Daniel Tashian and Ian Fitchuk join Kelleigh Bannen on Today’s Country Radio for an in-depth look at writing and producing Kacey Musgraves’ ‘star-crossed‘ album. Tune in and listen to the full interview with Daniel Tashian and Ian Fitchuk in-full today at 5am LA / 7am Nashville / 8am NYC or anytime on-demand at apple.co/_TodaysCountry.
Ian Fitchuck on Making ‘Golden Hour’ with Kacey Musgraves
I think back then, we were making something that just felt really beautiful to us. Something that felt warm, and inviting, and nostalgic, and free. I think that was just all of us letting our inhibitions go and just having fun and enjoying the process of making music. As you know, a lot of times when you’re making music, there are a lot of voices or a lot of chatter around and expectations or maybe goals that you’re trying to reach. I think that we felt like we had a beautiful opportunity to make the kind of music that we would want to listen to, and maybe not what was expected. No one was looking over our shoulder and we just had the most fun.
Ian Fitchuck on How Writing ‘star-crossed’ and Kacey Musgraves’ Honesty Helped Him
One of the things that Kacey is so good at is telling the truth. So when we made ‘Golden Hour,’ we were helping her tell her truth, which was falling in love and I’m seeing the world in a whole new way. And then over the course of the last two years, obviously, as her narrative continued to shift in her own way and her relationship went the way that it did, mine was also kind of unraveling in a completely circumstantially different way. But I think that she, her courage to step into what she’s actually going through and to not be afraid of talking about it in a really nuanced way, I think in some ways gave me some support, some tools, some language to navigate also what I was going through.
Daniel Tashian on Kacey Musgraves’ Self Awareness on ‘star-crossed’
If you listen to this whole album, like in the middle of it, there’s some songs where she’s just really like laying out, in a way, like her own sort of flaws and in a very like brave, what I consider to be a really brave sort of way, a very human way, but it must feel uncomfortable. Also, there’s the awareness that this is at the end of the day kind of entertainment, and it needs to be packaged in a way that people can sort of accept it without it being this kind of like voyage of… some sort of self-absorbed thing. I do think there’s a layer of theater around this project, which I think was something that enabled her to be as vulnerable as she is.
Daniel Tashian on Kacey Musgraves Being Her Own Genre
People talk about the genre. What genre is [‘star-crossed’]? And whenever anyone asks me about that my response is always like, “Look, great artists are their own genre. They metabolize the different genres that they have enjoyed in their life and they come up with something new, they synthesize it and they become their own sort of food group.”
Ian Fitchuck on Managing Expectations For Kacey Musgraves’ New Album
I can only speak for myself. But I felt like had we tried to go into the studio in 2019, or even for the majority of 2020, like the first part, I think that would have been more of a challenge for me just to feel like people are expecting something great. And I think that once we focused on expecting something true, that it doesn’t really matter. We put every ounce of our hearts and our care into making this. And when you know that you’ve done that, when you’ve left it all on the floor, then it kind of just doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks.
