Pennsylvania college kids Modern Baseball specialize in writing lyrically dense songs that stick in your head for days after you’ve heard them. Their honest, neuroses-riddled tracks provide the perfect soundtrack to every letdown you’ve ever had – and also make them the kind of band that can pack a venue at 7pm on a Tuesday. We caught up with guitarist and singer Jake Ewald to discuss writing songs on tour, the pitfalls of writing fiction and the lyrical genius of the Weakerthans.
How long have you been writing songs?
I started writing songs, like actually writing songs, in like 10th grade.
And do you do most of the writing for the band?
Brendan and I pretty much split it down the middle. He writes the songs that he sings and I write the songs that I sing.
What’s your writing process?
I usually do lyrics first. A lot of the time I will be walking around or something and a certain line will pop up in my head and I run with that the next time I have the chance to sit down. It’s usually just one line that I write down in my phone and it goes from there. There was a long time where I would go through the whole song as fast as I could so I wouldn’t lose the idea, like a stream of consciousness. Lately Brendan and I have both been trying to slow down and focus more on building cool melodies and stuff like that. But I know for both of us it usually starts with an idea that we write down in our phone and then we sit down and work on it later.
Who are your favorite songwriters?
Favorite songwriters… I really like, I really, really, really like John K. Samson. I like Justin Pierre from Motion City Soundtrack. Brendan really likes Alex G. I also really like Alex G. We both are really into Max Bemis. Back in the day he was our main influence for songwriting. More recently, David Bazan, too. He’s been an influence. He’s also like the polar opposite kind of, because all his songs are really slow and all the words are really prolonged. If I’m ever trying to do something different from what I normally do, ‘cause I usually just spit out a bunch of stuff really fast, I’ll try to do something like that.
What usually inspires you to write?
Usually one word or one line. It will usually come from a personal experience. A lot of the time, for both of us, it’s relationships. Not even necessarily romantic, but just relationships with other people because it’s something that’s constantly changing because you can never know exactly what’s going on with another person. Sometimes it sucks a lot, but it’s also a wealth of information to write about. It’s really easy to explore because there are so many ifs and possibilities with trying to figure out what someone else is thinking, or how you interact with a person. Also, anxiety is a pretty big one. We both write about anxiety a lot because I guess we’re both pretty anxious a lot of the time.
How many songs do you think you’ve written since you started?
That’s a funny question. I honestly had a realization a couple months ago. I started writing songs under a different name and putting them on Bandcamp because I had a realization where I was like, “I’m travelling the world playing music, but in my life I have written enough songs that I can count on like three hands.” Which just felt kind of weird in my head. I’ve written probably like 20 total, which sounds stupid. That’s not even that many. I’ll realize that and then I’ll be like, “Okay I should really sit down and write a song,” but then as soon as I think that and try to do it it’s like I don’t know what the hell to write about. It’s hard.
What do you think is the perfect song written by somebody else?
Definitely a Weakerthans song, “Reconstruction Site,” because it captures a really cool image. “My Favourite Chords” by the Weakerthans.
“Relative Surplus Value” by the Weakerthans. A lot of the songs I wrote for one of the first Modern Baseball albums were strictly personal experience songs, and when I heard that song, it’s written from the perspective of, like, a goofy business man in total business man language, but it works and almost reads like a sitcom. But it doesn’t sound contrite at all.
What’s a lyric or verse of yours that you are a fan of?
The song “Apartment” on our newest album is definitely my favorite chorus that I’ve written. I wrote that and I was like, “This is actually a chorus.”
Do you do any other kinds of writing, like poetry or fiction?
Never on my own, but I took a poetry class and a fiction class a couple terms ago. I really liked the poetry class but I hated the fiction class. I think I don’t like long form stuff because I would get really involved in writing one paragraph and then lose all of my energy. So that wasn’t fun. But I feel like when we’re on the road it’s hard to focus your thoughts on anything like that, but I do like poetry and short stuff.
What do you think the most annoying thing about songwriting is?
The worst feeling is being in a band and someone higher up telling you something like, “When do you guys think you’re going to start writing songs again?” And you’re like, “I don’t know, get the fuck off my back, dude. It’s not that easy.” But it’s probably the fact that – I mean, I’m sure there’s some people who can – but the fact that you can’t just sit down and write a song. At least, if you do, it’s not going to mean something for you.
Yeah, you have to have the spark first. So do you guys not do a lot of writing on the road? Do you mostly do it at home?
On the tour we did in the fall we finally had a trailer, so we had room to bring acoustic guitars and we were like, “Great! We’re going to bring acoustics, we’re going to write when we have free time.” And it just didn’t work. We tried. We would go off and be by ourselves but we just couldn’t make it happen.