555 - Overcome Dead Ends & Open Up to New Directions with Hrishikesh Hirway

Summary

Creative Pep Talk with Andy J. Pizza

Episode 555: Overcome Dead Ends & Open Up to New Directions with Hrishikesh Hirway
Release Date: May 13, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode digs into the nuances of escaping creative ruts and opening up to new creative possibilities, featuring an in-depth conversation between host Andy J. Pizza and Hrishikesh Hirway—host of Song Exploder, composer, and newly energized recording artist. The conversation covers the balance between ego and selflessness in creative work, the importance of deconstruction and process, the traps of perfectionism and achievement mindsets, and the transformative power of collaboration, coaching, and trying things the “wrong” way.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Ego, Selflessness, and the Universality in Creativity

• Andy observes that Hrishikesh’s recent album "In the Last Hour of Light" feels universal and resonates deeply, prompting a discussion about ego in creative endeavors.
  • [06:48] Hrishikesh: “That makes me feel great on the music side especially. That’s so gratifying to hear because the songs are so specific and so personal to me...I sort of went into this being like, yeah, I don’t know if anybody else is going to connect with these ideas or these feelings, but this is what’s going on and this is what I want to write about.”
• Specificity leading to universality: Hrishikesh describes writing about vivid, personal moments like stepping inside a photo, finding that others relate emotionally even to highly specific stories.
  • [07:49] Hrishikesh: “I did want to just write about these moments. Like I was looking through a photo album of my own life and describing exactly what was in the photograph…”

2. The Trap of Achievement & Perfectionism

• Growing up with grades: Hrishikesh discusses how excelling in school had ingrained him with an “achievement brain,” measuring everything against a perfect ideal—even in art, where that doesn't apply.
  • [23:22] Hrishikesh: “The idea of basically like getting an A. Getting a perfect score...It like defined my worldview to the extent where I’m like, oh, did I get an A on this?...And in art with a capital A, where not only is it not applicable, by applying it, you might actually be making stuff that’s not as good or preventing you from reaching things that you would have made if you just had the freedom to be like...what can you make?”
• Letting go with help: Producer Phil Weinrobe helped push Hrishikesh to record live, not “fixing” things, reclaiming excitement, honesty, and musical presence.
  • [24:51] Hrishikesh: “He really wonderfully and clearly articulated the opposite view...We’re going to record this album live...Your ability to go back and edit the thing and in my mind, fix it, you know, is impossible.”

3. Deconstruction as a Creative Tool

• Intentional deconstruction: Both Andy and Hrishikesh speak to the power of breaking down others’ work to absorb lessons—or even their own, as part of process.
  • [18:11] Hrishikesh: “I have always been someone who loves listening to directors’ commentaries and...the making of things...In school, going to the crits and listening to other students talking about their work…was really formative to me.”
  • [21:24] Hrishikesh: “What are your hang-ups, and how have they defined you?”

4. Collaboration, Coaching, and Creative Openness

• Changing views on producers: Years of Song Exploder taught Hrishikesh that great artists often benefit from collaboration, seeing the “creative vessel” take a new shape with others’ input.
  • [40:20] Hrishikesh: “By collaborating with somebody else whose mind, brain, whatever, is their shape of their own vessel, you get to put those vessels together, and some other completely new shape gets formed...”
• Producer as director/coach: The metaphor of a producer as director (with the artist as star/writer) illustrates the supportive, perspective-widening effect of a good creative partner.
  • [46:29] Hrishikesh: “They’re also like the director of the film, if the star of the film was the person who wrote the film.”
• Coaching in creativity: Andy draws parallels to sports, asking why artists so rarely seek coaches or producers as collaborators, when even star athletes lean on them for breakthroughs.
  • [46:38] Andy: “Michael Jordan really credits Phil Jackson for contributing so much...if he needed a coach, why do we not look for that? Why do we feel like we have to produce all of our best work and selves without that input?”

5. Practical Prompts and Breaking Out of Ruts

• Song origins from creative prompts: Stray Dog originated from Iron & Wine’s Sam Beam’s prompt: “Describe the street that you grew up on from the point of view of a stray dog.”
  • [54:45] Hrishikesh: “Sam Beam from Iron and Wine gave me three prompts, and one of them was, describe the street that you grew up on from the point of view of a stray dog, which was just awesome...”
• Embracing “wrong” techniques: New breakthroughs came not by perfecting old skills, but by letting go of old habits—recording live, collaborating, and opening up to outside perspectives.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On creative burnout and reinvention:

  [13:01] Hrishikesh: “I put, you know, whatever, 3,000 units of myself into this thing...and then like, out comes this little, like, this little, like one unit back...I couldn’t tell if the amount of work going into it was even equivalent to what was coming out of it.”

• On schools and grades warping creative process:

  [23:22] Hrishikesh: “Did I get an A on this? Did I do the right thing in everything, including in art with a capital A, where not only is it not applicable, by applying it, you might actually be making stuff that’s not as good...”

• On collaborating and letting go of “going it alone”:

  [38:27] Hrishikesh: “The idea of having somebody else produce felt almost like. Like I was giving something up...like a sign of weakness or something like that. And by doing so many episodes of Song Exploder...that didn’t change how I saw them…”

• On the “Stray Dog” songwriting prompt:

  [54:45] Hrishikesh: “Describe the street that you grew up on from the point of view of a stray dog, which was just awesome...Stray Dog made me think of when I had seen stray dogs, which was in India when I'd gone there as a kid and I was on this street that my mom had grown up on...Then in the end...I asked Sam if he would overdub vocals, do his Iron and Wine thing, and I was like, will you please just stack your vocals on this? Like, you’re my friends there with me.”

• On making your work a “memoir”:

  [48:44] Hrishikesh: “The album’s called In the Last Hour of Light, and in my mind, it’s a memoir. But instead of writing a book memoir, I wrote a bunch of songs. And...what I like the most about it is how...much it just feels like a document of these moments of my life...I created my own, you know, memory capsule.”

