the making of i’m wide awake, it’s morning by bright eyes - featuring conor oberst and mike mogis

Intro: 

Dan Nordheim: You’re listening to Life of the Record. Classic albums, told by the people who made them. My name is Dan Nordheim. 

Bright Eyes formed in Omaha, Nebraska in 1995 by Conor Oberst. Conor was in another band at the time called Commander Venus and had been writing and recording songs since the age of fourteen. The first Bright Eyes album was a collection of his songs from a two year period, and was released on Saddle Creek Records, a label founded by Conor’s brother Justin Oberst and Mike Mogis. Also in 1998, the album Letting Off the Happiness was released, which featured Mike Mogis for the first time. The next Bright Eyes album, Fevers and Mirrors, was released in 2000, with Lifted following in 2002. At that point, Conor moved to New York City and wrote enough songs to make up his next two albums, which he recorded back in Nebraska with Mike Mogis and Omaha friends as well as musicians he had met in New York. I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning, along with Digital Ash in a Digital Urn, were eventually released on the same day in 2005. 

In this episode, for the 20th anniversary, Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis reflect on how the Wide Awake album came together. This is the making of I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning.

Conor Oberst:  Hi, this is Conor Oberst from Bright Eyes, and I am discussing our album, I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning. I think I was in the perfect stage of life where I had enough sort of experiences at that point, that I felt like I had something to write about and to share. But I wasn't as, you know, I guess I wasn't as jaded, maybe, and I had a little bit of some wide eyed innocence left. Now it's completely been beaten out of me, so don't (laughs), so don't look for it, but  it was there at one time. And I think that record reflects just that period of my life, which, you know, it was romantic. I mean, it was, I mean, I had already done a lot of things musically, I suppose, but it did feel like a fresh start. Like I'd never lived anywhere besides Omaha so really like calling another city home and especially New York, you know, it’s still the greatest city. And it's like that really, I guess, caught me at the right time where I was able to express the newness of being there. Yeah so Wide Awake is definitely a record that, I think it's a New York record, but it's sort of through the lens of a Midwestern transplant. 

So we put out Lifted in 2002 and that was sort of us transitioning into what I would call a more professional state of being a band. You know, up until then it was touring in vans and well, we got a booking agent eventually, but in the old days, kind of booking our own shows and blah, blah, blah, all that kind of stuff. And after Lifted, it was like, have a sound person and have a tour manager and be on a bus. So that was sort of the beginning of the rest of my life, kind of. And then the next, Wide Awake, was the next record we made. And I remember it was New Year's Day, 2003. I like got in my van with a few of my friends in Omaha and my meager possessions and drove to New York City and parked my van in Jersey and I started living with my manager at the time, like First Avenue and 13th Street. And then over the years, I lived in like five different apartments in New York, but always kind of in the East Village, Lower East Side zone. And yeah, I guess the record is sort of coming from, I guess a place of  being fresh off the boat, as you were, from the, you know, kid from the Midwest, I guess, taking it all in.

Mike Mogis: Hi there, my name is Mike Mogis, a member of the band Bright Eyes, and, you know, we're talking about I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning, a record we put out a couple, like, decades ago. Conor’s writing, you know, the new setting and like just life situation around him, absolutely, you know, in my opinion, affected the writing of these, this batch of songs. There was just so much material that was kind of coming through, and I don't think, I didn't notice any difference because he's always been just cranking out songs, even when I met him as a 14 year old, his songs, they were still clever and weirdly poetic, you know, his solo records when he was a little kid, you know. And I was like, “Dang, this kid's got some skills, but he's only 13 years old? What the fuck?” And, you know, he still hadn't went through puberty. He was still cranking out good songs. And so it was just kind of a moment like, you know, probably growing up, moving to a new city, a metropolitan, like the biggest city in America and like finding new, you know, making new friends, new connections, new setting. It just really kind of blossomed into this creative burst. He's always been sort of a sponge sucking in life, you know, and putting it through his brain and then putting it into song, when he was a teenager making cassette tapes in his bedroom, you know, by himself. And then here making this record after years of touring and is just still doing the same thing, absorbing all this stuff and putting his take on it and then putting a catchy melody behind it. I'm always impressed by him and when he shows me a new song, I'm like, “Dang, that's so sad,” (laughs) or something. I don't know. He's just he's always  done that, you know.

Conor Oberst:  I think all the Bright Eyes albums have their own, I guess not necessarily a concept records, but we've always kind of wanted our records to sound different than each other. I think that my voice and the songwriting is kind of the through line, but as far as like how we decorate the songs and approach the records, you know, they're kind of then different all over the years. But for this record, we really were going for, I guess, a purist like seventies folk approach, very heavily influenced by like Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell and Graham Parsons and, I’m trying to think of stuff I was in really into at the time, like Townes Van Zandt.  Yeah so I think that it's kind of funny or it's been a thing over the years, cause I think that Wide Awake was, you know, definitely our biggest like commercial success and I think that some people have kind of only heard that. And so they assume that our band was, that was the entirety of what we did, kind of, whatever you want to call it, I don't know, alternative country or some shit. Because we had like a pedal steel or, you know, people aren't that discerning, I think about differences sometimes with genre, but, you know, that's just sort of, I mean, it's certainly a part of our band, don't get me wrong. But that record in particular, we kind of wanted it to exist in a world that could be, I guess it's sort of retro in that sense, you know, we recorded it on tape and all of that kind of old school approach. 

Mike Mogis: It was one of the more fun and quick and easy records that we've ever made. And, you know, I kind of, I listened to it last night and I got teary eyed, I got a little misty and just because memories of our friends and some of which are, most of which are with us, some of which aren't and that played on it. And like every time we make a record, it sort of encapsulates a certain period of time in life for me, it was one of the first records that we had made where I, yeah I felt like I didn't really do enough work or something. Like, I was like, “Oh,” felt like kind of, “did I try hard enough on this one?” Like I felt like I could have done more, but the reason I didn't is because when listening, you know, working on this batch of songs, we were doing two things at once. We were doing Digital Ash, the Digital Ash in a Digital Urn record, as well as Wide Awake, It's Morning, recording them simultaneously. We focused on this batch of songs first, even though we were tracking them at the same time, just due to some specific, just efficiency things. This batch of songs just didn't require much, they didn't require any production. They were so personal and the stories themselves were like, so touching and like there's just any other sounds were just superfluous and like didn't, I don't know, I felt a little insecure about it at first because I was like, “Shit, it's not, it doesn't have a bunch of fun, weird little tones,” and I don't know, that we've been accustomed to adding to our music, you know. Lifted had a bunch of people playing on it, you know, and same, Fevers and Mirrors had a lot of weird little production tricks cause that's when I learned how to use Pro Tools, you know, and Letting Off the Happiness was recorded on DA-88’s, ike these weird digital tapes and also on reel to reel 8-track machine limiting, but also you could add a lot of stuff. And with this, it was the tape machine back there in the control room and most of it was live.

Conor Oberst: We had been playing a lot of the songs on the road prior to the recording. We didn't really labor over a lot of the arrangements like we have on other records. You know, there's not a big, you know, there's not at all, like an orchestral element, which is on a lot of our records or like the effects and, you know, Mike Mogis, who's one of the other guys in the band and a producer by trade, you know, he's, I always think of what he does and what he does with the effects in the studio, I guess wizardry, that he has at his disposal is very evident on a lot of our other records. But we kind of intentionally kept away from this record so that it would have that, you know, that pure, that pure old sound.

Mike Mogis: Conor, this is a very prolific time in his life where he came in with like 20 some songs and we kind of picked out which ones would be for the folk record and which ones would be for the digital record, you know, like the Digital Ash in a Digital Urn album. And the ones that we chose to feature on Wide Awake, It's Morning, we just really adhered to that aesthetic of simplicity and just straightforward and sincerity and no kind of tricks, you know, because as Bright Eyes, we kind of like tricks. Restraint isn't necessarily one of our strong suits, you know, we're kind of a lot of information and it was so minimal. So everything that we did was very important and, you know, intentional, everything that you do in a studio, you'd think is intentional, but there's a lot of unintentional things you do in the studio in our past records and our current records. They're like, “Oh, that's a fun accident.” But this one, it wasn't, there wasn't really that many fun accidents. It was about songs and the most kind of sincere way to present them. And so therefore it just meant minimalism to me. And it's the first time we'd ever done that (laughs). You know, like it was such a nice change.

