Meet The Crew: In conversation with Rich Smith, lead singer of The Lasting Days

“Generating initial ideas is often best done alone, but quality control and refinement comes from the group.”

Next up in our series of short conversations with our diverse Firehaus Crew, we discuss collaboration, having a surplus of ideas and the perils of too many inputs with Rich Smith, lead singer and songwriter with The Lasting Days.

NB: Hey Rich, thanks for your time today to discuss the creative process. I’m really interested to hear about your reflections on creativity in a band environment as it strikes me there are a lot of similarities with business. But first, how long have you been creating music?

RS: Well, my earliest memories of making music are playing around with my gran’s seriously over-specced keyboard when I was about 9. Up until then I’d been getting lessons and playing through the various song books we had at home, but this was the first time I’d created something musically myself.

NB: That’s an early age. Tell me how you approach creating something new like a song, has it changed since you first did it?

RS: Not really, though hopefully the songs have got better. I’ve always found songwriting to be a very instinctual thing. I collect lots of scraps of ideas over time, but the original vision or concept for most songs tends to just appear in my mind and then I have to begin the process of refining it and making it work.

NB: So you’d rely on your brain just naturally stitching an idea together?

RS: In the end, yes, but I’ve always been a hoarder of ideas, originally on an old two-track and now more easily on my phone. I think it’s incredibly important to make recordings or take notes whenever you can. Firstly you really don’t want to forget that great idea you had on the train, but secondly the act of making the note forces you to at least in some way refine it into something tangible - even better if you repeat that process and tighten it up.

NB: Yes, I totally agree. There’s quite a lot of evidence that the simple act of writing ideas down makes a huge difference to your personal creativity. So, you’re part of The Lasting Days, at what point in the process do you bring your band-mates in?

RS: As early as possible really. It’s the logical next step, seeing how the idea works in the context and sound of the wider band. I’ve never been shy about sharing my ideas and letting others improve them, or shut them down! I just want to try as many different ideas as possible and make them as good as possible. I’m very fortunate to have a great bunch of band-mates who I trust, but I’ve been this open from the start. If an idea can’t stand up to your peers, it’s not going to work in a wider audience. Generating initial ideas is often best done alone, but quality control and refinement comes from the group.

NB: That’s interesting. Collaboration gets talked about a lot in business, but more often than not we find that individuals are just looking for validation for their ideas rather than genuine feedback.

RS: Yes, earlier on I had to force myself to do it, but I really see it as a quicker way to get to a great song. It’s so unlikely that you’ll hit gold in the first version that the best way of getting there is to share and respond to feedback. Getting other’s input is not a weakness, it’s a strength.

That said, I do think in a creative song-writing environment you do need one decision maker, or at least one per song. Their role is more of an orchestrator than a leader, not cutting out voices but rather knowing when to bring their input to the foreground or letting it lie. It’s just a reality of human dynamics; hierarchy shouldn’t be a dirty word and is just a reality in any songwriting environment.

Though having said that, overall responsibility lies with everyone in the group, a great band is one when everyone knows when to step up and when to step back.

NB: How about the listener, the end user as it were? How often do you think about them in the process?

RS: That’s an interesting question. I guess the answer is ‘not much’. In a way we’re playing and writing music for ourselves rather than others, but at the same time a lot of those snippets and ideas I mentioned are triggered by things I’ve seen or heard around me, so I think you could argue that popular tastes and culture are heavily influencing the start of the process. 

I’d say a more important influence is what’s been done before, by us and by other bands. Music in particular suffers from this as you get a very physical muscle memory to how you write which engenders a lot of repetition. I put in a lot of effort to make sure I deliberately write music which is different to what has come before.

I hate to say it, but at the grand age of 36, I do think there’s a generational effect as younger musicians have grown up with access to everything; any song, any style can be listened to and thrown away in seconds. There’s less value attached and as a result music is getting demonstrably derivative, there have been studies of bestsellers proving this. Of course, some are using this access to their advantage and creating new combinations, but overall it makes the challenge of being an original songwriter harder.

NB: I feel there’s a similar effect in communications with everyone bouncing around on the latest bandwagon, but then maybe that’s always been the way. 

It’s ironic that the access to everything means that all of us now have to try harder than before to produce something of great quality. People are missing out on discovering things at a different pace to everyone else, what’s new to them is now new to everyone at the same time, and by next week is old news.

You can argue that it’s a great advantage, that the pace of change is speeding up exponentially and we’ll all benefit, but I’ve always found that the most creative ideas come when you’re operating within certain restrictions. These used to be imposed on you, but now sometimes to get the best out you need to impose them on yourself.

NB: So, what one piece of advice would you give someone looking to improve their creativity?

RS: Come up with as many ideas as possible, recombine them, refine them, throw them away and with the good ones, be confident enough to say “this isn’t perfect, but it’s good enough”. Then get other people involved as early as possible. To me it’s fundamentally a volume game - quality control comes later, just get making ideas. 

And if you really get stuck, pick up a different instrument.

NB: Wise words, thanks Rich.

Rich is lead singer of The Lasting Days, we highly recommend you have a listen to them on Spotify,.