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Highlighted Timestamps

• 06:48: Hrishikesh reflects on specificity and personal songwriting
• 13:01: Describing creative burnout—putting in > getting out
• 23:22: The dangers of school/grades mindset in art
• 24:51: Producer Phil Weinrobe’s “opposite view”—record live, embrace mistakes
• 40:20: On the magic of creative collaboration
• 46:29: The producer as “director” in music
• 54:45: The origin and process behind “Stray Dog” and using creative prompts

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Creative Prompts (“Creative Call to Adventure”)

[60:22] Andy recaps with three actionable prompts:

1. Approach your work like a memoirist – Even if you aren’t one, treat a piece as a personal document.
2. Use Sam Beam’s prompt – “Describe the street you grew up on from the point of view of a stray dog.”
3. Deconstruct something – Take apart a work that moves you and analyze how it works.

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Conclusion & Further Information

The conversation is a rich exploration of how to break out of creative ruts by embracing vulnerability, seeking new perspectives, collaborating openly, and giving yourself permission to “do it wrong.” Hrishikesh Hirway’s journey—returning to music with a fresh, open process and support—reminds all creative practitioners that new creative chapters require new creative risks.

Check out Hrishikesh’s album at your local record store, on Bandcamp, or streaming platforms. For more creative prompts and pep talks:

• creativepeptalk.com
• andyjpizza.com

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Notable Closing Quote:

[58:53] Hrishikesh: “A creative pep talk is what I needed so often during the course of this whole album. And there’s something about just, like, the title of your show that is comforting to me because it’s like, that’s an idea that exists.”

Transcript

[Andy J. Pizza]

This is not an ad, it's a gift. I'm going to be at the Icon Illustration Conference this year in July doing a handful of different things and I asked them if they could give me a discount for the listeners of the show because I would love to see you there and hang out at the after parties and whatnot. And they let me have a hundred dollar discount to share with you, which is just so generous and so awesome. If you're an illustrator, I highly recommend going to Icon. It's been a magical experience the times that I've gone. Even the first time in 2014 that I went, it was a very scary leap, but so worth it. Go to icon icon.creativepeptalk.com to learn more. The discount is automatically applied to that link. Icon.creativepeptalk.com Hope to see you there. Has your creative groove become a creative rut? This is a thing I think about a lot because it's happened to me a bunch of times where you struggle to kind of find your way. You find something that works and then you just go over that thing over. You know, you're just like treading that path and getting as much as you can from it because it was so hard to get. And then eventually that groove just digs down until it's a rut that you're stuck in. It's really easy to get in that place. Today on the show we've got Rishikesh Hereway, the host, creator and producer of the popular and phenomenal podcast song Exploder. This is the second time that Rishikesh has been on this show and and we had an absolute blast chatting. And the thing I took away from his perspective with this new album that he has, it's called in the Last Hour of Light. It's fantastic. I've listened to it three or four times. The single Stray Dogs I've just had playing in my mind over and over. It features Iron and Wine. It's just a great, great tune. But what I took away from this conversation was just how many ways he has opened himself up to what he needs to get out of ruts. Whether it's coaching or perspective from a producer, or it's a prompt from a musical friend, or if it's just opening up to doing things the wrong way. This is a huge through line through this whole show and I think there's going to be so many things that are going to help you get out of your creative rut. In fact, at the end I'm going to come back for a really quick three part creative call to adventure. Three different options because it was just so much great stuff that came out of this. I want to hit all of those, but for now check out this chat that I had. By the way, Rishikesh is also a composer. He did the soundtrack for the thriller Companion from New Line Cinema and Netflix's television series Everything Sucks and a handful of others. He's just got a great CV and he's just as fun to talk to and nerd out about creative stuff. Had a blast talking shop about all of this. I think you're going to come away feeling open and inspired for your next creative project and I'll be back at the end with those three prompts. Here's my chat with Rishikesh.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

Your way on the creative journey. It's easy to get lost, but don't worry, you'll lift off.

[Andy J. Pizza]

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[Rishikesh Hereway]

I'm so flattered and thrilled that that is what was behind that question. That makes me feel great on the music side especially. That's so gratifying to hear because the songs are so specific and so personal to me that I, I sort of went into this being like, yeah, I don't know if anybody else is going to connect with these ideas or these feelings, but this is what's going on and this is what I want to write about.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah. And that makes sense. And they are very specific and I know they're about very personal things, but they're just something in that. That classic and the specificity lies. The universal thing. Yeah, it really feels like that there's so many. And I also like that I think because you're getting so specific you're teasing out things that aren't usually explored in songs. Was that intentional?

[Rishikesh Hereway]

But that that's just like the dream dream comment to get. So thank you.

[Andy J. Pizza]

It's true, though.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

It wasn't intentional in. Except for the idea that I did want to just write about these moments. Like they were like I was looking through a photo album of my own life and describing exactly what was in the photograph and where I was in that moment and what I was feeling like if you could step inside the photograph again and. And relive that little, you know, four second, five second moment.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah, that makes tons of sense. Does this resonate with you? Because I feel like. So there's problems with this definition of creativity, but researchers often define creativity. Their working definition is often novel and useful. And I like thinking about that because I feel like we over identify creativity and art as novelty. So it has the. It's very. It's about originality and that's also kind of about the individual, like the specificity element of that. But I feel like if there's this other side, which is the useful. The connectivity, you know, the. This doing stuff for other people, I just, that's one of the things I was struck by when I think about you. Because you spent so much time deconstructing other people's music and kind of championing it and then also building your own thing as a musician and a composer. It just strikes me that you took a more selfless path, which is not often associated with creativity. And even your presence is often like pretty soft spoken and grounded. And I just wonder if, if you feel like that's an accurate portrayal of your journey or if I'm missing stuff behind the scenes.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