Conor Oberst: I think that, you know, simplicity was on our minds and we actually recorded the whole record in like two weeks or something like that, which for our band is record time, you know, we spent a lot of times we spent like, well, sometimes we spend years making a record, but you know, definitely like six months and you know, whatever. So this was like, very much like we just did it, we did it as live as possible and yeah, I mean, I think you kind of hear that on the recording. Two of my friends from New York, Jesse Harris, who’s a great songwriter, a guitar player, he's probably best known for, he wrote a lot of like Norah Jones's big hits, like her huge hit. And he's just a friend from New York and this guy, Tim Luntzel, RIP, who's this amazing bass player. And they kind of, yeah, they were in that, I don't know what it was, like, Living Room was a club in, like, Lower East Side. This is kind of this whole, sort of, folky jazz scene in New York. So, we, the three of us, took a very small plane, because that's, at the time, that's all you could get, like, direct from New York. And it was wintertime, and I was scared of flying at that time, and it was shaky. I did have a brief Big Bopper moment. I was like, man, this might be it, you know, but alas, I made it. 

Mike Mogis: I mean this one even, Wide Awake, it has a weird little intro. You know, all of our records have an annoying intro just to test the listener's patience, I suppose. But even that was done live. Like, Conor's telling a story about being on a plane in a plane wreck, you know? Like, being on an airplane that's going down. I think, in a way, it's a comforting story. It's like, “We're going to a birthday party. It's your birthday. I love you very, very much.” You know, like, it's such a strange thing. Every time we did a take, we did like three takes of that song. And he told a slightly different story because he's improvising, you know, the story was kind of frameworked around the same premise of a crashing plane, but it was different each time, you know, so that nature kind of shows like there was no manipulation to it. There was just, whatever came out, came out. 

Conor Oberst: What you're hearing is like a live take of Tim and Jesse and I in the studio. We did record that song right when we got there and all of our records, for those who haven't listened to Bright Eyes records, there's always kind of a sound collage, some kind of intro before the first song that we always thought of as kind of this way to weed out casual listeners. You know, if you have enough attention span to sit through whatever we’re, strange thing we're doing at the beginning of the record. Then, you know, you're maybe in a more mindset to receive the rest of the information of the album. So for that, for that record, partly because it was,  ou know, we were steering clear of a lot of the effect driven recordings, it made the most sense to do the intro of me just telling a story as if we were, you know, at a coffee shop playing a set or whatever so. 

Mike Mogis: I remember a tiny bit of anxiousness and maybe that anxiety came from this weird turbulent landing or like this plane trip just to come out here to make the record, you know? And it's funny that that would be the first things that people would hear on this album, you know, but  I do think, you know, for me, I don't think I had, it's possible that I had met Jesse and Tim in passing in, in New York City, but it was definitely my first time recording them. And I, you know, I still get nervous when setting up a session and I get a little, like have this nervous energy and excitement and which could also be construed as anxiety a bit, but like have this kind of energy when you're setting up and making a record when a band just shows up. And it was the first time I was recording those guys. You know, I've been working with Conor for years and years and years. Like, so any of their nervous or frazzled nature just sort of probably matched mine. But it was exciting. And those dudes are just such pros. It was kind of effortless to, like, record a lot of the basic tracks for this record. So much so, I felt like I wasn't, like I said, doing my job. Like, “Wow, we only did a couple takes of this, time to move on.” Like, you know, sometimes we hem and haw over things, this record we did not. 

“At the Bottom of Everything” 

Conor Oberst: When I wrote “At the Bottom of Everything,” I guess I had moved out of the first apartment in New York and I was down on having to be at the time. And I remember just that feeling of being in New York. One of the things I really liked about it was, I mean, I'm from Omaha, Nebraska, and maybe like a, at the time, kind of like a big fish in a small pond situation. And just growing up, I mean, Omaha’s a city. It's a real city, but it's, you know, it's not a large city, so I kind of knew everyone there and the people I didn't know knew me. So going to New York and the anonymity that provided. And I loved like walking out of my door of my apartment and, you know, hearing 10 different languages being spoke on the street as I like walked around. And yeah, I just kind of intoxicated by New York and that song, I think, you know, I was definitely inspired by walking around and just kind of looking out at life, I suppose. 

Mike Mogis: Those people that he met in New York City were very influential on how this record turned out sounding, you know, like the guitar parts of Jesse's and the bass parts of Tim's and  having Jesse and Tim there as part of our live crew for the majority of the record. And the song “At the Bottom of Everything,” that one, Jim James did an overdub. He recorded that in Louisville at his studio in Louisville and sent that to us. 

Conor Oberst: Jim James and I go way back. We were both on this record label called Wichita in England. It was the first label that signed My Morning Jacket and Bright Eyes for like a deal overseas. And so I met him real early on, became friends and yeah, started playing shows together. I fell in love with his music and you know, he's just got such an incredible, unique voice. And I knew I wanted, you know, a high male harmony, kind of, you know, Graham Nash kind of vibe or something like that, in that ilk. Yeah, he came in and knocked it out of the park. 

Mike Mogis: They were all in like a half circle, like just in a room in Lincoln at the studio. And  so that one, I played mandolin like right after we recorded it. I tried to make it as live as I could, but after we recorded it, got the take. Like I said, I think we did like three passes of that song. And the last one we were like, “Okay, that's it.” And then on that song, there's times where, there's one time, I think it's the last chorus of “At the Bottom of Everything,” Tim doesn't hit the right, went to the wrong note, the “boom, boom, boom,” and he just does a walking thing, but we kept it, it just was charming, you know? Like even when we didn't play it right, it was still charming, and, you know, there's some mistakes, and it sounds cool to us. 

I remember having a specific setup for that, and then, yeah, those were the first ones that we recorded, and, yeah, “First Day of My Life,” “Lua,” “At the Bottom of Everything,” the one where Emmylou's, “One Foot in Front of the Other,” “Land Locked Blues,” that was about it, I think, in that, like, setup, where they're just in a half circle. And that kind of set a tone for the record, you know? And we did double drums on this album, so we had a setup for that. We had, we had Clark and Boesel playing, I believe. Clark Baechle from The Faint and Jason Boesel from Rilo Kiley were the drummers on Wide Awake. And Matt Maginn playing bass on some of this. He's a bass player in a band called Cursive. Nick White was the keyboard player, the piano player. He was in a band called Tilly and the Wall at the time. Maria Taylor also sang. Yeah, it was kind of a mixture of old school Nebraska, fucking Saddle Creek people and New York folks that played on these records. But yeah, it started with the core acoustic songs, I believe. And in the most minimal way that we had recorded, which is live, everybody together sitting right next to each other and that kind of set a tone for how the rest of the songs would kind of unfold, I think. So it really felt like a lot of just friends making music together. 

“We Are Nowhere and It’s Now” 

Conor Oberst: I did demos prior to the record. Jesse Harris and I did some in New York, just in a really small studio, like up in the Sony building. Cause I was, that was like my publisher at the time. Then they have like a little free  demo studio you could use. And then I also demoed in my house in Omaha and my friend, Jason Boesel, who’s been in a million bands and plays with us, but he was in Rilo Kiley, that band from LA that we became friends with and ended up kind of joining our gang of Saddle Creek Records and things. Anyway, it was one of the first times. I really played with Jason as far as like arranging a song and when I put out doing, you know, like the little waltz guitar thing, I think I had an inclination to play it really slow. So I remember like when he got in there and started doing a little more upbeat drum part, I think it like turned into a, and that, you know, cause I can hear the old version, I probably half a copy of it, that's like a lot sort of more maudlin and slow. And he put a little pep in the step, which I like. 

Mike Mogis: So like the first time I heard it, I remember thinking, “Dang, this one's long,” (laughs). Like there's a lot of verses. It was such a, a trippy story. And I remember thinking, “How do we make this wall sound not like a waltz or something?” (sings rhythm) “one, two, three, four, five.” But the song itself, like, the title itself, “We Are Nowhere and It's Now,” is compelling to me. It was just moving to me to have that imagery. And that was one of the first things that I thought. But I did think, “Man, these verses are kind of long. They keep going. What are we going to do?”

Conor and I flew to Nashville to record with Emmylou Harris, you know, there. And that was a trip because she's Emmylou Harris (laughs). You know, she didn't even know, I mean, I think, was it her daughter? grandaughter, whatever relatives that were like our age liked Bright Eyes. And so she took the job. She, she's like, “Okay.”

Conor Oberst: Well, that was very much a shot in the dark. We, like I said, we were making that kind of record and there were parts where we wanted harmonies and, you know, just kind of thinking about, you know, who would make sense with the songs we had. And, you know, obviously that she's kind of the queen of that style of harmony and music and, you know, we're big fans. So yeah, I just reached out to her via whatever connection management stuff or something. Somehow we got the versions of the recordings to her and she agreed. So it was, it was amazing. So I flew down to Nashville and we recorded her, I can't remember what studio, you guys have so many  beautiful studios down there, but it was one of the old school ones that kind of had like a church-y vibe. And I remember sitting down on the couch in the control room and she had the recordings before and she's like, “Oh, let me show you the harmonies I came up with.” So I'm sitting on this little studio couch and they're playing the track through the speakers. And then she starts singing next to me and man, it was, it was a pretty surreal, intense feeling because it's like this voice I've heard, you know, my whole life more or less. And she's singing like my words and singing some of my songs. So that was very special. And she's such a lovely person and very generous to do that for us. 

