
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.