I think that it is accurate, especially, you know, from just outside of my own experience of it, I think, hopefully. Yeah, the reception of it, if that's how you, how it felt to you, then I don't have any issue with it. Like, I'm like, oh, that's. Yeah, that's cool. I think for me there was a lot of stuff and a lot of feelings kind of bubbling under the surface of all of that because I started making the podcast in a moment that I felt was failure. I had reached this point with my own music. I had spent over a decade building my music career. Yeah, I had put out four albums at that point and, you know, toured a lot and played a lot of shows. Good shows, bad shows, small shows, slightly less small shows, not big shows really, but I had been toiling, I think, for. For a long time and, and it was pretty ego driven. You know, it was just. It was only in the service of me trying to Have a career where I'm like, these are my songs, this is my music. Not to mention that, like, everything that I was making was as DIY as I could do it, you know, where I'm. I'm going to write all the songs, I'm going to. Not only that, I'm going to produce all the songs and I'm going to play close to as many of the instruments as I possibly can, if not all of them. And if somebody else is going to come in, I'm going to write their parts for them. You know, I'm going to do all the. I'm going to do everything so that this end result is as crystallized a portrait of who I am. And all of my. You know, I'm going to be the art director for the album artwork. I'm going to design the logos, I'm going to make them merch, you know, the T shirt merch, everything. And I had done that for. For a long time. And then I just sort of felt like I hit an impasse where I couldn't tell if the amount of work going into it was even equivalent to what was coming out of it or what was coming back. I remember reading this really depressing statistic about how much energy it takes to recycle something.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

That recycling had this, like, net loss in terms of energy, you know, and for all of the good intentions and things like that, that actually it was an energy loser. And I don't know if that stat is still accurate. Hopefully this is from a while ago. Hopefully not.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

But I remember just how deflating that was. And I only mentioned it because it felt something like that where I was like, oh, I put, you know, whatever, 3,000 units of myself into this thing.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

And then like, out comes this little, like this little, like one unit back or something. Yeah.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Which I'm sure lots of creative people listening have experienced just that.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

For sure. Yeah. And I don't know how fair or useful or interesting that perspective on it is, but that's the truth of where I was. And that equation or whatever that way I was looking at it at that time made me feel like I was like, it's not happening for me, you know, or I don't know how. How I'm going to get to the next level. Like, I've. I've managed to get here and it feels like an uphill battle in a way that it felt like four years ago. And maybe it's a little bit less uphill than it was four years before that. But it's still really tough. And what am I doing and what am I doing wrong? And. And in that mentality, I kind of felt like I needed to step away for the first time. And that's when I made the pilot for the. For Song Exploder. So my ego was kind of in freefall a bit already when I started the podcast.

[Andy J. Pizza]

So that makes tons of sense. That's kind of the right point to do this sort of project. And it feels almost like a creative hero's journey of going into this world where it's really about, you're leaving everything, you know, you're going into this very foreign place that is really about. I've even. I remember, I don't know if it was the last time we talked or if I've heard you say this elsewhere. Seems like right from the beginning of Song Exploder, you were thinking about how the audience was going to hear this. Like that was the thing that you were thinking about above all else, like, trying to make something that worked for them. Is that right?

[Rishikesh Hereway]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so it's an interesting thing, you know, to say by taking myself out of it. That reads as like an egoless creative move because there definitely was still ego behind it because I didn't want to look foolish.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Right.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

You know.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

I didn't want to reveal my inexperience as an interviewer, and I wanted to make something that felt more professional than the truth of its origins might indicate. You know, I'm just like, like the first episode, you know, making in my bedroom, living in a one bedroom apartment with my wife, and my computer is in the corner and I'm editing together this, this podcast episode in a way that I thought might feel professional if I made it feel more like a documentary film. In the documentary film, the camera's only pointed at the subject. You don't even hear the questions. Maybe you might hear the director off mic, ask a question or something like that. But for the most part, the focus is entirely on the subject. And since I just was naive about all of this stuff, how to conduct an interview, how to interview someone, I just tried to take a page from that and make it feel as much like that so that people would hear it and think, oh, yeah, this is, this is a professional, this is legit. And all of that, I think, is not apart from ego. Me take taking myself out of it was a way of sort of expressing some kind of creative vision.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Totally makes sense, but. And I totally validate that, that it can be a way of, you know, hiding or deflecting as a different type of ego. But over time, as this became a bigger and bigger thing, like you spent a lot of time in making from that place. And so you're still doing a lot in service to the song and the other and celebrating that. And I just think it's a. It's an interesting journey. And also hearing you talking about how you wanted to do the music thing as almost like a documentary where often you don't see the filmmaker. And that was a really unique choice for audio stuff. Even in that, even in that thinking, you're very deconstructionist. Like you're, you're taking apart. Like that's a very unique insight that only comes from. From really having that deconstruction mindset. And I heard you also talking to Alec Baldwin about, in recent chat about how you had. When you were early on learning to interview, you were deconstructing his interview style and what he, how he was holding, how he's close to the mic and all these different things. Seems like that element is just very innate to who you are. And it's a part of the creative process that I don't feel like gets talked about a lot. I don't feel like it gets included. Do you feel like deconstruction is a big part of your process as a creative? I mean, I have to imagine it has to be given your history.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

I think that process in general is really fascinating to me.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Okay.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

You know, I have always been someone who loves listening to directors commentaries and you know, like watching the featurettes, the making of things on the, on the DVD and in school, going to the crits and listening to the other students talking about their work and where it came from and having to defend sort of the. The vision that they had and why they made the choices that they made. All of that stuff was really formative to me because it was when I was starting to make my own stuff and think about articulating it, you know, thinking about the reason why, oh, why is my focus here? Why am I printing my photos on this kind of paper? Why am I using this. This aperture? You know, like everything kind of was open to interrogation. And I thought if you had thought about that stuff, then, you know, maybe you have a good answer. Maybe there's a. In the ideal world, the. The subject matter that you're writing about or talking about or shooting or whatever, anything that you're making that the subject and the. And the execution should be inextricably linked if possible. And I think that was just yeah, that was something I got from school. And then when I left school, I think I looked at things in a way where I was trying to find lessons in them, you know, like, okay, I don't have school, I'm not in podcast school. There's nobody to teach me some of these things. Okay, well, what can I learn just by. I mean, it was the same thing with music, right? Like, I love this song. Okay, let me start by trying to do a cover.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

Of this song. And oh, I see. This is a new chord that I had to learn in order to play this song. And then later you're like, oh, I know that chord now. And I could maybe use it for something of my own.

