With every new project comes something new, right?
Every other record I've ever worked on – every single one – I've had another one happening in my mind, like I was working on two at once. I would be on tour, and I would be sandwiching in recording sessions between tour schedules. This is a Photograph is really the only record where I lived inside of it. It was just this record and nothing else. It was the only thing that I was focused on. That felt nice.
Do you come to Sam [Cohen] with demos? Where does the collaboration start?
I had a pretty fleshed out demo for "This is a Photograph," the title track. Other than that, everything was pretty bare. This is the third record that we've done together, out of my seven albums. He's someone that I go to for my larger projects. I call all my records that I do in between working with Sam my "destination records." With Sam, he's the person I trust to take on these heavier concepts and dig in with me. Other than the "This is a Photograph" demo, everything was just phone demos of me with a guitar, or me with a piano. I had these ideas, and then Sam would come with ideas as well.