Mike Mogis: “We Are Nowhere and It’s Now,” I remember she was like, “I don't get this song.” Like she was like, I don't get, “What is this about?” And I don't even remember what Conor said. Like he said something kind of basic, “Oh, okay.” She's just a naturally gifted harmony singer. She's sung on the, with everybody, like the most classic, best songwriters in the world. And she's a fucking classic songwriter herself, with an amazing voice. And like this one, cause she never rehearsed, we walked in the studio. She had kind of, we had sent her the songs and I know that she had listened to them and must've maybe hummed along with them in her car or her house or whatever. But we came in, hit record and she's like, “I can't quite find my harmony.” We're like, “What are you talking about? This sounds great.” Like we just, this was one song where when we were recording it, I remember her not as happy as she was with like, “Land Locked Blues,” and “Another Travelin’ Song,” that one was done within like the first take. So, yeah, so I think it was because we had three songs that we, generally speaking, we kind of like using or having an element, at least be on an album to hopefully three times just to make it feel cohesive. With, “We Are Nowhere and It's Now,” that one was a trickier one and Conor, I remember wanting that one in particular to, I think it is because it's so long and there's a lot of verses that just to have some shape to it. He really wanted her to sing a lot more on that one. It just felt like an important moment and we just wanted to feature her voice.

Conor Oberst: I think she sings on like three songs, maybe. But yeah, we had recorded the,  we had recorded the record essentially. And yeah, I hadn't heard, she hadn't sent any of the harmony ideas. So everything kind of happened right there in the studio in Nashville, where she, like I said, she was sitting on the couch next to me and singing then, then turning to me and being like, “Do you like, you know, is that, you like that?” I feel ridiculous, even like answering the question. I was like, “Yeah, uh, I mean, Emmylou it’s perfect.” So yeah, it was just a real  sweet dream to be there with her. Yeah, my friend, Maria Taylor, who also sings on the record and she played with us a lot back then. She was with me and Mogis was down there, but I remember like at some point during that thing, Maria had to like go in the hallway of the studio and was like crying, like overwhelmed, by how, you know, beautiful it was that she was like singing. 

Mike Mogis: I really love it when Nate's trumpet parts come in, it just sounds right to me. And we didn't really do much, there's piano comes in, or there's a little mandolin, there's just like, there's also Emmylou Harris, we just chose very specific, small little arrangement choices to  help the song move along, because there's a sense of motion in the song, “We Are Nowhere and It's Now.” It feels like kind of, there's a lot of weird little, not traveling aspects throughout this record. But take the fucking first thing, you're in an airplane, there's a train underwater, there's “Another Travelin’ Song,” “We Are Nowhere and It's Now,” there's a lot of movement in this album. And so my thoughts when putting the song together was little things kind of popping in and out, momentum. And then the, I guess you'd call it maybe second verse, but it's literally maybe the seventh verse, but where we drop things out, pair it down and you kind of pause, rest for a second. And just that creates its own motion where you rest for a second where it's just kick drum and snare drum and Conor singing, you know, and well, and his very soft guitar. But that song, it touched upon all kinds of personal things for me, it was not any really thing that we ever discussed, but about “sleeping with a head full of pesticide” and just the refrain of “we are nowhere and it's now,” and then going to a bar after work, you know, and not that either Conor or I had jobs, but like the idea of like friends in a place that's comfortable and like, I don't know, there's just lots of touchstones of personal things that mean a lot to me. It's a well constructed song. 

Conor Oberst: It definitely is an encapsulation of that time in my life, like being fresh to New York. Yeah, there's a, it's still there, although it moved, and it's a lot different now, but there's this bar, St. Dymphna's, that was kind of like my second living room, and spent a lot of time there. And there was this woman, Raquel, who was a waitress at the time, then she eventually, she went on to own it, which is great, but, like, you order a drink, and she would, like, bring, like, a bowl of soup first, and be like, “Okay, you gotta eat this, before I give you a drink.” So that was, you know, there was some discipline involved. 

The title of the song is, to me in my mind, touring, there's that time in between cities when you really are, feels like you're nowhere, you're in between destinations. And still to this day, I feel like a sense of, I don't know, calm and I don't know, freedom and like sort of not invincibility, but just like existing on a different like when you're in between, when you're traveling and you're in between those spots, like it doesn't matter if people call you or try to get a hold of you like, especially back then it's like you couldn't, you know, you just say, “I was on the road,”  or whatever, and that was a good enough answer. So you're kind of, there's no obligations and you're just there and the interstates blowing by and I've always loved that feeling. So I guess that's where the title of the song comes from. 

"Old Soul Song (for the New World Order)"

Conor Oberst: I think that probably the most obvious political touchstone or one of them on the record is the "Old Soul Song (for the New World Order).” That song is definitely, parts of it are pulled right out of real life. There was a big protest in New York City leading up to the Iraq war and yeah, my friends and I went out and, you know, protesting and that, yeah, that time, I mean, I think my sort of my time of becoming interested in politics, I guess, goes back to the 2000 election. You know, I was 20 years old, but I remember being in Europe on tour and it was like, “We don't have a president still?” Like, “What, what is this all about?” You know, and then 9/11 happened and then of course it was on everyone's mind. 

I don't know, I just felt like I needed to know more about what was happening in the world after 9/11. And then that kind of led right into moving to New York and the war and the second election of Bush the second time. Which I did a thing called Vote for Change, a concert tour with Bruce Springsteen and R.E.M. leading up to the war. And yeah, it's funny to think back, like, you know, it's kind of hard to get waves of enthusiasm around John Kerry, but we sure tried. And, it wasn't just us, that was like, our leg of the tour was Springsteen and R.E.M. and us, but there was different, I think My Morning Jacket was out with like Pearl Jam and I don't know, Dave Matthews, there was a whole network of people that were all part of the same organization trying to get Kerry elected. And that was, yeah, one of my first real introductions to complete political disappointment, like really putting your heart and soul into something that doesn't come to fruition. But we all live and learn. 

Mike Mogis: Collectively, we're all pretty pissed about the weird wars we're getting involved with for seemingly greed purposes. And like, I remember it was 2000, we were in Europe when the, all this recount between fucking Al Gore and George Bush were happening. We're like, “What is happening?” It took a month. We were in Europe this whole time. We thought Al Gore would win. We're like, “Jesus Christ.” And then, you know, 9/11 happened the next year. And, like,  then going to war in the Middle East. And after George Bush Sr., like, was in the Middle East in the 90s when I was in high school. Like, it was just felt like this weird tragic continuation of fucking oil, money, greed, I don't know. It just didn't sit well with any of us and it just felt wrong and stupid and kind of evil and pointless and worth noting, I guess. And remarking on, and Conor did many times in the songs and in protests and like, this is a true story about him and being in New York and doing these, because in Omaha, Nebraska, that shit, you didn't have big protests like that. Nowadays there actually are. But, like, back in the early 2000s, people  weren't as engaged and as passionate. And I think that was a moving thing for Conor to feel this camaraderie for once. With tens of thousands of fucking other human beings having the same impassioned belief and being amazed by that. And “Holy shit, the power of the fucking people, like, coming together.” I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about it. Like, you know, like, it's reassuring and kind of gives you some kind of like joy or pride to have that affirmation in your fellow human beings that you're not alone and like there's, you really do feel like there's a lot of power when people come together in protest and just come to the streets and like proclaim a certain thing in unity. It feels empowering. 

Conor Oberst: The pedal steel is obviously a big part of our band, but I think the part on that has a very bittersweet sound to it, which I appreciate. Still to this day, that little drum break thing that happens towards the end of the song before the kind of big outro. I remember when that, I think it was Clark Baechle’s old friend, plays in The Faint. I don't know that kind of, that happened because that was another song we played live a lot before recording the album. So I always liked that part, the drum break into the big chords in the the outro. Very cathartic, I suppose. 

Mike Mogis: I think it might have been one of the first songs that Conor showed me. I think it was at the Bowery Ballroom, he showed me this song and we played it. I think it was just him and me, I was just on like banjo or mandolin or something, I can't remember if it was a Monsters of Folk of Bright Eyes and friends. But I remember he's showing it to me in a dressing room at Bowery Ballroom. Yeah, it was this song, it was that song. And you know, I remember him saying, “I picture like this big, like big moments, especially in the weird little pause.” And so it wasn't until like months later that we actually got to the studio to record it. But that was one because of what he said and yeah in the dressing room, like I was like, “Well, let's use this one for like two drummers,” you know, just because a lot of times that adds impact or like bigness or like the sound of a large group, even though we were a small group. But “and they went wild,” you know, we break it down there just for effect of like, I find that, I don't know, when you say something softly, it makes people listen more. I don't know. It was kind of always in Conor's, it was his idea to do that, obviously, but it was the dynamic, like shifts in the song, I think are important in even the story of protests and an alarm clock radio, like just coming out of a slumber to being, you know, like just shocked. And there's just little, little nuggets of imagery that I think piecing this one together and having employed of like whispery vocals that are real quiet, then all of a sudden getting really big with the drums, (sings drum beat) “ticka ticka ticka.” It sounded bigger to me than what it actually was, what that I actually recorded, unfortunately, but like, it still is effective, the sort of jarring shifts. It's a real kind of catchy, pleasant melody, and even though the song isn't that pleasant. 