[Andy J. Pizza]

I think this hits on this noticing what you notice sort of thing. Like, I don't know a lot of people that speak highly about, I don't know if that's what you're doing, but speaking positively about crits in art school or school, like, there's a lot of people that have no tolerance for that kind of thing. And I think it's just, it's difficult. Like sometimes I'll hear a comedian or a musician and they're kind of really going into this very specific aspect of life that they have just naturally ruminated on and meditated on. Just can't stop thinking about it. And sometimes it would cause me to be like, wow, I never think about that. Like, why don't I think about that? That's cool stuff. And what's been much more valuable is to be like, what are the things that, like, I keep coming back to and to the point where other people aren't even willing to follow me because they're just like, no, dude, no, don't. You're, you're doing, you're going way too hard. Like, I'm guessing most people weren't as into the behind the scenes of the documentaries and the director's feedback and all that kind of stuff. Like, that's, that's a huge tell in terms of where you take things. You know what I mean?

[Rishikesh Hereway]

I love that. Yeah, I love the idea that it's like, oh, what are your hang ups? And how have they defined you?

[Andy J. Pizza]

That's true. It's totally true. And the other thing is, I think that it reminds me of something. I think that's been really essential for me is just an openness to, not just experience, but openness to coachability or learning something or trying to find the lesson. And, and sometimes that's difficult because there's a lot there, I think There are a lot of things in creative process that you can pick up from people and then there's a lot of it that's intuitive or accidental and it's really difficult to. There's not really a takeaway, but I think getting in there is, is worth it. I've, I have, I've picked up so much from just having the attitude of maybe there's something here.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

I've been thinking a lot about the ways in which I misconstrued the act of creation and my whole way into music and creativity. And I think speaking of hang ups that have defined you, sometimes they define you for the better and sometimes they define you for the worse. And on this exact axis of trying to apply a school kind of mentality to creative work, I think there are things that I got out of it that have been beneficial. But I think there's also been this kind of dark cloud that I'm only just starting to recognize. Maybe that's too dramatic of a visual, but I think that one of the reasons why I got into trouble in the first place and stopped making music and the reason why all this stuff continues to still be so hard for me is because school and like, the idea of basically like getting an A. Getting a perfect score.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

Was something that was so drilled into me and something that I accepted as like an important achievement that I. It like defined my worldview to the extent where I'm like, oh, did I get an A on this? Did I get a perfect score? Did I do the right thing in everything, including in art with a capital A, where not only is it not applicable, by applying it, you might actually be making stuff that's not as good or preventing you from reaching things that you would have made if you just had the freedom to be like. Like if, if art isn't on the spectrum of, you know, a letter grade or 100 to 0, which I think it is not, then, you know, what, what can you make? I feel like I've been so constrained by this kind of school view where I was like, oh, I can't do that, that's wrong. Or that, you know, I would, I would pre edit ideas and, and, and, and instincts even because I was so caught up with the idea of making sure I did the, did the thing the right way.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Did you? What, what do you think unpicked that from your mind?

[Rishikesh Hereway]

I think I still have that hang up. But this album was so interesting and painful and educational because it struck exactly at the heart of that thinking because I met the producer of the Album Phil Weinrobe, who. He really wonderfully and clearly articulated the opposite view. And I think I kind of really needed to hear that. I had been so convinced of the kind of rightness, the rectitude of my own thinking, because I built a career from it, and it, like, came naturally. And there was just so much evidence to support. To support that, even if that meant, you know, a byproduct of it was, oh, I guess I'm not making music anymore, because obviously I don't know how to make the right thing. Because if I did, then I'd be more successful. You know, even with all of that, nobody had really convincingly, to me, articulated the. The opposite perspective. And he did, where he said so in specific terms, he said, we're going to record this album live, including your vocals, which means that your ability to go back and edit the thing and in my mind, fix it, you know, is impossible. And for him, the idea of, like, fixing it, that's not the appropriate language, because not only was fixing it beside the point, it was, to him, the opposite of how you get to something that's exciting and interesting to listen to. His feeling is that there is a spontaneity that happens when a group of musicians come together in a room, learn a song, start playing it and are playing it, and you can hear the newness and the freshness in the performance, and it's kind of intangible. But there is a moment where you lose that excitement after playing it too many times.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

And if you record take 15, as opposed to take four, you're gonna have something materially different. And. And he said, you know, oftentimes worse. And the idea of having infinite choice by recording everything the way that I was used to, which is one layer at a time, or at the very least, if we're recording everything together, we're

[Andy J. Pizza]

all,

[Rishikesh Hereway]

you know, in separate spaces. The amps are in different places, the drums are in their own space. So that if you have to go back and be like, oh, I. I flubbed that one note on the intro. Everything else was great. Let me just go rerecord the intro. Right. Like, that's what you need. You need to have that. Because otherwise, if everything's all together, you can't. Can't do that. You'll screw up the recording. And his whole perspective was, there are worse things than mistakes. There are worse things than singing out of tune, which was the thing that really, really I was most obsessed with and focused with, because I think, you know, singing is the most personal Thing, and. And it felt so vulnerable to me to sing any. Anyway, the idea of singing it live and just being like, well, that's what happened. And here we go. And now that's on. On the album felt crazy. But he really. He convinced me enough to give it a shot.

