(This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.)

Lawrence Peryer: I want to start with walking back into the room with the Jayhawks after so long. What did you find was different from the first time you worked with them, and what did you find was the same?

Bob Ezrin: It wasn't very much different, I must say. The people in the band are very distinct personalities, and they have been those personalities for most of their adult lives.

I didn't come in when they were teenagers. I came in when they were already established and had been doing this for quite a while. So from a purely personality level, everybody entered the room in the same place we were when we left the room twenty-six years ago. In terms of the experience and the work, what was different this time is that there's been a little more water under the bridge, and there's been more time spent in studios and more time spent apart. In a way, it was really lovely to get back to that spot.

When we started before, what brought me to Minneapolis was that I got a call from Josh Sarubin, who was an A&R guy at Columbia Records, who said, "We've got this new Jayhawks album, and they're a little bit stuck, and they could really use somebody who's material-oriented." Would I be interested in going down to Minneapolis to meet them?

So I went. I had never been before. It was a delight to discover a whole city full of gentle people who just—

Lawrence Peryer: It's a beautiful town.

Bob Ezrin: It's a beautiful place, and gentle and artistic and freethinking and relatively relaxed—not dissimilar to Canada, not dissimilar to where I'd come from.

I felt at home pretty quickly, and so when I did finally walk into the room with them, I was feeling like I belonged there. It was just a natural thing for me to be with those people in that place at that time. They saw me—Gary will say this even to this day—as being a very direct person.

You've known me for many years. I'm not direct in a confrontational or provocative way. I'm not trying to provoke anybody. But at the same time, I feel like we're all pros and we've been doing this for a while. So if you play me something and I don't think it's great, instead of spending two days beating around the bush, I'll just say, "That one's not working for me."

Nobody had really sat with him that way before. And I challenged Gary as a writer, too, because I felt that in several cases he was capable of doing even more than he had done on a particular song. I felt like sometimes he got a great idea and rushed through to the ending because of the excitement of it.

I come from a school where you rush through to the first iteration, and then you go back and try to perfect it. I kept pushing him to go back. He got frustrated with me from time to time, but inevitably, when the songs were ready and we were ready to record them, he was really thankful that I pushed him, because he was very happy with the end result.

Happy with his own work, and that's great. Fast-forward twenty-six years: Gary's been doing a bunch of solo stuff. I've been talking to Gary over the years, and we would occasionally meet up, sometimes in Nashville, sometimes here. He falls in love with and then marries a good Canadian girl from just around the corner.

So I start to see him a little bit more, and then he gave me a solo album, which I really loved. I thought it was really well done, and that he was continuing to improve as a songwriter and didn't just stick to his laurels and stay with what he was doing before. He was experimenting with new things, and I really appreciated that.

And then he just sort of dropped the fact that, "Well, I think we're going to go back in and do another Jayhawks album." And I said, "Not without me." And he said, "Seriously?" And I said, "Yeah, seriously."

Lawrence Peryer: Amazing.

Bob Ezrin: So we got back together like that. And then when I went back to Minneapolis to go into the rehearsal studio with the group, I was back in that town full of almost-Canadians and feeling very much at home. And it was just great to see everybody again. There was very little in the way of change, and I sort of appreciate that. I like that. Not everything has to be mutable.

Lawrence Peryer: It's funny, because as a fan of theirs, I have a very similar take on this end of the experience: there's something very familiar and comforting about them, but they change just enough that they're not stale and stagnant.

And a lot of it, obviously, is his songwriting, because it's the same essential band. They might bring in a ukulele player or a fiddle player or something here and there, but it's essentially those four people. It's really beautiful to have that long-term relationship as a listener. I love when my favorite artists change, despite the fact that it drives some people nuts.

They want their band to be kind of stuck in amber, but it really is the evolution of his songwriting that I think keeps it interesting.

Bob Ezrin: Yes, you're right. There's been a certain amount of evolution in terms of the craft. He's just gotten better, as most of us strive to do, but he's done it.

I think what was also different this time was the way in which we did it, which was much more live—everybody in the room, all playing at once—and more elemental in the production. I wasn't trying to adorn as much as I did on the Smile album. I just wanted to capture that sound of them that you would hear in their rehearsal room, or that you would hear coming off the stage when they were playing live.

So that was slightly different, and I think that helped to imbue the songs with a certain energy. It's that live energy—there's no way to fabricate that. It's either live or it's mixed. It's not both. In this case, it was very live, and it felt really good.

