What first got you into songwriting?
I've always been into it, I guess. It feels funny, because I'm in my childhood bedroom right now, and this is where I would write all my songs on Reason and [Apple] Logic. That's how I got into producing and engineering; just doing it with my own songs as a teenager. Then, I went to university, interned at studios, and did the more official sound courses. The old school route: Work at studios, engineer, and work your way up. At a certain point, as much as I love engineering and producing, I think the thing I'm best at is the creative side as opposed to the technical side. In sessions, what I was best at was making the artist feel comfortable being there with their creative ideas. I [would be] engineering, thinking, “This isn't the exact route I want to take.” I had just gotten my first album production credit and I loved that, so I kind of eased in. There was a while where engineering was my day job so that I could be a songwriter. I would take engineering sessions in order to afford having a writing room in London and kept doing my 10,000 hours of writing sessions and production sessions. Now, my engineering background and my songwriting background go perfectly hand in hand, and a lot of the time it's sort of the same process.
Describe the typical songwriting process for you.
It's always different. It depends on what the artist wants. An artist might come in with most of an idea and how they want it to be finished. Sometimes I'm not playing a single instrument; instead I'm helping out on lyrics. Sometimes I'm playing all the instruments, and the artist is doing topline and melody. I try to keep it as artist-led as possible, because at the end of the day it's not the Steph Marziano song, it's theirs. To be honest with you, I don't go in with ideas, because I find that clouds my head. I trust my ability that something will come out, and 99 percent of the time it does.
You're a pro. That’s what I'm hearing.
Yeah, sometimes I don't feel like it, but I think so.
Do you remember when you first realized that you loved songwriting?
I found that band spaces weren't super friendly towards women teenagers in the early 2000s, so I wasn't getting invited to jam with the boys. It was more inward songwriting, then learning to record, then getting that confidence to think, “This is such a cool release!” I can sit with a notebook, write lyrics, play chords, and do the production on my laptop. Whereas loads of guy musicians I know spent all those years jamming with other musicians. My love for it came inwardly as a teenager, and it was only as I got older that I realized I can share this enjoyment with people. Now, being an adult and doing this job, my focus is giving that enjoyment to the artist, whether it's inward or collaborative.
Like midwifing artists through the process.
I've never heard that analogy before, but that's good. Yeah, however they want to do it, I'm there to support them, because no one's going to write a great song if they're hating the experience, not feeling confident, and not feeling themselves. I’m trying to take that feeling I remember as a teenager – of discovering songwriting and feeling, “This is the most fulfilling thing ever” – and trying to give that to as many people as possible.
I've heard you described as being a “fun aunt” in the studio. It seems you fit the audio world definition of being a “good hang.” What do you think makes someone a good hang in the studio?
I love Amy Poehler's podcast Good Hang... I'm obsessed with it, and I've listened to a bunch of episodes where she talks about the world of improv being [applicable] to any industry, because you've got to adapt and “yes, and…” everything – whether you're an artist, whether you're a producer, whether you're anyone, in any job. If I come in saying, “No, this is how we're going to write the song. This is how we're going to produce it,” an artist may say, “Well, no. I had this completely different idea,” and that's not fun when two people are on opposite ends. The artist is under loads of pressure to write a song and have hits and all of those things. If, in the back of my head, I'm thinking, “Okay, I've got to recoup my publishing,” or, “This is how I've got to make a living” – I don't think I've ever written a good song when I'm thinking about that. I try to be in the moment with the artist and make all of us feel like the most confident and the most us version of ourselves.
That probably lends itself to building ongoing collaborations with musicians. Do you have anything that you can think of that you do intentionally to build those collaborations?
Being super open and making someone feel at ease is really important. The first time I worked with Hayley [Williams] was with Denai Moore, who I produced. At that time, I think Hayley hadn't collaborated much outside of the band [Paramore]. That was maybe six or seven years ago, and I remember consciously thinking, “This is probably nerve wracking for everyone involved – me and Denai being super nervous to meet Hayley Williams, but then also for Hayley to be working outside of her own project.” There's a deliberateness to making everyone feel comfortable, which stems from years as an assistant engineer and engineer, because I'd watch how producers (whether good or bad) would make those artists feel comfortable or uncomfortable. As an assistant engineer, you have this bird's-eye view of the way a producer and engineer does their job, because it's less responsibility in some regards. You're sat in the corner watching, and you're thinking, “Oh, that artist didn't like that thing that that producer said, and now they're a bit shy,” or, “Oh, they loved that thing, and they've gained confidence.” I got to watch and observe. “This producer did this thing and instantly the artist felt better, but it didn't work for this other person. How come?” It's definitely a skillset that takes years to develop. So much of it comes from watching people work.
That was such a good answer, because a lot of people don't have that kind of social conditioning.
Exactly. It was social conditioning. I find now that [songwriting and engineering go] hand-in-hand. A lot of times, instead of doing singles with people, I tend to do full projects with them. Songwriting sessions are a good way to see if we gel. With bands who maybe don't do as much songwriting – if that's still a scarier thing for them – we start with a songwriting session. If that goes really well, I may produce the album. I might have only written one or two songs on the album, but we’ve produced a body of work together. Weirdly, songwriting also showcases my engineering and producing skills, in the sense that I could be someone’s right hand person for a whole album. It's a way to build trust with an artist. It’s a nice way in. Sometimes it's the opposite. I produced Sir Chloe's record and she had written everything. But now we're doing songwriting together because we've made a record together, and we have that trust within each other. It's about being as flexible and open to whatever role I need to play on a record. It’s more of an L.A. thing, but sometimes people will get stuck on, “I'm the topliner,” or, “I'm the track person.” I hate that. I think, “Well, we're all here to make a song for the artist, and we want that artist to be comfortable.” Whatever role I need to fill, I'll do it. I don't care if someone else sits in on [Avid] Pro Tools. We're all in this together.
You have worked on so many different kinds of projects. A Moon Shaped Pool [for Radiohead], with Sam Smith, Denai Moore, and Jay Som – all these incredible sessions. What are some things that you've learned from inhabiting different genres?
On a musical scale, all of those genres can be so different. Instead of thinking about the differences, I like thinking of the commonalities. One of my first big credits when I was an assistant was working for The Prodigy for about four months. At the time, I didn't really know anything about electronic music. All I listened to was indie bands, and I suddenly got chosen to work on this Prodigy record [The Fat of the Land]. It was a baptism by fire in loads of ways, but it taught me electronic music. There are so many principles of indie music that are similar to electronic music, information that you can take to any other genre. I try not to pigeonhole the thing that I'm working on or making, defining it by what the sound should be. Instead, I ask myself, “Well, what does the song need? What's the most important element of the song?” Then all of the sounds will happen based on the song. I've just made a record with my all-time favorite artist from when I was a teenager, Kevin Devine. His musical background has always been between folk music and indie rock. With this record, his 11th album, part of it was wanting to change it up and part of it was, as a longtime fan and listener, thinking, “What do those listeners want?” We took one of his songs that I could have recorded in a classic way – it was one of the most beautiful folk songs I've ever heard, standard folk structure and an acoustic guitar – but it was his idea to change it. I did a sound bed of synths, his vocal, and noises and things – no acoustic instruments of any sort. That’s one of those things those years of not being able to choose what records I worked on as an assistant engineer and engineer really helped with, turning a beautiful folk song into a thing that's a little bit more expansive.
It sounds like you had to summon some courage to work with someone that you admired so much.
