You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and,
piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made.
My name is Tao Huynh.
Big Thief is a four-piece folk rock band from Brooklyn, New York.
In May 2019, they released their third album, UFOF, to critical acclaim.
Pitchfork named it Best New Music.
In this episode,
singer Adrienne Lenker and drummer James Krivchenya break down a song from that album called Cat Tales.
I'm Adrienne, and I play guitar and sing and write in Big Thief.
When I first started writing Cat Tales,
we were just outside of Seattle at this studio called Bear Creek.
And we had a bunch of songs that we were planning on recording.
But this space was really inspiring,
and I found myself kind of writing in all the little pockets of time.
And I had just gotten this 12-string guitar that I had bought when I was on a road trip by myself in New Mexico.
at this little pawn shop and I brought it with me to the session.
And one night after we'd finished recording, everyone was kind of going to bed.
I stayed up late and just started playing this chord progression.
That picking pattern is one of my favorites and is particularly fun to play that on the 12 string.
I just played it over and over again, and lyrics just started popping out.