Lawrence Peryer: So you went down to Minneapolis, you went to the rehearsal studio, but you wound up recording in Toronto. I have a two-part question. One, I'm curious about the significance of uprooting and going to Toronto with them—bringing them home, if you will.

And then, if I have it right, you guys recorded in only ten days. That feels really high-stakes to me for a rock or pop record.

Bob Ezrin: It's a new world, Larry, and with the tools that we have, you're able to do a significant amount of editing and comping and pulling things together from various different takes, in a way that was much more difficult to do when you were dealing with tape.

My preference is to go for performance. Rehearse the stuff to make sure we know it really well before we take it in, and rehearse it well enough so that they can just get on the floor and make it sound—obviously each song has a slightly different sound—really good to everyone as they play.

Don't let them overdo it. And then when it's all sounding right and everything is functioning properly, just hit record and tell them to go for it. We record, in pretty much every case, three to four takes of live performance. That's it. I just want them to go for it. And somewhere in there, I keep a mental note as we're going along.

Somewhere in there are all the parts that we need to put the record together. And then of course there's a little bit of overdubbing. Obviously, we didn't do the vocals live. We did guide vocals live with Gary, but we had to go back and redo all the big vocal harmonies. The playing was live to a guide vocal.

And that's it. With four takes, you have four takes of high energy, four takes with full concentration, full energy. They haven't overplayed it to where it just becomes intellectual and not emotional, or where it becomes a little too mechanical. So a lot of what you're hearing in the record is that sort of spontaneity that you can get.

And then they go home, and I go through everything and present it back. Gary did add some guitars afterward to a couple of things that we were missing, and that was it. And then it was mixing, which I spent a good deal of time on because I really wanted it to sound special. I didn't want it to be too affected.

I didn't want it to be too modern, but I didn't want it to sound like a throwback either. So we had to balance out what our intentions were and try to get the end result that we had always imagined when we first started. That's the thing, right? That is the trick here for somebody that's been doing it for as long as I have.

For me, it's like a task. I set myself a task, and then I work really hard to accomplish the task that I set for myself. I wanted it to sound like this, and I wanted it to have this kind of spirit to it. And so then the job was to make sure that I actually accomplished that.

Lawrence Peryer: Throughout the course of a project, how do you balance that notion of having a task, or being on a mission, or knowing what you want to hear at the end, with leaving room for serendipity or pleasant surprises? Or do you not want surprises?

Bob Ezrin: No, I love surprises, but that's part of what I want. The task that I set for myself is to create an environment where people just feel free and they just go for it. And then I pick the best surprises, right? The best stuff that happened.

It's a combination of stuff. First of all, there has to be consensus, right? At the beginning, there isn't any. You've got a bunch of different approaches and opinions, and then you get everybody together in the room and you start working on this stuff until you can distill it.

From all of these disparate elements, you can distill it down to the parts that are common, that everybody agrees on. And then once everybody gets to that point of agreement, what I try to do is make sure that they understand it—that they know what they've just agreed upon, they understand it, and they still think it's the right thing to do. And then we go for it.

And at that point, when you've got everybody—it's like anything else. When you've got a hockey team and everybody knows what the game plan is and they all agree upon the game plan, then it is just a matter of getting them on the ice and telling them to go for it. And that's what we did.

First of all, Gary and I worked out the songs. That was a process. Gary and I had to determine what we thought the end result was going to be. And I would say we grew that through a process of—what's the word I'm looking for? In a way, we cooked it like a good dinner.

We were trying a few things. We added a little spice here, a little something there, as we were figuring out what songs were going to go on the record and what the overall vibe of the record was going to be. And then when we got to that point, it was a matter of just gathering up the troops and getting us all in a room together and saying, "Look, these are the songs, this is the direction, and this is how I would like to record it."

And everybody had a chance to weigh in. To the best of my ability, I accommodate everybody's style and wish. Everybody's got their own style of performance, but at the end of the day, it all has to knit together, and when you go "one, two, three, four," everybody's got to come in. That was it.

We worked on that. We worked on making sure that everybody understood what the song was to be and how we were going to do it. Then we took it in the studio, and then there was that freedom of just saying, "Just play it. Don't stop. Just play it. Go ahead, play it. Let's play it again." That's not to say that we didn't ever go back, like, "Well, let's try that. Let's do that chorus again as an insert," or something like that. We did occasionally, but most of the time these were live takes, top to bottom.

