A star cast: Interview with Sodajerker

Interview by Natasha Young

Liverpool-based songwriters Simon Barber and Brian O’Connor work together under the name ‘Sodajerker’.

But aside from showcasing their skills by creating their own musical material, they’ve shot to success in recent years with their acclaimed ‘Sodajerker on Songwriting’ podcast series focusing on the craft.

Having interviewed a lengthy list of musical icons for the show, from Rufus Wainwright and Johnny Marr to Nick Lowe and Ben Folds Five, the duo took time out to chat to Your Move about the secrets to the series’ success, songwriting lessons learned and their wish list of guests.

What were your initial ideas behind the podcast?

S: We’d been playing together in bands at school and then started writing songs under the name Sodajerker, but we thought there was more to us than the music – we wanted to put our personalities across and engage with an audience.

We started thinking about a podcast and were fans of amazing podcasts like ‘WTF with Marc Maron’ and ‘The Nerdist’. We liked the longform conversation format.

There were one or two shows by major networks but no one really talking about the nuts and bolts of songwriting, certainly not in the UK, so we got in early and cornered the market.

People often find podcasts through recommendations. Yours has featured a lot in ‘essential’ podcast charts so it must be rewarding to receive such recognition?

B: Definitely. In spite of that most of our success has come from word of mouth and, although those endorsements are nice and get you attention here and there, it’s about people discovering it and telling their friends and before you know it you’ve got an audience.

Does that help with getting interviewees? You’ve had some iconic guests so far.

B: It can but it helps that we managed to get great guests in the first two episodes – Billy Steinberg and Todd Rundgren – so when we contacted other potential guests they’d see that we’d had those people on and they’d go ‘if they were on then I’ll do it’. It validated us early on.

Given the songwriting credentials of guests you’ve featured, who has given you the best advice and what was it?

S: Some people are great talkers and tellers of stories. Lamont Dozier, the big Motown songwriter, had amazing stories. He’s been in the business for decades and seen it all.

Others are very technical and theoretical about songwriting and they’re able to tell you exactly how they put a certain chord sequence together or how they constructed a particular melody.

Andy Partridge from XTC ticked all those boxes. He’s a great musician; really able to articulate his process and also really funny and a great storyteller.

B: One piece of advice that stands out to me is from Mike Batt, who’s probably best known for writing ‘The Wombles’ theme but is a great songwriter and arranger. He was referring to writers’ block and mentioned something he used to tell his young daughter. When she wanted to draw a picture but couldn’t think of anything to draw, he’d say ‘just make a mark on the paper, then once you’ve made the mark that will lead to something else’.

He says you can apply that to the process of songwriting. You might be drawing a blank but if you just do something and even if it’s rubbish, that rubbish might turn into something good if you follow it through.

Has other writers’ insight helped your own songwriting since you’ve been doing the podcasts?

B: We’ve always been the kind of people who remember things people say and a lot of songwriters are like that – they’re always writing down quotes, unusual phrases, strange combinations or words they see everywhere.

When we write we’re constantly reproducing quotes or advice from people and we’ll go off and do it, so it informs our approach quite a lot.

S: Sometimes it’s not a conscious thing but you’ll write a song, demo it and listen back and you can identify certain characteristics you’ve absorbed from people you’ve spoken to. So maybe you think ‘that’s a Gilbert O’Sullivan move’ but it’s only after the fact that you think clearly you’ve been influenced by that person.

Who’s still on your interviewee wish list?

S: We’ve got a healthy list of people we’d love to speak to and that’s one of the great things about the podcast; we never run out because we’re so fascinated and there’s all these great songwriters.

McCartney is the Holy Grail, and then there’s Springsteen, Billy Joel, Randy Newman and Tom Petty.

We recently got Paul Simon which we never expected, so that was one ticked off the very top of the wish list.

Do your industry links help you track such iconic musicians down and get them to open up more?

S: They relate to us during interviews in a way they maybe don’t relate to others because we understand music from the same perspective. We can mention very specific details in songs and it makes them think ‘these guys know what they’re talking about’.

At the same time, we started by asking people to be on the podcast and that was nothing to do with our background as musicians.

A lot of the time people maybe don’t ask these people to do it, they think it’s out of their league, but we’re quite hard-faced and I’ll gently ask every three to four weeks until they eventually cave!

What are your main songwriting focuses and inspirations?

S: We’d like to write more songs; ironically the podcast takes away a lot of that time. We’ve been bowled over by the response as we’ve got thousands of people downloading it and we get loads of emails, so we spend less time than we’d like writing songs.

We’re trying to redress that balance and we’re inspired by people we interview and music we were listening to long before we started the podcast and we just carry out the process most typical songwriters do. We sit together and try and hone in on a particular phrase or title we’ve had for a while or a chord sequence and we try and flesh it out and see what happens.

How has being based in Liverpool affected your music career?

S: We’re fans of the music history of Liverpool – the Beatles, the eras of music that followed and the big bands that have come out of the city.

Having more Liverpool people on the show is something we’d like to do although they seem harder to get than some others.

B: It’s strange, we’re approaching 90 episodes and we’ve had two Scousers on in five years. It’s not for the want of trying either, it’s just how it’s worked out.

S: It’s a city with a big musical history and culture around music. We draw a lot from it, not in the sense of when people make documentaries about music and talk about a city informing their work and how the River Mersey feeds into it.

We’re not poetic about it but there’s a big infrastructure for music here and it’s on the map as a music city in the way a lot of others aren’t. I think it helps with podcast guests too.

You made a BBC World Service documentary recently. Are you looking to continue in that direction?

B: We always had in mind that we’d love to do a documentary. We were contacted by the head of current affairs who happened to be a fan of the show and said they were looking for music content so would we like to do something based on our archive of interviews. We thought ‘fantastic’.

We’ve since found it went down well with the powers that be and they’re interested in doing more in the future, but we’re definitely going to keep doing the podcast for as long as we find guests.

Do you have any other projects in the pipeline?

S: We’re trying to develop an album of our own material and racing towards 100 episodes of the podcasts.

There’s music we’re writing, podcasts and possible documentaries on the horizon so we’re busy.