Songwriter, artist and filmmaker Luke Dick joins The Ty Bentli Show for an interview to discuss how writing with Eric Church helped kickstart him in Nashville, what makes working with Miranda Lambert so special and which one of his projects he feels represents him the most. The interview with Luke Dick is available on-demand here.
Luke Dick on writing “Kill A Word” with Eric Church
Eric came over and I had an idea started that he really liked, which was “Kill A Word.” And so we wrote that and finished that in like an hour, and then he had an idea started, which was “Round Here Buzz,” and that was sort of the luckiest day of my life that got me into music. “Kill A Word” is the first song where I felt like I had really contributed a lot to it, and then also had collaborators that believed in it, and then collaborated on finishing the song. I was riding with Jeff Hyde and I had the one verse with a refrain on the end of it, and I said, “Let me lay it down,” and I laid it down and I turned around and he’s like, “Here, I wrote this.” It was an entire verse intact, and then Eric showed up with a verse that was intact. And so it was a different kind of writing where you’re not pouring over every line; everybody just shows up with a verse, and it was like almost our little writer feature, you know? I remember playing a 12 string guitar and coming up with that lick, and then thinking, I had the lyrics, I knew what the lyrics were going to be, and I was like, “I want something kind of acousticy like this.” And then I remember also, “This needs another hook at the beginning,” and I put that little, you know [singing] and he’s like, “I really like that.” And I was like, “It’s kind of strange, I might not work in country, but they can change the hook later or whatever.” But then it stuck, and all that stuff stuck, and it was a moment. It was a moment when we made it, and then it became a part of the culture, and I was really proud of that that happened.
Luke Dick on what inspired “Hey Steve”
Natalie Hemby, a fellow collaborator, sort of a soul sister to me in town, we went to get tacos, and there’s this homeless dude. And she gets in the car, pulls out a $100 bill out of her purse and says, “Should I give this to that guy?” And I said, “Whoa, that’s a really generous gesture, but in terms of charity and stuff, that’s really your own heart. If you feel like you want to do that, then do it. And if you don’t want to do it, don’t do it.” And so she just quickly gets out, and goes and gives this guy 100 bucks. And I see him look up, and I see him mouth this words, and he said, “Are you fucking serious?” And she was like, “Yeah, buddy.” And he was just sort of flabbergasted. And then he comes to the window, follows her, she rolls it down, and he’s got these tears in his eyes, and he said, I’ll never forget it, he goes, “This is the second best thing that’s ever happened to me in my life. I love that he characterized the second best thing. And he goes into a bit about his story, and it was really touching, and tragic, and sweet the way that he was sharing. And then he says to Nat, he says, “What’s your name?” She goes, “I’m Natalie,” and he kisses her hand really gently, and then he looks at me and says, “What’s your name?” And I said, “I’m Luke,” and he shakes my hand and Natalie goes, “What about you buddy, what’s your name?” And he kind of stands back, kind of like nobody had ever asked him that before. I don’t know. And he goes, “Me? I am Steve.” Something about that really got to me and in a different kind of way, and we came back to my studio and I’m like, “Nat, I really want to write this song, ‘I Am Steve.’ ” I said, “But I don’t want to write it about homelessness. I want to write it about somebody who’s lost in the world, who’s looking for happiness, who finds happiness, who loses it again, and also how it’s kind of like everybody. And she goes, “I love that idea,” she goes, “I’m honestly a little bit too shook by that interaction to write that song right now, so if you want to write….I wrote it with my friend, Jason and I told him that story. And so we conceptualized the song, and it’s strange, and it’s good, and it’s got an awesome melody and it’s fun. I didn’t want to dwell on the darkness of that. It’s about sort of embracing the destination that you’ve ended up at, and also even if that destination is confusion, that, I mean, the world’s strange, it’s full of tragedy, it’s full of joy, and it’s hard to make sense of the world.
Luke Dick on working with Miranda Lambert and writing “Bluebird”
I would say that “Bluebird” was a good example of that to me, in a couple of ways. One, in that I like to bring ideas to the table, and I like to bring melodies to the table, but I also like to leave room for my collaborators. I want to sit back after every song and say, “Gosh, I’m glad that everybody in the room was there, because this happened, and that happened, and this happened, and it was brilliant.” And that song is like, I had just the tagline, “And if the whole wide world stopped singing, and all the stars go dark, turn a light on my soul and keep a bluebird in my heart.” I had a kind of a melody I’m like, “Nat, this needs a better melody,” and so she made the melody better. And then Miranda just like dropped a whole half of a chorus on top of that at the beginning. If the house just keeps on winning, I got a wild card up my sleeve. And the world giving me lemons, I just mix them in my drink.” And I’m just like, “Whoa, this is so good.” And it also grounded it in a certain way, and I would say that sort of style of collaboration, I hope, defines me. I would like for it to define me. But then also when you’re like, “What are we going to sing about in the verses? Is it birds? Is it hope? Is that this kind of a thing?” And I was like, “That just seems too on the nose to me. And I feel like everybody already knows that.” Then we got to the verse, and it was, I had these verse ideas where it was like, “I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to sing about birds, I don’t want to think about hope.” And I was just looking at that refrain, which was, “The house just keeps on winning… Turn a light on in my soul.” “Keep, turn, keep.” And I was like, “What if we played on these verbs? You know? Keep, I don’t know, I’m a keeper. And then, what does that mean?” And then sort of verbs kind of supplied the verses with meaning, “I’m a turner, I turn pages.” And I was like, “What is that? I turn pages.” If I don’t like something, I just turn the page and keep reading. Or a keeper, I keep looking for something. I keep digging down into the deep. Or the next first. We had a few verses that didn’t make it that were really good, but then it was, “I’m a giver, and I’m still giving them hell.” You know? And that whole twist was Miranda. “Forgiveness is pretty hard, so I’ve made an art of forgetting them well.” She’s so earthy in her writing that I’m 100% ready to hear what she has to say on a song. And it’s not every day where I’m just so on the edge of my seat on what my collaborators are going to say. And that’s a real gift, to have somebody like Miranda, who I feel like is a once in a generation writer/artist who is coming in and grounding your ideas with their own grounding rod.
