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Evolution. It’s a word that fuels many a heated debate in the socio-political world. In the realm of popular music, evolution is a concept fast-approaching extinction. Artists receive contracts with expectations of short term success, often resulting in disappointed record executives and orphaned musicians.

Happily for us (and our hungry ears) Guster provides a shining counterexample to that sad story. Starting out as an acoustic trio (guitars, vocals, percussion) at Boston’s Tufts University, Guster toured relentlessly, garnering a fan base that can only be described as ‘rabid’. With the release of their fourth album, 2003’s Keep It Together, the band took a major step forward with the addition of multi-instrumentalist Joe Pisapia. A more muscular and eclectic sound emerged while retaining that distinctive Guster sound. Moving on from (but not abandoning) their acoustic roots, Guster has attained that rare balance of innovation and channeled influence.

Oh…that, and absolutely killer melodies.

One listen to their latest recording, Ganging Up On The Sun, it is obvious that the evolution continues. From the gorgeous harmonies on the pensive “Lightning Rod” to the highly textured “Ruby Falls” to the instant classic single of “One Man Wrecking Machine”, Guster’s music is an inspiring example of the power of impassioned songwriting.

On two consecutive spring afternoons, American Songwriter discussed the topics of the songwriting process, influences and the maturation of the band with Guster’s Ryan Miller and Adam Gardner. We hit on everything from the upper echelons of pop music to 80’s Hair bands.

When you put things together, is it words first or music first?

Ryan Miller:
It’s always music for us. Our relationship wit the lyrics is a particularly difficult one. Chord progressions and melodies come and then it’s not really an idea until we have a great melody over a chord progression and then it’s like…it’s this weird process of sort of backtracking and trying to fit in words that make sense and that sound good over this melody that we like. And the melody ends up not really bending that much. In our songs, melody is king.

Adam Gardner:
Words are painfully last!

Because there’s four of us and we play together as a band now - and unlike Keep It Together, we actually feel confident now on our new instruments.

It was interesting having Joe’s perspective on how we write and how we even just talk, because he was like “You guys understand that you’re reading each other’s minds to a large degree, right? You guys will be starting something and you don’t finish it because you know what the rest of the sentence is - but I don’t. So you need to finish those sentences for me.”

The conversation is a good example but that happens on a musical realm as well. So someone will start something and we all know, because we’ve been playing together, where that chord progression is gonna start to head. It was interesting to have Joe in there too because his vocabulary musically is so much broader than ours and he hasn’t been finishing our sentences musically for fifteen years so it’s great to have him come in and actually finish the sentence differently.

It certainly is a strong point in Guster’s music.

RM: So, it’s like we end up doing this weird sort of like almost mathy crossword puzzle method of trying to fit in lyrics around melodies that we really all sort of sign off on and like.

It’s a really hard thing to do. It usually ends up waiting…you know..inevitably there’s lyrics being written , you know, up until the morning that they’re being sung. It’s been happening that way for five albums.

Well, it appears to be working!

RM: It works on some level. It’s very stressful for me but…on the last two albums Brian will end up like having to bail me out. With a week to go and I haven’t written the lyrics for one of our songs [Brian will say] “I’ll just take that one” and he’ll take one in his room for a week and come out with something great.

When an interesting musical fragment comes along do you write it down or record it to save it for later?

RM: Yeah, I mean Joe does a lot more cataloging of his idea than any of us do.

No, I sort of have very distinct writing modes. But we’re either touring or writing or recording or off and I’m pretty much…95% of my output happens during the writing portion. I don’t do a ton of writing on the road. I don’t do a ton of writing when we’re off.

Well, it’s got to be pretty tough writing on the road, especially with clusters of shows and not a lot of down time.

RM: It’s more just a frame of mind thing, you know? It has a lot to do with time and more with, like, emotional space.

How has the process of the way you guys write songs changed, in particular regard to either the official addition of the new fourth member or just the fact that you’re older now.

AG: Each song sort of varies. It can be anything from someone coming in with a chorus idea or a whole song idea. A lot of this record was us just sitting around…we’d just lock ourselves in a room and someone would just start with something…it could be a bassline, it could be just a simple drum beat, it could be a guitar riff…and then we would just build up a song from that.

RM: The way that we wrote on this album was very similar to how we wrote Keep It Together. These two records are very different from our first three records: the way we approached it sonicaly, maturity level, everything. Especially the way we approached the writing. The first three records, I or somebody else would show up with a song and we’d go from there. On this record we basically had a schedule, noon to seven every day when we would all show up at the rehearsal space and just write. Sometimes I would go early and come up with some ideas but a lot of times we would just jam, you know - and play each other idea and try and feed off of each other that way. Having Joe as a fourth member - he’s incredibly musical. He plays every instrument very well…with the exception of drums (giggles) - just having that ability, and then when we’d get stale we’d all switch instruments and we’d do something really obnoxious that we knew we wouldn’t like but maybe would head into something else.

It was really interesting to just sort of show up and be at work that day. It’s sort of counterintuitive, I guess, to what a lot of people might think - I mean, maybe not necessarily the songwriting community - just your average person. It’s sort of like the Brill Building. You just show up and write a song that day.

The Guster version of the Brill Building.

RM: I guess. I wouldn’t be that presumptuous!

The very first listen through Keep It Together, I heard traces of famous bands…just little snippets. I heard some Beach Boys and Joe Jackson and even a little Elvis Costello. I wonder now, do you see yourselves somewhere in that continuum of bands?

RM: Do I see that thread of music continuing through us? Certainly not on a pop culture level. We haven’t had the notoriety of any of those bands. I think in a way though..it’s like that’s what we shoot for on every album.

We’ve been a band for so long but, the thing is, we’re still really hungry. And that’s what sort of fuels us in a way. We want to make records like Joe Jackson, you know? Like Look Sharp and we want to make record like My Aim Is True or whatever.

I don’t necessarily think that we have and I don’t know that this [the current record] is it, but that’s our goal. We want to make a classic record that’s part of that legacy.

Was there a record you heard in the past that made you say “Wow! This is what I want to do!”?

RM: The literal reason that I learned how to play guitar was because i heard “Still Loving You” by the Scorpions on the radio.

For a kid in his bedroom in Dallas it just felt so…larger than life and I was like “I want to learn how to play guitar. I want to learn how to play that song!”

AG: [Laughter] I wonder what Ryan’s response was because I know his answer and it’s probably too embarrassing for him to say. ‘Cause, you know…look, we grew up in the 80’s around the hair bands.

I think it might have had something to do with The Scorpions actually.

AG: Yea…it was! [more laughter]

Mine isn’t a whole lot better than that. I mean, it’s slightly better. The song for me….when I heard it and I was like “I wanna learn the guitar. That’s what I wanna do!” was “Money For Nothing” by Dire Straits.

Hey, that’s not nearly as embarrassing as The Scorpions!

AG: No. Alright, but here’s the embarrassing part. I didn’t give you the full story. It was when I heard it on Fame, the TV show. When they did it, when Fame did their version I was like “If Bruno can play it, I can play it!”

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Originally published in July, 2006. Copyright © 2006 American Songwriter Magazine. All rights reserved.