“Lua”

Mike Mogis: At this point in his recording career, I mean, he'd made like a bunch of records, he's kind of good at working the microphone. This record I used, what, are you using an SM7 right there? That's the microphone that I used with him on making this record and in a lot of records, especially when it's him playing acoustic guitar, because it rejects a lot of,  it has a lot of proximity effect. Like when you're up on it, it's got a lot of closeness and you back off of it. You kind of disappear, you know? And so, and he knows he has it so, so loud in his headphones. I go to his headphones, I'm like, “Damn, how can you hear anybody else in the band?” But he can't. But so he's really aware of like where his vocals are sitting in the mix. So he's pretty good at just like moving back and forth and using that mic in particular, the SM7, which does have a lot of proximity effect and a lot of rejection from outside sources, which is why it's handy to use in a live situation and an acoustic guitar player or a singer songwriter I should say. And yeah he gets right up on it and just whispers and he's like shoving his mouth on top of the little foam part right there when he's whispering and then when he starts shouting, he kind of he moves a couple inches off and it just sounds about right. “Lua” just felt like it's just so touching because he sings it so softly and it's so pretty. 

Conor Oberst: “Lua” has been a song that I've continued to play, kind of never stopped. I wouldn't say it's certainly not every show I play, but I've played it a lot more than many of my other songs. I remember writing that and I would, sometimes I had a, another good friend in New York, this guy Butch, who I would, he was like one of the only people I knew that got up early in the morning, cause he was like a photographer assistant, so he was always going to these shoots, like, mad early. And sometimes I would like turn up his apartment cause I couldn't, I'd been up all night or I couldn't sleep. So I remember going in like playing that song for him.  He's probably the first person to hear it actually. And he was like, he has a way of making you feel like, “Wow, that's really good.” So, he boosted my confidence with that one, I guess. 

Mike Mogis: Again, such a, like, weirdly beautiful and somewhat tragic, not tragic, but it's, I don't know. I always felt it was kind of sad. But, (sings vocal melody) “dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun.” I mean, it's just like a happy, catchy melody. But it's about being a drug addict and fucking, I don't know, being alone. 

Conor Oberst: Again, just kind of trying to have that less is more attitude towards the record. Because as you probably remember, we released two records on the same day. So Digital Ash in a Digital Urn would come out the same day. We recorded it after we recorded Wide Awake, but those, I was already writing those songs and we were kind of already piecing that record together, which is totally different. And so yeah, I think that the yin and yang of those, working on those kind of simultaneously, led to like a lot of decisions on what to record, so just, yeah, just make it simple. So that song felt like nice, just on its own. 

Mike Mogis: The spareness in it, and the kind of weird loneliness in it. I didn't want anything to ruin that effect. You know, cause it's kind of a thoughtful, introspective, lonely song. And there's only one person involved with that. You know it's you or it's the author, it’s just, you know, so. And maybe that's why a lot of people like it cause it feels like, it's not encumbered with stuff. Like it can be more touching and more personal because it can feel like they can put themselves in the song. 

Conor Oberst: Yeah again, that's, you know, a little vignette of New York. And yeah another friend of mine, God it sucks the longer you live in, you're like, “Oh yeah, that person's also dead.” But she's no longer with us, unfortunately. I don't know if I should be talking about it like that, but yeah, she's an old friend. 

Mike Mogis: We try to make as good a judgment as we can in the moment. And that one just felt like, “There should be nothing else here.” Like, “let's make the point about the human condition that like lives in all of us. It's flaws, it's beauty and all that.” It seemed to help embolden the point, I guess, of the song or the message of the song, just to have it be just by himself, you know, and hopefully it takes the listener just to be by themselves too.

Conor Oberst: It's also kind of flexible as a duet. I've sang it with like Gillian Welch and  Phoebe Bridgers and Klara and Johanna, the girls from First Aid Kid and different people over the years. And also added like sometimes Nate Walcott, who's the other main person in Bright Eyes, plays trumpet. And so sometimes we'll put a long trumpet solo in the middle, I don't know, we've played it like so many different ways over the years. And it kind of always works, I think, because it is  simple and the lyrics are maybe not as, I don't know, dense or layered as some of my other songs. So maybe it's a little more, I think a lot of the songs on that record are a little more immediate to the listener, which is probably why more people listen to it than our other song. I don't know. 

Mike Mogis: And just for the dynamic of an album, always like try and find ebbs and flows to reign things in and and make it, you know, more intimate and spare, you know, just to have shape to the album as a whole. So this just felt like the right song for that. There's obviously several songs that are spare, but this one is the most, you know, because it is, it's a lonely little number, but it's also like extremely beautiful. 

It's a well written song. It's like one of the best ones on the record, well, I don't know. I like all of these songs. There's no favorite song of mine on this record, but yeah, they all resonate. I guess the time and place when this record was made, they all feel connected and they all feel,  last night when I was listening to it, I felt like I was back in 2004 or something, like, I just felt, even though we play these songs live still, like, I haven't listened to the record in a while. And you know, yeah, I got fucking teary eyed just thinking about the time and the people. All these songs kind of resonate with me as a collective, as a whole, and so therefore they are all very meaningful. Each record's kind of like that, though, to be honest. Even Digital Ash, even  People's Key, (laughs), you know, or more recent ones, you know. 

“Train Under Water” 

Conor Oberst: God, I keep feeling like I'm given the same answer. But yeah, the songs were all written in the same time period, so I guess that makes sense, but yeah, you know, you get to New York and one of the first  challenges I think for newcomers is, you know, just figuring out the subway system. And I was never very good at that. I mean, I was like, I feel like I'm always getting lost or think I'm headed to the right place. And this is, again, this is like, you know, flip phone era times. So, you know, you had to read the maps and things like that. So yeah, but, the L train was the one that was real easy for me because I’d just take it from 14th street and First Ave., one stop and then you're like in Bedford and on Bedford and Williamsburg, which was where it wasn't, I mean, it was still gentrifying and stuff, but it wasn't as, it wasn't like a mall like it is now, it was like a place people went. So I could always make that little jump and then see my friends that live in Brooklyn. I'm like, I'm just talking about transportation and stuff now (laughs). I suppose you want some like emotional… (laughs). The craziest one is the one that you take from France to England, the Chunnel. Like they, it's like, have you ever, you know about this, it's like a giant train that goes under the English Channel. And like literally like you drive your tour bus onto it, you park on a train and like go under the English Channel. That's like the ultimate train under water experience. 

Mike Mogis: It was a fun song to play with Jesse and I played steel and Jake, our friend sang on it. It just felt breezy, (sings drum beat) “chicka chicka chicka.” You know, there's a swing to the rhythm of it that has, it has a little jazziness to it, and that's kind of the breezy, kind of carefree, like, swing it has in it that is, you know, unique. 

Conor Oberst: I guess I never thought of it as jazzy, but I love jazz. I do love jazz. The harmonies are my friend Jake Bellows, who was in a band from Omaha called Neva Dinova that we played with and made like a split EP with. That's him singing and he has a beautiful voice. I think Jesse Harris again was playing the kind of, which that actually makes sense. He was playing electric guitar. And he, like I said, he was the one that wrote the Norah Jones songs and has tons of his own records. But yeah, there is a weird crossover at the time. Yeah this sort of jazz scene and folk scene in New York, like I said, this place called the Living Room and yeah, just all those little spots, like in the Lower East Side, a group of people would play like, you know, every week. And I ended up down there a lot. 

Mike Mogis: There's a romanticism to it that I find relatable, even though it's a story about something specific, but it just, the metaphors in it kind of feel relatable to me. Yeah but the song “Train Under Water” always struck me as a romantic idea of like a new place, new beginnings and a new relationship, whether it be with, with an environment or a person. It's just, I don't know. It felt kind of positive and hopeful. 

Conor Oberst: The excitement of like anything is possible. You know, you don't, when you go out in Omaha, you know, I mean, we had tons of fun and things, but, and we did, I think, very creative things for like what we had. But being in New York, it was like, yeah, those experiences you're like, “Whoa,” like you meet some, you know, meet one of your heroes at a party, like, you know, and like, see something amazing that I would never see in Nebraska, you know, I think it was, it added a lot to my desire to create. 

