Honey Badger-style,” and that's what has brought me here today. [laughter] If this had been the last show of my life, you just witnessed a massive failure. So I have a lot to live up to. [laughter] [whistling] If this were the last show of my life, I would go home and try to figure out how to write the most badass song ever recorded. In the coming months, I will focus on the first words in the lyric of every song and let them push me into the unknown. So I want to know from the audience today — if I've done this part right, which, of course, I haven't. But if I've done it as well as possible — could you explain what is a “butthole mic”? And could you give any tips? The answer to your first question is yes. It is an expression for miking the center of a drum. For some reason, drummers love using this microphone technique, but I personally feel like it muddies up the whole sound of the band. So, the mic goes in the drum — I recommend an overhead mic, although there is a cool handheld version — and then it goes into a mic preamp, and then it goes into the board of the recording computer as a second channel. The channel itself is set so that the low end is cut off. It doesn't go any lower than that cutoff point, and then you get the high end in the first channel. I actually use it a lot of times for some sounds, like for the snare on some tracks on this last album. For those moments, the extra color the mic provides is much more useful to me than the extra low end the mic is providing. And as long as there's some balance between these two channels, I personally like to have it for certain things. I'm curious about your process with recording drums — how the process changes from a recording to a remix. I think I would imagine that since a song is already recorded in your head — your beat is already in there — that you just try to write some new parts that sync with the existing music. Well, it's a lot like that, but with a couple of exceptions. One of the things I don't really do is I don't go home with a copy of the full song — at least not the way I usually record. So I usually begin by demoing the tune to get the most basic arrangements down. This helps to identify the parts that need to be added. Sometimes, the only thing that gets added is a groove or a beat — something that gives the music an extra kick, and usually I play it on the keyboard or in GarageBand. Once I have a basic feel for the song, I'll then try to put some melodies in place so that I can put drum fills on top of those. This gets the general outline of the tune down, so that I know what I need to do next. When it comes time to add drums, usually there is a point where the arrangement of the song is done. The song is all in the groove, so it's actually hard for me to hear exactly what's missing from it. It's basically like putting the final brushstrokes in an unfinished painting. And since it has been painted and finished with brushstrokes by the time it gets to me, I can't make much sense of the painting anymore. I have to really hear what I need to do with the drumming before I can give the artist any directions. I may get a sense of what feels like missing, but I can't fully visualize it until I try it out. I'm in the midst of demoing a song, and I have a rough outline of the verse, chorus, bridge, and ending — the four-chord song pattern. For the main part, I've been going up and down the scale, trying to put in something that has a strong four-chord progression in the chorus. I've heard other songs like this — it's in the style of bands that had big hits in the ‘80s. The chorus has a strong melody and a strong drum fill pattern — something that gets repeated throughout. It makes me happy, because I can play it with no mistakes, but I can't really hear it without the drums and some other sound in the mix. I've listened to the bass a couple of times to see where it could really work, and I've really enjoyed hearing what it can do, but I know there's something else to fill up this space. I'm trying to think of what I can add to this, and for some reason my mind keeps running to the phrase, "butt crack" — meaning like, that drum part can be in the same groove as the bass, where the bass usually occupies that space. When we look back at the '90s, in a lot of ways, there was a sound. If you compare Nirvana to Stone Temple Pilots, you can hear the contrast. And I'd like to be on that continuum, but what that means for me is creating a sound that has a lot of the energy of those bands without being overly similar to them. When I think about what I do and why I do it, I think about a song like “Come On Eileen,” and how it makes me feel. The groove is an anchor — it's grounding — and the way it goes against a strong melody and just a general energy in the song — I find it really hard to be unhappy when I hear it. It's like putting my feet on solid ground. I think when I'm doing well as a songwriter and musician, I can capture that same kind of magic. That's why, when I'm creating, I find myself having those moments of inspiration that seem to come from nowhere. When I hear a song that really gets me. But, mostly, it's just about being a fan of good music. The fact that I love it makes it a lot easier for me to connect with the music and understand why the song is there. I was playing drums in a band in college, and the drummer we had, he would sit behind me and listen to my drum parts and ask me to play something for him and he'd throw the drumsticks across the room. He was very demanding about his musical style, and he was quite a skilled drummer. But our band wasn't very good, and that was probably the reason. He was never going to have to worry about his career if the band failed. He was going to keep his day job. Whereas, I've never done that — you might find me on the street without a job — so it's a matter of doing what I love and feeling like I'm still involved. “The idea of doing music, at least for me, has been the driving force,” he continues. “I've had a lot of other careers before this. This has been one of the most rewarding, but I don't really think of it as being that. I think of it as being my work. It's a labor of love.” “I don't really think of it as being that. I think of it as being my work. It's a labor of love.” – Neil Finn I have no idea what the sound is. It's pretty much something out of outer space. That's a good description. And yet it works for me. The song is called “Waving at Nothing.” I think that's kind of a neat thing about the guitar sound — there's so much empty space, it becomes filled up by the notes you write. It's really about how quickly you can get excited about a new thing, and you don't really know where it will go. But we were on a roll as a band, and we had had a string of hits in Australia, and we had had the success here in the States with our record “Different Gear,” so we just went for it. We knew it was ambitious for this album, but I still think that if anything, it makes the whole album more exciting. So much was riding on it. It makes me feel like that every time I go into the studio. Once the decision is made to go to the studio, I'm very excited. I start thinking about the songs we've worked on, and I start imagining how the album is going to sound. It's really cool how the process works this way — with everyone coming into the studio with a fresh idea, creating something new and unique. “The fact that I love it makes it a lot easier for me to connect with the music and understand why the song is there. It's a great feeling. You're always going to love doing something that you really enjoy doing.” We have gone through different stages, but we're now in the “go for it” phase. Everything's still in its earliest stages. So once we decide to make a new album, there's a sense of excitement, because we know that we're going to make a record that is going to be different than anything that we've done before. And as soon as the first song starts coming together, you start feeling that it's going to be different than anything else you've done, and that's exciting. I'd much rather be in that mode than go through the process of doing something safe or that just follows a trend. I'd rather do something that makes everyone around me uncomfortable, because that's always fun. It can be really rewarding, too, if you