Lawrence Peryer: You alluded to it earlier, that Smile very specifically had much more adornment—for lack of a better way to say it, modern production technique. "Adornment" was the word you used.

What drove the lack of adornment and the restraint this time around? What did Smile need that this record didn't?

Bob Ezrin: That's an interesting thing. I think what we were looking for was to recapture the elemental sound of the band. Not that they'd lost it, but they just hadn't done it for a long time.

So the idea was to go back to basics, because it had been a long time. When we did Smile, they were well into their career, and they had tried a variety of different approaches. I liked the idea of a little additional production and some experimentation, and they seemed to enjoy it.

We all had a really good time doing it. But this time, especially now, where everything is so produced and so affected and tuned and perfect and, in every way, mechanical to me, I wanted none of that for this one. Yes, we worked to click tracks so that everybody was in the same time, but I wasn't religious about it.

We didn't have Auto-Tune going 24/7. There were the occasional parts or notes where I may have thought, "Oh, if I could just bump that up a little bit, it'd sound a little bit better," but there wasn't a whole lot of that. The biggest thing really was finding those special moments where the live performance was the most alive it could be, and combining those all together into one complete work.

Lawrence Peryer: I wanted to go back to the first part of the other question, which essentially boils down to: why Toronto?

Bob Ezrin: Gary and Stephanie were living in Quebec at the time, but they were actually looking for a place here, and they were missing Toronto, where they had started. They started in Burlington, actually. So there was a little bit of that.

He had left the United States and chosen to live in Canada and to become Canadian. I am Canadian—I was a dual citizen—and I had chosen to renounce my US citizenship and come back to Canada. Both of us, because we were no longer recognizing the country: the country he was born in, the country I chose. And so we were kind of bonded over that.

There is something about the atmosphere in Canada, too, which is a little less fraught. There's a gentleness in the air, and that gentleness has been missing from the United States for a while. And I did want that for this project. I did want that sort of gentleness and that sweetness.

It would've been either: we would've all convened in Minneapolis, or we decided to come here. At least here, there were some studios that I knew, and there was this one particular studio, Canterbury, which unfortunately is no longer open.

I just knew that they would love that place. It had a hippie-ish, old-school vibe about it, with some really great microphones and a beautiful console and all that sort of stuff. So it just made sense. We weren't going to do it in LA, we weren't going to do it in Nashville, we weren't going to do it in New York. So it was either going to be Minneapolis or here.

Lawrence Peryer: And Minneapolis has gotten heavy, too, right?

Bob Ezrin: It sure has been.

Lawrence Peryer: What was in the air in Minneapolis was tough, the last eighteen months.

Bob Ezrin: Everybody was really happy to be here, and quite relieved to be out of it.

Lawrence Peryer: When you and I spoke a week or two ago, I brought up "Mr. Lincoln," and I wanted to talk to you about it again on mic. The more I sit with that song—it feels like a Band song.

Bob Ezrin: Yes. It's like a historical novel, almost. It's a fictional story told in historical context and informed by actual events. It's the story of a guy who played in the band at Ford's Theatre when Lincoln was shot. He was not a Lincoln follower. He was at the other end of the political spectrum, and yet what he saw moved him—something that should never happen to anybody, is what he said.

"I wouldn't wish that fate on any man." And I think it really moved him, particularly when he saw how Mrs. Lincoln went to Lincoln and held him. And then he talked about the times, and about the train that held Lincoln's body as it went to lay him to his rest.

And it really is evocative of the time, too. I would say that when the Band wrote that kind of stuff, they really went for almost an antique language. In this case, I didn't think the language was necessarily antique, but I think that the marriage of that language—it's a story, the song, the subject matter that we all are familiar with—sort of gave it a patina of being of another time.

Lawrence Peryer: Not to overstate it, but I feel like it's quite an accomplishment in songwriting. It's a very accomplished song.

Bob Ezrin: It's a very well-written song.

Lawrence Peryer: And that kind of brings me to you as a producer. If I see there's a Bob Ezrin working with so-and-so, there's a new album out—Bob Ezrin, the producer—I have certain ideas of what I think the hallmarks of that are. I'm happy to share them, but I would love to know what you think an artist is looking for, or what they think they're going to get. What are they buying, and what are you selling?

Bob Ezrin: Fortunately, I haven't had to really do much selling. I don't actually go out after the work, which is kind of interesting.

