that I couldn’t have planned on. And the songs just
came – I don’t know where from! I still need to learn
chords for half of them. I don’t remember writing
them. I hope I did!”
Working with a very short deadline was a new
one for Tim – “Sometimes I’ve written songs where
there’s like a three-year gap between writing a song
and putting out a record,” he admits – and with just a
few short weeks to write an album, he headed for the
beach to write... “I love beaches in the off-season,”
Tim explains. “I don’t know why, it’s just romantic.
It looks like death, but a beautiful death! And the
songs just kinda varied depending on my mood from
day to day, or even what the weather was like at the
beach! Like if it was a rainy day, it would be more
introspective, but if it was sunny, the major chords
would come flying. It all happened so fast.”FINDING SPACE
If the writing and demoing process was a breeze,
when it came to recording, the reality of the shoes
he was filling rendered things a lot less comfortable.
“I had a panic attack the first day at the studio,
because we recorded everything live in this huge
room, and I was standing where [MMJ frontman] Jimwhat was actually happening was something of a rock
’n’ roll intervention... “They’re friends of mine, and
the producer Kevin [Ratterman] is also a dear friend,
and to their endless credit they caught wind that I
wasn’t in a good spot, and they dropped everything,”
he reflects wistfully. “For Chrissakes, Bo [Koster]
the keyboard player... he’s Roger Waters’ keyboard
player! And he had two weeks off in the midst of the
The Wall Tour, and he decided to spend those two
weeks with me in a studio in Louisville. It’s the last
place he should have been – he should have been on
a fuckin’ beach or something!
“My epiphany truly started when all these people
started to come to my aid, and my first inclination
was, ‘I need to write good songs, ’cos I can’t give
this band mediocre shit!’ So I began writing the
opposite of how I usually write – unselfishly! It gave
me enough room to get out of my own head, and
because of that, it became a pure form of expression“WE REALLY SET OURSELVES
UP FOR FAILURE, BECAUSE WE’D
NEVER PLAYED TOGETHER BEFORE!
BUT OUTSIDE OF MAYBE A FEW
OVERDUBS, EVERYTHING WAS LIVE”
THIS SPREAD Shots from the
sesions at La La Land studios
in Louisville, Kentucky, where
Eraserland was recorded
TIMOTHY SHOWALTER
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