[Andy J. Pizza]

I'll say I relate to it in. One thing I've been trying to do is I have. My equivalent is for my picture books, and when I do comics and illustration, I. I have the process of drawing. I kind of treat them almost like logos. That's how. Like, how. How perfect I want them to be in a very specific way. Because I. I'm. I make messy work, but it's just a certain kind of thing about the composition and the shapes and whatnot, which means I will do, like, sometimes five to ten drawings of the same thing, like, with a light box, like, going over it. And the thing that I've learned to do is to stop with the sketches, the step before I go do the final, so that the last one, when I'm doing the final marks, I'm still having to be fully present and make it right so that I'm not just tracing it. You know,

[Rishikesh Hereway]

you're not memorizing something. You're not reciting something that you've memorized.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yes. So I definitely relate. And the funny thing is, I could be mistaken, but I feel like last time we spoke, I think you said that the biggest takeaway from Song Exploder was that there isn't one way and that.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

Yeah.

[Andy J. Pizza]

And so it feels very akin to that. Like. And I don't know if this is your experience, but this album, for some reason, strikes me as a really big moment after this huge journey you've been on with the podcast. I know you've released other music, but there's something about this one that just felt. Felt big. And it's cool that even even though you knew that on some level, like, I've got to do this, there isn't a right way. There's not a right way. There's the way that this thing works, that you needed that kind of guide in the moment to be. Like, remember, you've talked to hundreds of these people, and they've all convinced you there is no right way. And then this becomes this, like, manifestation of that.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

Yeah. I think when. When I put out the EP a few years ago.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

After having not put out music for so long, I think now I can look back and say, okay, what I was doing there was really kind of like, picking up where I had left off, you know, at the time, a decade earlier, trying to, like, just reconnect with the idea of making music at all. And I think it sort of felt like. Like my muscles had atrophied, you know, like I'd been in a bed for 10 years and forgot how to walk or something like that. And I had to kind of, like, retrain my muscles to just say, like, yeah, this is something that I have done and I know how to do, and I can. I can get back to it. And then I put that out. And then I think with this album, my. My hope was, what's someplace new that I can go now that I can walk again? Like, what comes next? Like, what happens if I go, if I walk over here? Or can I start even, like, run? You know, can I do something that I haven't done before and not just sort of be where I'd been in the past?

[Andy J. Pizza]

I love that. That's a good. I think I had experiences where the fir. I've been doing the show for 10 years or something a little over that. And the first five years, it became a real primary focus. And I was still doing illustration, but I put a little bit more on the back burner. And that was surprisingly powerful for all kinds of ways to just not be so precious about it and diversify and all that. But tons of people are going to have that experience where some part of their creative identity that they used to hold really tightly, they've become estranged with. And it's. It's an interesting prompt to be like, instead of thinking, if I'm going to pick that back up, I've got to be even better than I was. You could think about it like, this is a crawling project. This is a walking project. I'm literally. This is personal training for just moving again. In the next project, I'll go somewhere with that mobility. I really like that. That I like. That's a good way to frame it.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

Yeah. Because it really was so different. It was just some. I never imagined working this way. It was so contrary to how I'd thought. I thought the sort of next evolution of what I was doing was going to be a quantitative one, I guess. You know, like, work in the way that I've been working, but, like, have more resources or, you know, not more resources because it's still diy, but, like, more resources in terms of my knowledge and, like, in involving other people and. Yeah, just being more sophisticated about the approach. But instead of quantitative, it was qualitative. It was, okay, well, if you're gonna if you're gonna say there's no right way to make music, here's a way that you, you could have never imagined. And what happens if you apply everything that you've done and the person who you are and put it in this, this whole other box that you didn't even know existed?

[Andy J. Pizza]

That's really interesting. And I've heard researchers talk about these two ways of being in our head. There's the achievement brain and the awakened brain. And it is really interesting, like you need a relationship with both in order to have a creative practice. But it's, I think it's important to realize how seductive that achievement brain is and how necessary it is to get into that other side, which is beyond right and wrong. It's be, it's, you know, it's something hopefully that transcends that. So I'm inspired by you kind of walking us through that. I could really use your help now. As a rule, I try to give way way more on this show than I take. But every once in a while I have an ask. I think it's been about three years since my last big ask when we launched me and Sophie's book Invisible Things. And now it's companion, Mysterious Things is on its way and we could really, really use your help by buying a book and spreading the word. Pre orders can make or break a book success. If you can launch a book with momentum, it has a chance to get into people's hands. And we really, really want to get this book into kids hands because it was written to ignite kids curiosity, to get them curious about our mysterious universe. And I don't know about you you, but I am hoping this next generation is curious, open, full of wonder and engaged and excited about living life on this planet. If you pre order from our local bookshop, Bertie Books, you can get a copy that is signed by me and Sophie. There's also a bunch of links to everywhere else. You can get the book at InvisibleThings Co and by the way, I'm doing some talks to virtual groups, schools, companies and conferences in exchange for what's called a pre order book buy AKA buying copies for your group or the attendees. So if you've ever wanted to book me to speak, this is the least expensive it'll ever be. Write to me@hi dj pizza.com and I can walk you through how that works. If you love my art, this is one of my favorite collections of paintings that I've ever made. If you loved Invisible Things, you're going to love Mysterious Things and If you have to. Children, nieces, nephews, students, or friends with kids in your life ignite their curiosity with mysterious things. Pre order at invisiblethings co or click the link in the show notes. Thank you so much for your help. We really, really, really appreciate it.

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[Andy J. Pizza]

I know that it doesn't always work like this, but I'm curious if these years of deconstructing all these songs that I assume you love, maybe not all of them, I don't know, but I'm guessing a lot of them are ones that you're a pretty big fan of. Was there anything that you learned through the process? Might be technical, might be even writing or just like. I'm curious if anything, through these years of really getting musicians to pick apart their songs, if that influenced how you approach this album on any level?