A lot of it is just word of—you know, somebody that I know knows that somebody's doing something, and they call me and say, "Would you be interested?" And then I go and meet, and we start from that point, from a point of curiosity about each other. Then we get to know each other, and it either goes forward or it doesn't.

I think that in every case, when an artist is about to make a record, there are several schools of interest—several special interest groups, let's say—involved with the project. The plan that the label has may be very different from the plan that the manager has for the band, which may indeed be different from the plan that the artists themselves have for what they want to accomplish.

So what are they looking for? Everybody's looking for something different, and it depends on who's making the call. In the case of Josh Sarubin, who called me to work with the Jayhawks the first time, they were looking for something commercial, something that wouldn't get lost, and that would reestablish the band as the important artistic force that it was.

So they wanted something artful, and they wanted something that was accessible. That was their wish. In the case of the band, I think that they were looking for something that might succeed more than what they had just done, because success meant better venues, better gigs, better everything.

So they were kind of hoping that we would come up with something like that, but they weren't looking for a quote-unquote "commercial" record. I think for the most part, that's a dirty word amongst most artists, at least from that era. They wanted something that would be better and would be better received.

What I wanted out of it was to do the best thing I could do for that group at that time, and to serve the people that I was working for. In that case, I was working for a combination of the label and the band. This time around, it's just me and the band, and we didn't have anybody telling us what they were expecting or what they wanted.

It was just us getting together, and really it was Gary and me that determined what the direction of this should be and what we were looking for as an end result.

Lawrence Peryer: A few minutes ago, you talked about how you both left the United States, you and Gary, and I wanted to ask you about a couple of the thematic fragments from the record.

"American Midnight" seems pretty self-explanatory, but I'm also curious about "Sanctuary Park." It's a real place. The word "sanctuary," which is such a lovely word, has come to be so loaded—in some quarters, a derogatory term or a weaponized term.

Bob Ezrin: But it's not a weaponized term out in the world.

Lawrence Peryer: That's right.

Bob Ezrin: It isn't.

Lawrence Peryer: Not in the real world.

Bob Ezrin: Not in the real world. And I think there's a spiritual quality to the word itself. They say a rose by any other name would smell as sweet—not if you call it a kumquat. There's a sweetness to the word. The language matches the intent, or the thing that's being described, or the state that's being described—the state of sanctuary.

It lives inside the word itself. And I don't think there should be any controversy about what sanctuary means. We all need it. We all strive for it in a certain way. We all deserve it. All living things deserve sanctuary, all living things. So I loved the title. I loved that it was a real place.

If you look back through the lens of what was going on in the United States at the time that this was written, and now, sure, you could read a double meaning into it. I think what Gary was using was "Sanctuary Park" as not just a place, but a state of being—a kind of innocence, an innocent place.

And the song has a real innocence about it that I really love. When I was first interviewed about the record—and this is the quote that's sort of gone around—it was how there's a gentleness and an innocence to them that I was craving. And it's true. It's really true.

There's just so much hardness around right now, and I needed a fix. I needed some beautiful harmonies and lovely melodies, and I needed to feel like I used to feel when I went to the folk clubs: we are all one, and all is well in the world.

And their voices together—forget about it. That's it for me. When they're singing in that harmony, there's just nobody else that sounds like that. And when I hear it, suddenly all is right in the world.

Lawrence Peryer: His voice does a lot of that, too. It's such a comforting voice. Do you have a working theory of why you have so many ongoing, long-term, and revisiting relationships with artists? Sometimes you see artists work with a producer for a couple of records and then go away, or be afraid to be too associated with one producer.

Jimmy Page is notoriously famous for not letting the same engineers work with him. What's your working theory of what it is about you, or how you show up, that makes artists comfortable with you as a long-term collaborator?

Bob Ezrin: I think they sense very early on how much I love them. I don't go into a situation expecting to be in conflict with somebody, or expecting it to be difficult, or them to be difficult people.

In fact, I never go into any situation like that in life. I just walk into a room with an open heart and feel what's going on and appreciate it to the best of my ability. The worst thing to do is to go in with preconceived notions, and even worse than that is to go in with a game plan before you've talked to the people.

That's a terrible thing. So maybe that's what it is. Luckily for me, I have loved most of the people that I work with. I have some relationships that have gone on for—with Alice, it's almost sixty years. That's insane. And I love him. I love Alice, I love Sheryl.

