“Hello.”
“Hey.”
“My hair — I
crimped it, and it
feels like a [bleep] poodle.
It’s really fluffy.”
[playing guitar]
(singing) “I’m all
right with a slow burn.
Taking my time,
let the world turn.”
“The song is definitely one
of my most personal, for sure.”
(singing) “I’m
gonna do it my way.
It’ll be all right.
If we burn it down and
it takes all night.”
“Country songs,
historically, have always
been about real life;
they’ve been story songs.
That’s what I love the most
about the roots of the genre.
I came up with the chorus
on a spiritual journey,
so to speak.”
“O.K.”
“Yeah.
And I think anything
that, like, puts
me or any human
outside of their,
like, egotistical
state of living
is a really healthy
thing every now and then
— in moderation, obviously.”
“Do you mind if I ask if
it was mushrooms or LSD?”
“It was LSD.
Yeah.
[laughs] And I was just
sitting on my front porch
thinking.
And I was just like,
man, I love a slow burn.
And I was like, that can apply
to so many areas in my life.
That can apply to,
like, relationships,
you know, a good drink.
You sip on a glass of
wine for a long time.
You savor it.
You really enjoy,
like, the journey.
You don’t rush to
the finish line.
It did open my
mind a little bit
and make me kind of take a
step back and, like, really think
about where I am,
and what I want,
and just kind of
the world around us
and the crazy time
that we live in.”
“That’s a very acid thought.”
“Yeah. Yeah.
It kind of is.”
“She had said that she wanted
to do something called
‘Slow Burn.’
I like writing title
first because it can
be that kind of keystone.”
“What mood were you thinking
when you heard the title
‘Slow Burn’?”
“I guess I kind of imagined
immediately kind of being
out west or somewhere
out near some mountains
where you could get a
vast sense of landscape.”
“Ian and I started to
mess with a little bit
of a backdrop
that you might be
able to paint that
kind of idea across.”
“Testing”
[guitar]
“What was her
initial reaction?”
“It wasn’t, Oh,
my God, you guys,
this is so amazing.
It was like, Yeah,
that’ll work.
Let’s see what we
can do with that.”
“I felt like,
I don’t know.
It made sense.
It gave me this feeling of,
like, all the old Neil Young
songs that I grew
up listening to.
They were kind of
roaming around the room,
strumming, while I
was trying in my head
the little verses that
I had come up with.”
“She likes to doodle a lot.
So she will
hand-write the lyrics
with a lot of people who
are just on their phones.”
(singing) “Born in a
hurry, always late.
Haven’t been early since ’88.”
“That’s me poking
fun at myself,
because I was born
a month early.
I came on the day of
my mom’s baby shower.
I mean, I always
have loved to party.”
(singing) “Good in a
glass, good on green.
Good when you’re puttin’
your hands all over me.”
“That’s talking about a good
drink, or like a good joint,
whatever.
That’s in reference to green.”
(singing) “I’m all
right with a slow burn.
Taking my time, let
the world turn.”
“I had a pretty complex idea
of an arrangement, just kind
of some interweaving slightly
Eastern-sounding feelings.”
“I was playing the bass,
and I was just
playing some sort
of spaceship kind of licks.
And then later, we
added some strings,
where there’s a bit of, like,
almost an Indian motif.
I like anything
that sounds Asian.
I like that.”
“I just wanted to
feel like it opened up
into canyon-scape images.”
“I do remember thinking, Well,
I think that’s pretty good.
But you don’t know how other
people are going to react.”
“I was like, it just feels
like it’s trying too hard.
Let’s, like, delete, like,
literally half of them.
I like going, O.K.,
erase, erase, erase.
I didn’t want people to
listen to this record
and be like, O.K.,
where is she?
Like, she just got weird for
the hell of it, you know.”
“She would let us put
a lot on the table,
and then she would remove
as it felt necessary.”
“That has earned the nickname
the Ax Man in studio.
They’d be, like, playing
a part, and they’d
be like, ‘Doesn’t
matter anyway,
she’s just going to
come in and delete it.’”
“You know, I’ll be honest.
There were some things I
was hoping would make it
but didn’t.”
“Like, sorry.
I have to:
It’s a [bleep] slow burn!”
(singing) “It’s a slow burn.
You know the bar
down the street
don’t close for an hour.
We should take a walk and
look at all the flowers.”
“My husband just pointed
out the other day,
you say the sun’s going down.
And then in the next line, you
say the bar down the street
don’t close for an hour.
He’s like, wouldn’t
it be like way later
if they were
closing in an hour?
I was like, It ain’t
supposed to be literal.”