[Rishikesh Hereway]

Definitely. I think even just the instinct to work with a producer was something that I was excited about because of the conversations I'd had with artists who had their songs transformed or seen new doors into their work opened up by the perspective of a producer. That was something that I wanted for a long time. One of my goals, one of my dreams, was to be an artist who also became a producer, that I would produce my own work and I would also produce work for other people. And I felt like the best way to do that would be to, yeah, just keep making everything of my own. And then, you know, that could be sort of my signature and then I could bring that to other people's work. The idea of having somebody else produce felt almost like. Like I was giving something up, you know, I was giving up something in the present and in the future.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Right.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

And maybe it was almost like a sign of weakness or something like that. Like, oh, I need somebody else's help in order to see this thing through. And by doing so many episodes of Song Exploder where there were artists who have incredible, singular visions, I would never think that their artistry or their talent is diminished because they happen to involve a producer and a producer who might have had a tremendous effect on the song. Like that didn't change how I saw them or, or somehow I Don't know. It was just like, okay, that's the story.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

Cool. Like, oh, this jet wasn't designed, engineered, and built by just one person. Well, that jet's not that great. You know, it's just like. No, it's still. It's like a miracle that this thing happened. And this is cool. These are. These are all the hands that got involved. So that fundamentally changed the way that I thought about making my own music from where I'd left off, where I'd left off, and where I am now. And that also continued with the songwriting, or so that was preceded by the songwriting. I similarly was excited about the idea of talking to other people and writing with other people, because I sort. I was thinking about the kind of the shape of my mind, you know, that it is. It has some shape. Right. It has some defined shape. Maybe you can push and grow and evolve and something like that. But, like, everything. It's like a glass of water or like a vessel of water. You pour the water in, and it's going to be in the shape of whatever the vessel is.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

And by collaborating with somebody else whose mind, brain, whatever, is in their shape of their own vessel, you get to put those vessels together, and some other completely new shape gets formed, and then the water that gets poured into that takes on this other shape that didn't exist before. And that doesn't make it worse than the. You know, like, that's like saying what shape is worse or better? That's an insane way to talk about shapes.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Right.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

Like,

[Andy J. Pizza]

it's clear. Like, the rectangle is just not as good as the octagon. Okay, we know.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

Exactly.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Really funny to put hierarchy on.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

Yeah.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Right. Do you have. Do examples come to mind of bands or musicians that you talked to that had a really impactful relationship with a producer that you were like, oh, man, that's really cool. And I want to have some of that.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

I think there are a lot of examples. I know there are a lot of examples, but I remember interviewing Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

Back in 2017, and 9 inch Nails had been, I think, in a lot of ways, an inspiration for me in high school because it felt like a product of Trent Reznor's singular vision and his expression. It was so personal, so specific. And I was like, this. This guy does everything. And even if it's not. It's not like I was like, I want to make music like Nine Inch Nails, But I really admired the kind of, like, the authorship, the auteurship.

[Andy J. Pizza]

He's thought of as, like, a lone genius, for sure.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

Yeah.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

And so interviewing him and Atticus Ross together, where Nine Inch Nails now exists in this partnership, was so interesting because Trent articulated the way that the kind of creative process got divided between them in a really crucial way. He. He said this phrase that I think about all the time, where he's like, oh, there's plenty of time later to hit it with the it sucks hammer.

[Andy J. Pizza]

That's really good.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

But he would step away. He would literally leave the room after the two of them would kind of just create. Just kind of ideate and, like, mess around and make things and get excited. He would. He would sort of turn off the editing part of his brain for that and just like, they just have fun. And then he would literally leave and Atticus would go through and find moments and find interesting things and kind of do like a first pass on an edit, like a curatorial thing. And then Trent would come back and that, you know, but having that kind of separation, you know, where you could sort of trade off and be like, okay, you take the baton for a second and then you're going to pass it back to me. And that felt really interesting. And I just thought such a fascinating way to work. And also he'd articulated so well these different parts of the process by externalizing them, by putting them in different people's bodies. And I ended up getting so wrapped up in this idea that I started a different podcast. I started a spin off. I don't know if you'd call it a spin off, but it felt like that to me. Called Partners.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

That I made. That was just about different partnerships. And, you know, the thesis of that show was basically like, all creative collaborations, all collaborations, business partnerships, creative partnerships. These are all kinds of love stories in their own way. And so I'm going to approach them like their love stories.

[Andy J. Pizza]

That's cool.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

And talk to them like. Like, tell me your couple origin story. You know, talk to these. What is it about the other person that is different from you that makes this relationship work, that makes the product better? That was all simmering in the background before I started making music again. And. And so that's like one huge way, and that's just like one example where the idea of more than one person working together created something exciting and also just like, facilitated something getting made at a moment where I wasn't getting. I wasn't making anything on my own.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Right. Like, I am not from the music world, so I. For the longest time, and I think a lot of people Feel this way. I didn't know what a producer was. I know that it's also changed a lot and it means a lot of different things and a lot of different scenarios. But then over time, I've come to think of it, like, seems like in a lot of cases, it's almost like there might not be hierarchy here, but some kind of coaching. It's like a. Does that feel true to you?

[Rishikesh Hereway]

Yeah, I mean, I think like you said, the term producer can mean so many different things and. And so many producers interact with artists in different ways, and even the same producer might have a different relationship depending on who the artist is. You know, some producers are really like kind of co writers who are going to help you craft the song from the beginning and they might have, you know, suggestions on changing lyrics or, you know, fundamentally changing the DNA of the song. Other producers are more closely related to engineers, where they have a really incredible set of ears and they are going to hear how the song should be recorded or mix in a way that's going to make it the. The best version of it. But I think they're. In some ways they're also like the director of the film, if the star of the film was the person who wrote the film.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Right?

[Rishikesh Hereway]

Yeah.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Like, it's a written and starring one person, but the director is brought out from somebody else.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

Yes.

[Andy J. Pizza]

That's the way to think about it. I like that.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

And it's.

[Andy J. Pizza]

It's kind of. It's something that I feel is missing in a lot of creative equations or how we understand creativity. I often think about, like, Michael Jordan really credits Phil Jackson for. For contributing so much. I'm, you know, I'm not comparing us to Michael Jordan. I'm just saying that if he needed a coach, like, why do we not look for that? Why do we feel like we have to produce all of our best work and selves without that input, you know?

