Time To Shine

Described as a Love Letter to Nashville, DAN AUERBACH’s Second Album Waiting on a Song Is Also, He Tells Tg, a Tribute to the Magic of Writing and Recording

- Matt Parker

Songwriting and recording is a mercurial practice. Spend too long trying to bottle your muse and it leaves you completely. The great Jimmy Cliffonce told this writer that, aside from lying on your back, the secret to good songwriting was being “an open receptor”. Black Keys man Dan Auerbach’s second solo album Waiting On A Song is a technicoloured ode to the craft, capturing the joy of picking up an instrument, pressing record and seeing what happens. Described as “a love letter” to Auerbach’s adopted hometown of Nashville, the album is also a homage to a dying approach to music making, with Dan incorporating a list of the city’s session greats, plus some serious six-string credentials in the likes of former Wrecking Crew man Duane Eddy and Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler.

Despite having lived in the city since 2010, “Nashville only started to feel like home recently,” reveals Auerbach. “I was always on the road, but when I started to not tour, it really changed everything. It turns out you can really enjoy a place more when you’re there!” It was the process of ‘not touring’ – that is, living life in as close to a resting state as Auerbach will ever manage – that sparked Waiting On A Song and a process that’s tipped in the title. Auerbach usually makes albums in the time it takes most guitarists to pick their pedals, typically a fortnight or less, so to find him waiting on anything is something of a surprise. TG once asked what might happen if he spent longer working on a record. “I’d make two records,” came the appropriately succinct answer. Auerbach’s interpretation of downtime therefore differs vastly from most people’s – and arguably more so since he opened his Easy Eye Sound Studio in Downtown Nashville.