“First Day of My Life” 

Mike Mogis: Again, it's sort of the contrast of, that is throughout this record, which is despair and joy. Like, “First Day of My Life” is probably the most positive song Conor's written, at least at that point. And well there's been, there were some other ones, “Going for the Gold,” “Kathy with a K,” there's some songs that just espouse positivity. It's rare with Conor's writing, but like, I really feel like that is the most positive song Conor's ever written. It's about the person that's going to be showing up to the studio any minute. I just got a text from Maria. She's in an Uber on the way here. I'm making a record with Maria Taylor. She sings on this record, on many occasions, she's sung on a lot of our records in Bright Eyes, but it was just such a beautiful, like love song. 

Conor Oberst: I wrote it again, not thinking much about it. I was a little, you know, it's a very pure love song as far as the songs in my canon or whatever. And so I've always been a little like self-conscious of it, I guess. And at the time, I was as well, you know, I've written a lot of songs about love, but most of them drip with sarcasm or some shade of darkness. And this one is real  straight to the point. I mean, it's just a love song. And I remember  playing it at a show. It must've been Omaha real early on when, after I wrote it. And my friend, Tim Kasher, who's like the singer in Cursive, a real old friend, whose music I trust a lot. Like if you know anything about his music, it's also very cynical and like, you know similar, but he came up to me and was like, “Is that a new song?” “Yeah.” He's like, “That's the best song you've ever written.” And I'm like, “Really?” I didn't think so. 

Mike Mogis: “First Day” was a song. It's just really intimate and personal, whether it's, you know, the listener or the stories themselves in the song. It's just, the only way to really present that song is to be intimate and personal, which is to just keep it spare. It has obviously the embellishments of upright bass and Jesse Harris playing acoustic guitar, but it's still real tight, you know. And I think that's the importance in that song is to have it feel tightly together, you know, that one is about a couple of people. It's about being together, you know, somebody else. So having it be totally Conor by himself didn't feel right. So that's why there's like just, I mean, maybe they're having a threesome, I don't know (laughs). Like, between Jesse and Conor and Tim, I'm kidding. Musically speaking, it was important to keep it really spare, but having something else there, you know, because that's what it's about. 

Conor Oberst: It's, like, far and away the song that I've ever written that the most people have heard, which, again, is just, you know, you can't predict these things. I think like for all music, I feel like if you set out to make something to please an audience, I mean, maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like it's even that true with, I feel like it's even true with like straight up top 40 songs that I think the ones that become really huge, and not saying my song was like this at all, but I think there's like a fluke quality to it. And it's like the zeitgeist of whatever at the time, like I'm trying to think of like, what was the one, the Danger Mouse, (Gnarls Barkley) “Crazy,” like, that's kind of like, “Why did that song become huge?” I mean, it's a great song, but you know what I mean? Or like, even like Amy Winehouse or something, you know, there's something where it's like, there's a quality that's universal, but it also is not exactly something that's available at the time, you know, and then people usually start recreating, you know, facsimiles of whatever was successful, you know. I think that's just the nature of the music biz, but yeah, so I have no idea why that one is, well I guess I do, I just said I did. I have an idea why, but I wasn't planning on it. 

Mike Mogis: I saw something maybe a decade ago, but somebody was doing stats on like the most played songs at a wedding, and number one was Jason Mraz, “I'm Yours,” and then number two was “First Day of My Life” by Bright Eyes (laughs). And I was like, because it's such a beautiful, like this is a feeling that every human being hopefully has, and it's so well articulated in the way that he relays these feelings and stories and events in a song that's catchy, you know, like it's just, it's kind of amazing and perfect. So no, I'm not, I'm not surprised. I'm glad that it's like that, you know. 

Conor Oberst: I've had so many people over the years come up and say, “That was our first dance,” or “we walked down the aisle to it,” you know? And yeah, I mean, that's awesome. I sometimes feel, you know, not bad, but I guess a little bad that, I don't know, I feel like through our music, I put a lot of darkness into the atmosphere. And so maybe karmically that song can help balance the scales of all the other songs I've written, I don't know. 

Mike Mogis: And live we kind of, is one that he does change some of the lyrics up a little bit and we kind of reinvent it with flute solos or like a little mandolin or whatever there's just other ways to embellish it, but it is about togetherness and so that's why I think it's kind of fun to explore that. You know, “First Day of My Life” because it is about being together and the love that you have. So that's why sometimes when we play it live, we kind of jam out with it and we have everybody kind of jumping in and out because it's kind of a celebration of sorts. 

Conor Oberst: I have a thing with a lot of our records where I don't listen to the recordings very much unless I have to maybe relearn something for a tour or some occasion to listen. But I play the songs, you know, I play the songs all the time. So the songs themselves like exist in my mind, almost separate from the recording. So sometimes I'll hear an old recording and I'll be like, “Whoa, that tempo is like way different than the way I play it now,” or I hear the sound of my voice and I'm like upset that I don't like how I sound. You know, like things that are specific to the recordings. I mean, not just that record, but all older records, but the songs themselves exist in my mind. And every time we play them and I think that those songs stand up. I still play most of them live. We play a lot of them still, so that's a sign that we still like them, you know. 

“Another Travelin’ Song” 

Conor Oberst: There's so many songs with that train beat, you know, there's, you know, it's the classic country rollicking. I love that word rollicking. All music journalists use that word. I'm gonna start trying to use it in regular life, just be rollicking along today. But yeah, I think that it's effective on that song. You know, it's like, I would say, you know, maybe Johnny Cash inspired. 

Mike Mogis: “Another Travelin’ Song,” it's kind of ruckusy. It's more, a lot of the musicians and the arrangements are kind of just kind of glued together in a weird frenetic blur of like ruckus sometimes. This kind of ruckusy, rollicking train ride, (sings rhythm) “ticka ticka,” you know, and it's kind of just a fun thing to play. So it was, it's a fun song to play live still today. So it felt like a good mechanism to have that story be told to that kind of music, you know. 

Conor Oberst: The name kind of says it all, you know, “There's been a million traveling songs and here's another one.” You know, that's the, it's kind of the idea, like it's meant to exist in a continuum of that style of song that I think no one will ever stop writing. You know, people are, there's someone somewhere writing one today, like with the same intention, you know, trying to capture that, that feeling. And yeah, I think that traveling in general has been one of the few,  like touchstones of my life or whatever. I mean, it's just like all I, most of my adult life, I've been moving around. So that's a, it's kind of very natural song to write. 

Mike Mogis: With “Another Travelin’ Song,” it just, it feels like moving through all these different scenes of life from yelling at a brother to sitting in a room with a typewriter or just like something about fast food crown and a weird, creepy event, about being a child. It's like, it's just kind of moving throughout life. It's kind of going all over the place. A lot of these things have some personal touchstones, you know, to Conor or us as a group of people that are in his family and friends, and it just kind of moves in a beautiful and you know, like, ruckusy way. And it's just, it takes you all over the place. 

That's when he's alone, you know, and that's why we pull it back there cause he's like, isn't that the blank page sitting at a typewriter that literally those lyrics, yeah? Because it's, it just felt like, “Okay, now you're by yourself, but you're still in this journey, you're still in this process, you're still in this, you're still in motion, even though you're at that point kind of alone,” and that's why we kind of pair it back and he gives shape to the song too, you know, but it's fun to take Conor’s lyrics and try and musically augment what the lyrics are saying, you know, or like not augment, but to embolden like kind of the message, you know. That happens in a lot of the Bright Eyes stuff, but it is kind of fun to pare it down because, because it kind of sets you up for, you know, a bigger release.

Conor Oberst: You know, there's like a defiance to that song, like sort of, no matter how deranged the world seems or how down you might be on yourself or your creativity or the, your point, like why, you know, all the sort of a existential bullshit that I always write about. Like,  I think that that song is a defiant, you know, I guess the last line, like “I’ll fight like hell,” you know, “to hide that I've given up,” you know, it's like, it's kind of a fucked up line actually. But it's still like, you know, the idea that like music and traveling and friends, like, can save you and they have a point and that's yeah, it's kind of a fight song, I guess. 

“Land Locked Blues” 

Mike Mogis: “Land Locked Blues,” that one, yeah, “When you walk away, I walk away, just tell me which road you'll take,” you know, just the way the song starts, like, it just feels spare and alone lyrically and emotively. Like it feels like a personal like journey, you know, and having it be spare is like important to the aesthetic, I think. I'm really happy and proud about how that one turned out. 

Conor Oberst: Well, that one's probably the oldest of those songs on Wide Awake that made the record, there's actually like a real early version of it that's on a Saddle Creek compilation, it's like different. I don't think maybe to that point had I ever like released a song for a second time, but I did feel like it fit with the other songs that were going to be on the record.