[Rishikesh Hereway]

Yes. Yeah. Actually, did you see that clip from the March Madness on the women's college team where there was the coach giving that incredibly hard pep talk?

[Andy J. Pizza]

I saw that to her, player, player.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

Being like, she knows that I need to be coached hard. I sent that clip to Phil.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Did you?

[Rishikesh Hereway]

And said, is this us?

[Andy J. Pizza]

That's amazing. Yeah. So I'm onto something here. There's something there. I just feel like we're in a messy middle where the idea of coaching is in a sort of amorphous, not very positive place in a lot of ways. I'm hoping that we can go. I hope we can find language for and space for that, for creative people in a way that really is conducive to creative people doing their best work. Because I do think there's something to really needing that outside perspective and. And guidance and relationship in your work, because it's just very difficult to see your own path. So I want to talk a little bit about the album specifically. I have kind of two things I wanted to ask you about. First of all, what is your favorite aspect of this? Because I always find, like, in a lot of projects, I don't ever get to talk about the thing that I like the most because it just doesn't come up. So tell us a little bit about the album and then maybe just say something that you're like, this is what I really like about it.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

Well, the album's called in the Last Hour of Light, and in my mind, it's a memoir. But instead of writing a book memoir, I wrote a bunch of songs. And I think what I like the most about it is how. How much it just feels like a document of these moments of my life. Like, I feel like I set out to describe very specific feelings and experiences like we were talking about at the beginning of this. And I can feel some satisfaction of being like when I hear those words again and when I hear that music, it does, at least for me, put me back into that place. I feel those feelings again. I can conjure the picture of it again. And it's like I created my own, you know, memory capsule that's.

[Andy J. Pizza]

That's really interesting. And I. We always have an ending with a creative prompt. We call it the creative call to adventure. I think that's where I'm going to go with this, is could you treat. Whatever you do, most of the people listening are not memoirists, so they're not already thinking through this lens. But whether you're making illustration or even a substack post or YouTube video or an album or whatever, could you start to think through that lens? And what does that for you? That meant really trying to capture moments. Right. And. And did you have things like, okay, this is what happened? I like this way Ira Glass talks about storytelling as being. It's one part. This is what happened. It's one part. This is how I felt about what happened. Do you feel like both of those were present?

[Rishikesh Hereway]

Yes. I haven't heard that, but that's exactly how I was thinking about it. And it is how I think about song exploder. It's like what I'm trying to get from the guests. I mean, I explicitly say, you Know when, before we start rolling the mics, I say, I'm gonna ask you really about what happened, but I want to pause in every moment to ask you how you felt about it along the way. Yeah, I didn't know that, that. That Ira Glass quote, but now I've gotta go find the. Find the original.

[Andy J. Pizza]

I think he said it on Mike Birbiglia's podcast, but he's been on there a few times, so I'm not be sure which one it is, but I think that's where I first heard him talk about that.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

Yeah, that's exactly what I was hoping to try and get. You know, that. And some of the. This is how I was feeling about it is not explicitly in the lyrics, but it's more in the melody or the chord progression or, you know, the arrangement or something like that.

[Andy J. Pizza]

That's really interesting. As an illustrator, I take that as like the. The colors and the tone of the piece and how it feels, even if the subject matter isn't really different. Yeah.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

And how close you zoom in on the subject.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Right.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

Yeah.

[Andy J. Pizza]

So many decisions.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

What is the composition?

[Andy J. Pizza]

That makes tons of sense. I love that. Last thing I want to say is I've listened to the album probably four times all the way through, and I really loved it. It's got. For anybody that's wondering if they should go check it out. It's just got a great atmosphere too. Even if you're not zoomed into the lyrics, it just has a great vibe for a morning or an evening. I feel like it's both those spaces. But I have had Stray Dog stuck in my head since you released it. Maybe you could talk a little bit about where that song came from because I just found the origin story really interesting.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

Yeah. I mean, I do think that music is so fun because it can be so collaborative in these different ways. But this was a different kind of collaboration in that it wasn't, you know, it wasn't like two people writing a song together in a room or even recording it together. But I was looking for ways to let you know these other shapes into. Into my world.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

Because I was. I was nervous about how I'd let myself down before and I didn't want to let myself down again. So I was going on this week long songwriting residency and I had never done that before, where I just kind of turned off everything from my life and focused on songwriting. I mean, speaking of ego, it felt like an incredibly selfish thing that I was getting to do, and I was excited about it, but I also didn't want to squander the opportunity. And I'd had so many years of writer's block that the idea of trying to write every day felt daunting because I was like, I know what it feels like to pick up the pen or sit down with the guitar and just have nothing come out. And what happens if I do do that? I'm not in this beautiful place and I'm, you know, set aside all this time and nothing comes out. So I tried to kind of get some life preservers, you know, that I could take with me. And I turned to a bunch of people that I knew and said, okay, this is the situation. This is what I'm scared of. In case I run out of ideas in my own notebook or I get through everything and it just, you know, still got three days left or whatever. Can you give me a homework assignment? Can you give me some kind of creative prompt? Because as, you know, like, responding to a creative prompt can be really useful sometimes. It doesn't go anywhere, but it's nice sometimes to be able to just turn and turn your brain off for the very first instant of, like, what am I going to write about? Where am I going to start? Give me just some little push down the hill that. That picks a direction.

