Song Exploder - The Arcs - Put a Flower in Your Pocket

Episode Date: November 5, 2015

The Arcs is a new project from Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys. He started the band with some of the musicians and producers he's worked with over the years. For this episode, Dan and his bandmates Richard Swift and Leon Michels break down how they made the song Put a Flower in Your Pocket, and how its title was inspired by a three-year-old girl. Plus: the story behind the Radiotopia logo, and the sounds that went into making it. This episode is sponsored by Hover (use promo code POCKET), MeUndies, and lynda.com.

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi-Kesh Hirwe. This episode contains explicit language. The Arks is a new project from Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys. He started the band with some of the musicians and producers he's worked with over the years. For this episode, Dan and his bandmates Richard Swift and Leon Michaels break down how they made the song Put a Flower in Your Pocket, and how its title was inspired by a three-year-old girl. This is a live performance. The bass, the guitar, the keyboard, and the drums.

It's live. There's no edits. Second take. You know, this thing just happened. We didn't even have to think about it. My name is Dan and I played bass and sang on this song. I'm Richard and I played drums and some background vocals. We produce a lot of records outside of arcs,

but this was like too easy. Like, somebody has a riff, and we just kind of know instantly, like, what to do. And that's Russ. Yeah, Russ Paul, our friend from Nashville. He's great. He's on all those top ten hits, country hits, but he's so out there. And he loves coming to our studio and making music with us. Russ was on guitar, literally just started playing it.

Pretty much we heard that, and then we knew what to do. Somebody gets behind the drums, somebody picks up a bass. We're all kind of like orbiting around Russ. It's really nice to kind of be able to mix up. the sounds playing old instruments but we can get really modern sounds the kick drum has like 808s layered underneath one thing that we've started to fall back on is like a lot of like spring reverb hits that's become our new crash it's a spring reverb unit an old spring tank I just bang it on the ground that's become our

thing apparently because we can't really record a track without doing it we did this on our free time this was like a project for friends to be together to just make music. So we never really set up a session. It was always like, oh, Leon, I'm going to be in New York City for two days. Let's get together. I'm Leon. I played keyboards.

That's an eighth tone organ, and it's just two major seventh chords. The A's tone was a little broken, which, you know, it's always good. And that's part of the thing that we love about recording is like the flaws. You know, that's why we like to capture the live performance because it's the human element that makes it feel special and alive. If shit is played to a click and perfectly in tune nine times out of ten, I'm not going to be interested. So Leon and I got together and started throwing ideas out. What are we talking about?

And he mentioned something that his daughter said. She was just picking flowers and she's like, I'm going to put a flower in my pocket. And I thought like, I'll put a flower in your pocket. That's like a cool, like temptation song title or something. So I just gave that to Dan and then he turned into something else. I just thought about somebody putting like a dime bag in their pocket and we turned into basically a drug dealer anthem. Yeah. Put a flower in your pocket.

If you see them, boy, you drop it and you run. The way that we record these songs, I'm not testing to see if the key is like appropriate for my voice. But sometimes it just works and this, the chorus was right at the top where my natural voice wanted to break up a little bit. They may pretend they like you, but man's best friend will bite you just for fun, for fun. If they're going for you, boy, you've already won. I like to have my voice double-tracked a lot of times, so I did that on this song. It has that haziness that I like. Leanne and I were writing a song, and we had an idea to have this mariachi part,

instrumentation. So when we went to New York City the next session, we called up a mariachi band. Florida Toloche? And they came to the studio and they showed up and it turned out to be an all-girl band. We didn't know ahead of time. So we thought that was interesting. But then they played and they were great. They came up with parts really quickly. And then we had put them on another song and then we put them on another song and then I said, hey, can you guys sing? And they say, yeah. Yeah, we can sing. We can sing. And then I put them on the song and they fucking killed it. We use fuzz bass to mimic kind of trombone parts, brass parts. Just replace those with fuzz bass, and that's what we're doing.

This song happened so quickly and I don't know, just it felt so right on. It's like we couldn't record it fast enough. When it happens like that, it's exciting. That natural feel that Swift and Leon and I have when we play together, it's special. It's a special thing. And we're just starting to grab a hold of it and make sense of it. And now here's put it. a flower in your pocket by the arcs in its entirety. More on the arcs visit songexploader.net.

There's a link to buy this song and you can watch the music video, which is really, really good. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out of full length. And this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishikesh, her way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations. about the process of making music, talking to other artists, and it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs.

And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wine Rope. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album

with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzukas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website. Rishi-kash.co. Or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploader.net slash live. Thanks. You can find all of the past episodes of the podcast and subscribe to future episodes at iTunes.com slash

songexploder. You can also find Song Exploder on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. I send out mixtapes on Fridays on my newsletter. You can find links to all of these at songexplotor.net. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX. My name is Rishi Kesh Hereway. Thanks for listening. Radiotopia.