Mike Mogis: I do kind of remember this. Conor is like, “I don't know, we've already released that. Why do we, we've never done that before, put out a song and then re-record it and then put it on our album?” And we already had so many songs because we were doing Digital Ash, we had 20 songs to work with. And we just tried it and the way that they play just the three of them together, just automatically sounded engaging and interesting. I think that's also one of the, I think I just liked the song so much that I think when we decided to record it again, that was with Jesse Harris and Tim Luntzel. So it was in like the live recordings of just the trio of them. It felt special and new just right off the bat, you know, like having Emmylou on it really kind of set it apart from the other version of the song as well that just made it more, it just made it special.

The version of it on Wide Awake, it's Morning, I think, is the best serving version of that song, but like, again, the elements of adding Emmylou, she's kind of mixed pretty prominently on that song, as she should be, and Nate's trumpet parts, and then a kind of a big, I think Nicky played  the piano, like, you just, when things come in, they have impact, you know, when Emmylou's voice comes in, it's really emotive to me. And I think that it's hard to, you know, picture that song in any other way. Honestly, even though we've played it three different, evidently we've recorded it three different ways and released all three (laughs), this is the version that feels the most true to the song. 

Conor Oberst: Obviously, Emmylou sings all over that one, which I think, you know, took it to a very different place than when it was just me singing, I mean, I was a little, I remember being a little surprised just that she wanted to sing, like she was going to sing as much of it as she sang. Cause I was kind of, I don't know, I was expecting it to just be like certain parts or something, but I wasn't about to say anything to Emmylou, you know, she was like, dude, she's singing on our record, so and now after it happened, you know, now it seems it always should have been there. But I was a little bit pleasantly surprised that she was gonna sing as much as she did, you know. It kind of really did turn it into like a duet kind of feel. 

Omaha is very close to like the geographical center of the United States. So it takes a long time to get to the ocean, I’ll say that. So I'd been playing that song for a while, it seemed like for a while, maybe I guess time was different then too. It's like, well, it was like two years felt longer than two years now. Now, two years just happened, you know, probably this interview’s probably two years, you know, we gotta look at our calendars after this. But no, I think that that song is still like again, it's one I play sometimes and I guess there is a Dylan thing or Leonard Cohen thing. Just you know songs that  kind of push the envelope with like how many verses you really need or you know, there's a lot of words. I mean, I love Bob Dylan. I love all his records. Even the ones I don't love, I still kind of love, you know, I mean, he's always been just part of my life, all of our lives, you know, and I think as any songwriter that cares about words, you know, it's kind of impossible not to be somehow influenced or, you know, informed by his music because it's kind of omnipresent and he's influenced so many people that it's just he's part of the DNA of, you know,  American music, popular music, whatever. And yeah, I mean the whole comparison thing, you know, I never took that at all, seriously, because no one should. And there's been a  bunch of people before me and a bunch of people after me, and, you know, I think it's just music journalism shorthand for like, “Guy with guitar that has a lot of words in their songs,” or something, you know what I mean? Like, things that get compared to Dylan, I find not really that much like it at all, and then other times it is. But I'm a fan. 

Mike Mogis: He always kind of, not scoffed, but like when, yeah, I remember lots of folks brought that up in interviews or you'd read it and kind of press things and, you know, it was a time before social media and all that shit, so it was Rolling Stone, or like, bigger media outlets and so forth. And so he was like, well, I think there was a certain kind of flattery that you would get because obviously, you know, like between like Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen or like, these are, in my opinion, the two best songwriters that lived, you know, and then for him to be kind of thrust into that like weird category of like, and he's like 23, 22 years old, like it seemed like a lot. But he kind of shrugged it off, I think, you know, like, it was like, “huh,” or whatever, like there was all kinds of weird little things that people would say. And I don't think that affected his songwriting. I think he was just, he was very prolific at that point in his life. That's why he wrote so many songs. We put out two records on the same day (laughs).  

Conor Oberst: In a way it was sort of the, yeah, the kind of beginning of that era of my life, I guess, like whatever the line is, you know, being 22 or whatever, it's like I was 22 when I wrote that line, you know. I try to change it, like as the years went by, but some numbers don't flow as well. They don't sing as well, as they say. 

I think there's a segment of my songs that if you're not interested in words or the story or the song, there's not a lot there for you per se, you know, like there's not a cool beat or, you know, it's just, cause it's just a lot of words. 

Mike Mogis: Yeah I mean, I've mentioned that one, same with “We Are Nowhere” where the verses just seem, you know, right. When you think there'll be a bridge or a pre-chorus or a change, it just kind of recycles a verse. And just, I never thought that they were too long and that all the lyrics are engaging and they kind of tell, you know, especially in “We Are Nowhere, and it's now just, again, it is different stories and places to where there are a lot of words are kind of necessary, there's a lot to explore there. And same with “Land Locked Blues,” where it just,  you know, kind of felt almost stream of consciousness there. Like in the way it was sort of presented, I feel like little ornamental tweaks throughout that song just sort of helped delineate some of the stanzas, you know, just to make it feel like it kind of moves.

Conor Oberst: One thing I like about  my songwriting style, I guess, which is, yeah influenced by lots of different people, but I do like when songs are non linear. I mean, I think a great old school, like story song is amazing, but those are really hard to write and sometimes they can go  kind of into like schmaltzy, not good territory in my opinion. But songs that, yeah, each stanza or each verse you kind of have a chance to introduce a new idea and yeah, that is like a very, like,  I would say Dylan or Cohen thing to do, you know, you have a lot of ideas and there is, you know, to me, they're all connected and they belong together, but as a listener, you might, it might take a second to find that. It's like some verses can feel like a non sequitur or like the song is starting over, “Here's a bunch of new things,” you know, but I like that, you know, that's like, it's like, I think it's good for the mind, you know, to think of, not everything has to be like, you know, ABC one, two, three. 

Mike Mogis: “Kids playing guns in the street” and the verse is “making love on a living room floor,” you know, it's very different places, you know, “kids playing guns in the street and making love on the floor.” And so I think we just naturally kind of felt compelled to have them musically  present themselves slightly in a different way in a different environment, not a different environment because it's not that extreme because that would be distracting, but like, just kind of treat them as their own little thing. You know, it all is cohesive. Obviously, Conor is playing acoustic guitar and singing and that one was recorded live, you know, with Jesse and Tim, you know. Also having Emmylou come in was a mechanism to use as far as  movement and change and color is concerned. And, you know, whether it be the kind of, it's not a trumpety fanfare thing on “Land Locked Blues,” but just the “Taps” solo and like Nate's parts on this just add a lot of impact. 

Conor Oberst: We sometimes insert musical references or I don't know, they almost border on jokes, but they're not, they're not jokes. But yeah, obviously he's playing like “Taps” and there's the line before or the verse before it is, you know, the verse about the war on television, and yeah, that is the kind of most, I suppose, political verse in there. And it was just cool to, I can't remember whose idea that was, if it was Nate’s or mine or whatever, but we did it once, and then we were like, “That's perfect, we gotta, we gotta record it that way.”

Mike Mogis: It's just the impact of brass and, and what Nate, his parts and his kind of arrangements of the parts that he's playing are so thoughtful and, you know, it really elevates the track when he comes in and it weirdly, even when it's “Taps” in “Land Locked Blues,” it still adds a little bit of joy to me. I don't know, even if it's a bit mournful, (sings horn part) “Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum,” military funeral, you know, but like, it still elevates it with a little bit of joy. The trumpet in this album kind of pulls that off too. It's mournful, but also joyous. 

“Poison Oak” 

Conor Oberst: Well, that one, on occasion, there's songs I write that, I mean, many times I wonder about  how like certain actual people in my life are going to like receive a song. I don't know it's right or wrong sometimes, but I think to stay true to the writing process and the creative process, like sometimes things get into songs that are maybe painful or whatever to certain people and that song kind of falls into that category for my family. My mom's side of the family is very close. We all, so I have, had two brothers, but I had all these first cousins, my mom had like seven brothers and sisters and they all lived in the same neighborhood. So really like, it was like, I grew up with this huge family. One of my cousins, like took his own life when we were young, like when we were 21, I guess, or 20. But his brother, my cousin, Ian, is like my best friend, we lived together while all that happened. And yeah, so it's I guess it's a tribute to his life, but it, sometimes I feel bad just like a lot of the dark things about his life and there, you know, he was more than that, but it's just a little snapshot, I suppose. 

Mike Mogis: Also like kind of a deeply personal thing for Conor, you know. Like that was a long time ago, it was kind of when I first started to get to know Conor when that kind of event happened. And there's little bits of like little stories of past events, maybe not completely biographical or autobiographical, it's pulling from life events and kind of shaping them in a song and there's a sweetness and kind of sincerity in the song. You know, about boyhood, you know, being a child, like the telephone and the string and all these like childhood memories, it's just touching. 