[Andy J. Pizza]

It means starting with the blank page. You know, you have. It's. You've got the little line at the top that's like, do this. And it kind of gives you something to work with.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

Yeah. So I asked for a bunch of prompts from people, and Sam Beam from Iron and Wine gave me three prompts, and one of them was, describe the street that you grew up on from the point of view of a stray dog, which was just awesome. I grew up in the suburbs of Massachusetts where there were no stray dogs there. There weren't that many dogs in my life growing up to begin with. You know, I just didn't have my. My family didn't have one, and people around me just didn't have pets that much. Just happened to work out that way. But stray dog. A stray dog that. But those two words made me think of when I had seen stray dogs, which was in India when I'd gone there as a kid and I was on the street. I was on this street that my mom had grown up on in this village in India called Saswood, where my grandfather and his brothers had all had houses and where they had raised their families. And I saw stray dogs running down the street and was just so surprised. Like, my instinct was to be scared of them. Because as a kid, I was just scared of dogs again, probably, you know, because I just wasn't around them. And these dogs just weren't scary because they also didn't care. Like, they just. It was like people were going down the street doing whatever they're doing, and the. And the dogs had their own city. Like, that was their town, their street. And we were just sort of like, obstacles or distractions. You know, we're just, like, absolutely irrelevant. And they seemed so happy and so playful. It really made such a strong impression on me, but I hadn't really thought about it. I hadn't thought about that image or I hadn't thought about the feeling that those dogs gave me until I read that in the text that he sent me. And that sent me off down the path of, like, remembering that moment and that feeling and then thinking about how that feeling was something that I had about my own life when I had been younger, you know, and with my friends in school and how important it was and how easy it was, how. How easy friendship was, and just, like, abundant, you know, you just felt like your friends were always around and you'd always have them around, and you could walk out the door at any moment and be like, let's go do something. Let's go do nothing. That was just, like, my sustenance, you know, those. Those friendships were such a huge part of me, and they feel so distant now. Like, that. That way of living feels so distant now. And so I. I ended up writing about all of that. And then in the end, when it came time to record, I recorded it with Phil, and then I asked Sam if he would overdub vocals, do his iron and wine thing, and I was like, will you please just stack your vocals on this? Like. Like, you're my friends there with me.

[Andy J. Pizza]

That's cool. I love that. And that line, we used to be that free hits really hard. The metaphor really comes together and. And I. I really love that song. And if there's any takeaway from this whole conversation, I think it's when you hit a creative block, just text Sam Beam. That's Just. Just do that. You'll be fine. He'll get you out of it.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

Yeah. He'll take care of you.

[Andy J. Pizza]

I wish I could do that. That'd be great.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

But in the show notes, Andy will include Sam's.

[Andy J. Pizza]

I'm sure you'll love that. That's a great idea. Thank you so much for giving me so much time and making this album. It's. It's really fantastic. I know we'll be playing it in the house a bunch. What's the best place to go check it out?

[Rishikesh Hereway]

Your record store, honestly.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Cool.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

You know, one of the other great parts of making an album for me this time around was to be able to go back to being an art director and a great and designer and get to make the packaging and choose the vinyl color. Yeah. You know, it's like an iridescent gold vinyl I'm gonna have, which I didn't

[Andy J. Pizza]

know is gonna be on vinyl.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

Yeah.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Great.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

And I haven't had an album on vinyl since, you know, 2011. So that. That would be, for me, the most exciting is if someone were to pick it up in a. In a record store. But it's, of course, also on Bandcamp and on all the streaming platforms, but I just love talking to you, Andy. I really appreciate the existence of this show. Just the title of the show. Sometimes, you know, even when I'm not listening, I just think about the idea of a creative pep talk. And part of the reason why I was so happy, like, why I wanted to come talk to you again. Thank you again for having me. Is because a creative pep talk is what I needed so often during the course of this whole album. And there's something about just, like, the title of your show that is comforting to me because it's like, that's an idea that exists.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah. It gets back to the. I'm not Phil Jackson. I'm not Sam Beam, but I'm doing my best out here, and I'm showing up every week. But I so appreciate your work, both in podcasting and of music, and just stay in touch. I hope we get to run into each other in person someday.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

I would love that.

[Andy J. Pizza]

All right, I'm back with three acts of the cti. Three for the price of one episode. First one we already talked about. Approach your work like a memoirist. Even if. Especially if you're not a memoirist. You don't write memoirs. Could you approach a piece or a project that way? Second one is take Sam Beam's prompt that he gave Rishikesh and say, what would a piece of work look like if it was from the point of view of a stray dog on the street that you grew up on? That's really cool for this song could be a great illustration where you're showing from the point of view of the dog. The third one is deconstruct something. So take something that you love and then take it apart. If you've never done this, this is so key. I'm sure you've done it to some degree, but maybe it's been a while. One of my favorite things to do is deconstruct a joke, deconstruct a story, deconstruction, illustrate an illustration that moves me and try to figure out like what is going on here? How is this doing what it's doing to me. Had an absolute blast talking with Rishikesh here way thank you for taking the time. It's always a blast chatting with you. Hope you get to come back on the show sometime. Massive thanks to Sophie Miller for being a producer and editor on this show. Thanks to Connor Jones of Pending Beautiful for audio edits, video edits, sound design and animation. Thanks to Yoni Wolf of the band why for our theme music and soundtrack. And thanks to all of you for listening until we speak again. Stay pepped up, y'. All.

[Mike Pesca]

We all need advice, but it's not always clear who to ask. Even in 2026. Enter how to the long standing Advice show an Ambie Award nominated Best Personal Growth Podcast. That's back with new episodes and a new host. Who?

[Rishikesh Hereway]

Me.

[Mike Pesca]

Mike Pesca. Each week I tackle a listener question ranging from travel to finance to relationships and beyond, with help from a world class expert. You know, someone who actually very much knows what they're talking about. Think of it as eavesdropping on someone else's therapy session without the copay or awkward silences. You've got questions, we'll find the experts and the answers. So follow how to with Mike Pesca wherever you get podcasts.

[Rishikesh Hereway]

Have you ever asked yourself, can the president really do that? Or wondered if there was too much money in political campaigns? Then check out the new season of you Might Be Right, hosted by us former Tennessee Governors Phil Bredesen and Bill Haslam.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Well, we're back for a brand new season now, and YOU Might Be Right cements the idea that constructive disagreement can lead to real problem solving. This season we're going to dig into the role of National Guard AI regulation,

[Rishikesh Hereway]

and a lot more new episodes drop every other week. Follow YOU Might Be Right Wherever you get your podcasts.