Conor Oberst: That was one that I did just by myself at that Sony studio. I do remember sending that demo to Mike Mogis and he, he really was like, “Wow, this is like a special song,” and then added that really exceptionally beautiful pedal steel to it.

Mike Mogis: It was one of the songs that we've also wanted this dynamic shift. You know, I remember kind of wanting to add steel, just to make it weepy sounding or something, I don't know, like sad. I feel like the pedal steel in “Poison Oak” kind of acts as an element to kind of just employ a little sadness, extra sadness to it or something. And so when putting it together, I think it was just kind of natural. Because those feelings, I still feel them now, so they were easy to kind of tap into then when it was a new song. And actually maybe instead of “Old Soul Song,” maybe it could have been “Poison Oak,” no, it's one of the two that Conor showed me first that we played live at the Bowery, but it might've been both. I have a memory of these two songs being kind of the earlier songs. that he showed me that we kind of played before we recorded the album in a different fashion, like in a more minimal way. So when we came to record “Poison Oak,” it felt already kind of slightly familiar in a way. And also, like I said, that kind of, it appealed to me just immediately, just emotionally. 

There's like a lot of innocence and sweetness and kind of sincerity in the song, as well as a lot of dark components and being able just to perform this material as a means of healing, it added a lot of weight to it. When we recorded it for the album, it felt kind of heavy. 

Conor Oberst: Yeah I think that, I don't know when the decision with the drums and that's Maria singing the harmony, but yeah, it felt like there is a very visceral kind of pain in that song. So to have the loud drums and be able to scream over it, I think felt like the right, right thing. 

Mike Mogis: We still play this one live kind of, you know, a bit, and Conor's changed the lyrics again, as he has for most of these songs, just ever so slightly, just tweaks, just to kind of make them more relevant to our current lives, but like it's still conjures a lot of memories or something. It's like because it's a lot of  wistful imagery, I think and it still kind of resonates with me. And in thinking about like past events and you know our lives and so forth, it still holds some emotional weight, for at least me, when we play it live.

Conor Oberst: I definitely remember when we would play shows in Omaha, you know, sometimes I felt a little strange singing around like my family and stuff. But I think if you want to be an artist or a writer of some worth, I think you have to be willing to, you know, to show the underbelly of your experience and your psyche. And it's not always, you know, I try to do the, “Names have been changed to protect the innocent,” kind of thing, but, you know, sometimes it's more evident than others in different songs. But I mean, to, like you said, to a listener, no one's gonna know, you know, not no one, but most people that hear the song aren't gonna be aware of all of that. So that's another thing is you have to make it, it can't be so specific and personal that, I mean, I guess it can be, but I try to make my songs, even if they are explicit from my experience, I try to put some universality into it so that like a guy like you can hear a song and feel connected to it, even though you might not know the actual character, people that make it up, populate it. 

Mike Mogis: “Being drunk as hell on a piano bench,” you know, “the sound of loneliness makes you happier,” you know, it's not necessarily,  it's not necessarily a cheerful song, but it's a mechanism for healing, you know, as well. And I guess I feel that in the song. 

Conor Oberst: Yeah I mean, I think that the subtext of a lot of, I guess I'd consider early Bright Eyes music then, and maybe still to this day, to some degree, although, like I said, I think I've lost maybe a little bit of my, I don't know, belief system has changed and crumbled and rebuilt over the years, but I think music as salvation was a big kind of theme for me, for those first several Bright Eyes records. Like the idea that like, “There's all this pain and all this misery everywhere that you can observe and whether it's your own or just empathy for other people.” But, you know, somehow the acts of music and the community that it brings together and playing music with your friends or just sort of fighting back against the negativity and sadness with, you know, creativity and coming together and making, you know, a joyful noise, as they say. 

“Road to Joy” 

Mike Mogis: We ripped off, what is it, Beethoven? I don't know, “Ode to Joy.” And like, that one was fun because, I mean, again, it's a long one with a lot of verses and, you know, the shape of that one, you know, was we always kind of wanted it, sort of like this building or this tension or this, you know, that's why it's just mostly like a (sings rhythm) “dung dung dung” and it just kind of a chaotic frenetic ending that's kind of explosive. It's more feel like we, as we've performed it live, kind of have created a more effective version of that song. But we did what we could in the moment, but it was, yeah, just a lot of suspense in that song that I think that musically speaking, we're trying to create, obviously ripping off “Ode to Joy.”

Conor Oberst: Well, again, sort of a musical joke. As a rule, I hate puns, but that is, and maybe that's the only song I've titled a pun, I don't know. But yeah, it's, you know, whatever, it's a bit cheeky, the taking the “Ode to Joy,” and then, you know, turning it into sort of a, you know, punk folk type of anthem. 

Mike Mogis: You know, it delves into political topics or some kind of personal stuff. I think that one was always slated to be the last song on the record and it kind of came together pretty easily. It was nice, you know, when (Nate) Walcott was in town cause he recorded some for Wide Awake and also Digital Ash when he came into Lincoln to record and having, I don't know, little elements like the vibraphone and the trumpet. There's just. little bells and whistles, almost literally, that on that song kind of gave it a little playful color, even though it's kind of dark in a way. 

Conor Oberst: I like it that it's at the end of the record because it does feel like it sort of revisits  all the themes kind of, but in a concise way. Again, like the defiance is there, kind of getting up to face the day in the morning, or maybe you’ve been up, been up all night and the sun's coming up and, you know, you have some kind of fighting spirit, I suppose, is maybe where that comes from. And the idea that obviously like you want to reach happiness, but it's a long, long road. 

Mike Mogis: There isn't a ton of change or movement in it. Well, that's not true, there's this growth and this resetting and this kind of tension that kind of builds throughout the song and kind of pairs itself down a little bit throughout the song and kind of comes back. It's just kind of a, I don't know, an uneasy kind of tension throughout that song. And it's a very cathartic thing to play. Like when it felt like that, when we recorded it and it feels like that still today, 20 years later, it still works and that's kind of an impressive thing. That's maybe why we drag it out a little too long live. I think there was some like 12 or 15 minute version that we played somewhere. Even I was kind of getting like, “Okay, we should wrap this up.” Like, but mellow noise sections and then big, like the loud part at the end, just going on and on. It's always a lot of fun to play. We tend to play that one towards the end of the set too. It was just a, as a point of excitement for us, I guess. But yeah that's its nature is kind of a tension building or shape shifting tension throughout the verses and choruses that lead up to that kind of just fucking it up. 

Conor Oberst: Well, I think that especially up to that point, I had been, you know, told over and over again, or anytime someone would write about our records or shows or whatever, there was always a, some kind of comment about my voice being poor. “Why, you know, like it sounds like a dying fucking animal or some something,” you know, some kind of, you know, it's an acquired taste. And so again, it's like a half, half joke kind of thing, but yeah, I don't know. That's where that line sort of came from. And, you know, we always have maintained a sort of “fuck you” kind of stance about like, “If you don't like what we do, it's really okay, we're gonna just do it anyway.
So I  think there's a little bit of, still had a little bit of that punk rock thing going on that we grew up on. 

Mike Mogis: “Make some noise,” and we still kind of live by that same, you know, with that same feeling and ethos, I suppose. When mixing it, I was a little nervous about the end result, even though it was kind of what exactly we set out to do, which was make a spare kind of folk record along the lines of like, you know, Jackson Browne or Neil Young records from the seventies that were written, kind of straightforward and kind of simple. I felt a little nervous, like, “Are Bright eyes fans going to like this?” The songs I felt were really good, just production wise, it's a bit different than what, you know, Lifted or Fevers and Mirrors, or even Letting Off the Happiness, the records that we'd put out prior to that, that had a lot more tricks and stuff to it and sonic exploration, like meaning like a little bit more experimental things with sounds or arrangements. This one we didn't do that and so I felt a little nervous about how it would be received. And I also, if I did my job or if I kind of phoned it in by just being like, you know, “I'm not going to play on this one. It doesn't need it. I'm not going to play on this one either. It doesn't need it. I'm not going to play on this one. It doesn't need it.” So like, I felt a little, a little nervous that I didn't do enough. The more that, you know, Conor and his voice are featured and not having them being unencumbered by a bunch of notes of counter melodies and so forth. Like it just  felt. right to me. So I was hoping that people would respond to that. I remember sending it to Jenny Lewis because we're still friends, but we were closer friends back then and cause I wanted her opinion. Cause I was a little nervous. So I was like, “Well, what do you think of this? Is this like too spare?”She's like, “Oh my God, this is the best thing you guys have ever...” She's like, “This is like one of the best records I've ever heard.” And she's our friend so I was just like, “Well, she's just being our friend, but I really do trust and respect her opinion on matters of music.” Cause at the time I was, you know, doing records with Rilo Kiley and, and her solo record Rabbit Fur Coat was around that same time. I remember it was touring this record, we were actually working on that in the bus, the Rabbit Fur Coat record. Anyways, we're friends. And so I just want to get her feeling it. And that made me feel better (laughs). 

Conor Oberst: Again, I do remember the sort of  surprise of how well it was received. And then, like I said, the Digital Ash in a Digital Urn, you know, I think they gave people, cause I think our band is somewhat polarizing. So it gave people like a license to be like, since we put out the two records, they could still talk shit. And they're like, “Oh, they made this terrible record, but they made this great record.” So I was like, it let people off the hook. They could like our band because we put out what they perceived as like a shitty record at the same day, like Digital Ash. But nowadays, like people come up to me and tell me how much they love Digital Ash. And so it's kind of hilarious, but there was a very tough time or like we went on the whole Wide Awake tour, which I don't know why we did this. We should have just played all the songs at the same shows, but in our mind we're like, “Let's do the Wide Awake tour.” And then it's like a way different band and equipment. So then we did Digital Ash, but playing like a lot of the same cities within the same year. So it's like you go to wherever on the Wide Awake tour, it's like, “Ah!,” like kind of miniature Beatles mania and then come back and we're like all in black and like The Faint’s the rest of our band. And it's like very cold and strange and lights going off everywhere and people didn't know what to make of it. They thought they were coming to hear “First Day of My Life” and they all, a lot of them left very upset (laughs). So it goes. 

After it came out, again, things  got very different as far as  whatever  success and celebrity and that kind of thing. I mean, one thing I will say that always kind of worked in our favor, our band kept, every time, cause we had our own record label, so we were also like doing all this work that I think if a band's just signed to the label, isn't aware of. But all the bands, they were part of our circle in Omaha and eventually widened, you know, everyone was getting more successful. And it seemed like as each year passed, each new record we put out, the goalposts would move. And so we had time to like, or I had time to sort of realize what was happening to a degree. But I still wasn't really prepared for when Wide Awake came out. It's just things were a lot different. And I remember the tour for the album, it was like,  I don't know, I felt like the Beatles or something. I walk on stage. I was just like, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash. Like so many, I feel like that was still when people had cameras. People were still flashing cameras at you, and, you know, it was back when there was money in the music industry, so like, doing weird photo shoots with like 20 people working on them, and all kinds of things that I don't know how much like exists really for like a band our size anymore, just because, you know how it is all, everything's changed kind of with the music business. But yeah, it was a sort of surreal little period of my life. 

Mike Mogis: It was a good moment in time, like the confluence of events of Conor moving out to New York City and having all these kind of inspiring new surroundings and environment and new people and the excitement in the place itself, the city. Songs that came out of that as a result, out of that inspiration and kind of creative like burst like I could, it just felt like special to me. So I'm not surprised. I wish that some of our more modern songs would be played as much but like we'll see maybe. But we have many records to make in the future, so we'll see. Well, hopefully we have many records to make in the future. But no, I'm proud of the fact that if you go to Apple Music or Spotify's, Wide Awake, It’s Morning, Wide Awake, It’s Morning, Wide Awake, It’s Morning, Wide Awake, It’s Morning, Wide Awake and then one from Lifted, or like “Lover I Don’t Have to Love,” or something like that, then Wide Awake, It’s Morning, Wide Awake, It’s Morning, you know. It's just our old shit, but like, there's nothing wrong with that. I'm proud to have been a part of it, you know. 

Conor Oberst: I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning, I would say far and away was our biggest commercial success as a band, but to me it's always felt like slightly like small in scope because of the instrumentation and the idea that we were kind of going for a purist sort of 70s folk rock sound. And it just, yeah, it's just a reminder of that time in my life, which is a very transformative period for me. 

Mike Mogis: Yeah, like looking back on, I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning, it's been so long, it's been over 20 years since we made it. And details in my memory is a little fuzzy, but I have  just distinct pictures in my mind and moments in my mind that I'll stick with me forever. And when I go back and listen to it today, they pop up and it's like, just the camaraderie and friendship. And just because the only people that played on it were our friends. Like there was an excitement that I felt then, because I was really, I mean, when Conor showed me some of these songs, I would be like, “Oh my God,” like, this is just, it just felt like a, he just stepped up songwriting, you know, even though I've, since he was a little kid, I was like, “This kid writes some fucking great songs.” Like when he was 14 years old, 13, 14, you know, and this just felt like an elevated, he just stepped his game up, you know, and I felt really excited about it. And when I go back and listen to the songs today, I still feel that. You know, I think of Conor as one of the best, like, kind of living songwriters going right now and I'm not saying that because I'm in the band or he's, you know, my friend, it's just how, what I feel, you know. And we're obviously still a band, we're still making records, but when I go back and listen to Wide Awake, I get, you know, reminded of like, “Wow, you know, not only have we been doing this a while, but we've been doing it for a while at a very kind of high level.” And most of it's due to Conor (laughs). But like, it just makes me just happy to be a part of this band and project for so long with Conor is, you know, one of my best friends, you know, we live next door to each other, I see him, he was just up here last night, hanging out with Maria in the studio and it's just, our lives are so kind of intertwined and our fates are kind of, our fates and fortunes are just so entwined with each other and I just feel happy to be a part of it, you know. 

Outro:

Dan Nordheim: Visit lifeoftherecord.com for more information about Bright Eyes. You’ll also find a full transcript of this episode and a link to purchase I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning. Instrumental music by Cheyenne Medders. Thanks for listening. 

Credits:

"At the Bottom of Everything"

"We Are Nowhere and It's Now"

"Old Soul Song (for the New World Order)"

"Lua"

"Train Under Water"

"First Day of My Life"

"Another Travelin' Song"

"Land Locked Blues"

"Poison Oak"

"Road to Joy"

All songs by Conor Oberst © Bedrooms: Bedrooms and Spiders/Sony/ATV LLC (BMI)

© & ℗ 2005, Saddle Creek Records

For the most part this record was recorded one freezing week in February of 2004 at Presto! In Lincoln, NE by Mike Mogis. Except for Emmylou and Jim James who added their loveliness in the spring in Nashville and Louisville respectively. It was then mixed by Mike at Presto! in June and mastered by Doug Van Sloan at Studio B in Omaha.

“At the Bottom of Everything”

-Jesse Harris - guitar

-Jim James - backing vocals

-Tim Luntzel - bass

-Mike Mogis - mandolin

-Conor Oberst - guitar, voice

"We Are Nowhere and It's Now"

-Jason Boesel - drums

-Emmylou Harris - backing vocals

-Jesse Harris - guitar

-Matt Maginn - bass

-Mike Mogis - mandolin

-Conor Oberst - guitar, voice

-Nate Walcott - trumpet

-Nick White - piano

"Old Soul Song (for the New World Order)"

-Clark Baechle - drums

-Jason Boesel - drums

-Andy LeMaster - voice

-Tim Luntzel - bass

-Alex McManus - guitar

-Mike Mogis - pedal steel

-Conor Oberst - guitar, voice

-Maria Taylor - voice

-Nate Walcott - trumpet

-Nick White - organ

“Lua”

-Conor Oberst - guitar, voice

“"Train Under Water"

-Jake Bellows - harmonica, voice

-Jason Boesel - drums

-Jesse Harris - guitar

-Matt Maginn - bass

-Mike Mogis - pedal steel

-Conor Oberst - guitar, voice

-Nick White - Rhodes

"First Day of My Life"

-Jesse Harris - guitar

-Tim Luntzel - bass

-Conor Oberst - guitar, voice

"Another Travelin' Song"

-Clark Baechle - drums

-Jason Boesel - drums

-Emmylou Harris - backing vocals

-Jesse Harris - guitar

-Tim Luntzel - bass

-Mike Mogis - pedal steel

-Conor Oberst - guitar, voice

-Nick White - organ

"Land Locked Blues"

-Emmylou Harris - backing vocals

-Jesee Harris - guitar

-Tim Luntzel - bass

-Conor Oberst - guitar, voice

-Nate Walcott - trumpet

-Nick White - piano, vibraphone

"Poison Oak"

-Jason Boesel - drums

-Matt Maginn - bass

-Mike Mogis - pedal steel

-Conor Oberst - guitar, voice

-Maria Taylor - voice

-Nick White - organ

"Road to Joy"

-Clark Baechle - drums

-Alex McManus - guitar

-Matt Maginn - bass

-Mike Mogis - 12 string guitar

-Conor Oberst - guitar, voice

-Nate Walcott - trumpet

-Nick White - organ

Episode Credits: 

Intro/Outro Music:

“Star Counting” by Cheyenne Medders, from the album Day Stood Still

Episode produced, edited and mixed by Dan Nordheim

Additional mixing and mastering by Jeremy Whitwam