I love their family. I love their grandkids. They're like family to me. And Gary's like family to me, as are the other members of this band. So maybe that's what it is: we had a bit of a love affair on Smile, and now we get to revisit that.

Lawrence Peryer: I told you before that I feel like there are three hallmarks, for me, of a Bob Ezrin project, and I don't think they're terribly controversial. One you talked about earlier, which is the commitment to song: the songs have to be finished and strong and, I guess, have to follow their own internal logic.

So the commitment to song, I think, is one thing. The other I think about with you is what you bring to the table as an arranger. You can take the song and make it more than the sum of its parts. And the third has to do with something I can't quite articulate as well. A lot of it has to do with the performance, and it's not about pulling out the best performance—that feels a little hack.

There is a high level. The performances are always strong and crisp. They're not lazy.

Bob Ezrin: No, I don't like lazy.

Lawrence Peryer: And I think maybe that's the meta theme across all three of those points: if you're going to do it, there's a standard bar. There's the Bob Ezrin standard bar, and it's, "I'm not doing this if we're not going to agree on that bar."

Bob Ezrin: Well, that's an interesting thing. My wife sometimes accuses me of seeing more in people than there really is. She says that, and she's English, so from their point of view, that's a cardinal sin. But from my point of view, that's a badge of honor. Yes, I do. I'm optimistic, and at the same time, I do see the potential in people. And invariably, Larry, when we're working together, I always ask permission to hold them to that potential.

There's always an early-on conversation where I go, "Remember that song that you did back here? And you're like—that's off the charts. Brilliant. Amazing. And that is a standard that is very high. And if you don't mind, I'd like to hold you to that standard for all of this project."

And nobody ever says, "No, don't do that." (laughter)

Lawrence Peryer: "I'd like to do worse, please."

Bob Ezrin: Yeah, "I'd like to do worse." They invariably say yes. And then when I do push, they understand why I'm pushing. And I'm sensitive enough to know when somebody is starting to rail against what I'm pushing for, and I will stop and talk to them about it and say, "What's bothering you about this?"

And if they say, "I just don't feel it," or "I'm not happy with the way in which this is going," then I let them tell me what they would be happy with and what would work for them. And as long as it serves the project, serves the end result, I'm okay with it. I don't have a pride of authorship or anything like that.

If somebody comes in with a better idea than mine, I'll love it. In fact, I say this over and over: I really love to be the dumbest guy in the room. I do. I love to be with people who are way smarter and way better. It's more interesting. It's thrilling and challenging, and it's tons of fun. Much better than being with people you've got to drag along.

Lawrence Peryer: In this commercial environment, sales environment, why is the album still so important? In a way, I would say now it gets to be what it originally was, right? It's the work, it's the form, it's the art form of popular music.

But I don't know if that's right. I'm curious, from your perspective—"why bother" is one way to say it—but why an album?

Bob Ezrin: It's a good question. In some cases, I tell people, "Don't even think about it. There's no point. Why would you want to make an album?" There is no point, because people go after an individual song.

Rarely do people listen from top to bottom to a new record. When it's somebody that you know and love, somebody that you've been a fan of for a long time, then you do appreciate taking a journey with them, whether that journey is seven songs or seventy songs. There's nothing precious about it.

An album only existed because that was as big as the carrying case. Back in the old days, you could only carry one song at a time, because that's all the disc could handle. And then they learned how to flip it over—"Oh, now we get two"—in that same carrying basket.

And as the baskets got bigger, more songs got added. Now we're in a world of infinite songs, and the basket is infinite because it's virtual. So you could make thirty-five songs. For my money, that's fine, too. But it's funny that I get mostly approached by people who are album artists, who like to make a full album's worth of stuff. So that's what I've been doing for the longest while.

You were talking about the three things. I think the fourth thing about what I do—and it's what I do in a general sense, too, not just with the music—is I'm a storyteller.

I love to tell stories. And I think that's what song form is: a story set to melody, a series of words that tell a story, set to a melody. And for me, the perfect form of storytelling in this medium is when the words sit perfectly on the notes that carry them, and they accompany each other perfectly.

That takes a lot of work. Mostly that's at the songwriting stage, where you really want to make sure that you're not squeezing too many syllables into a single note, or that the sound of the syllable doesn't feel right on that particular note. That note calls for a sweet sound, and you're saying something that's very harsh, or vice versa—that note calls for power, and you're saying something that's really soft, and it doesn't stick through.

These are all parts of the craft of telling stories through songwriting. And then the production is: how do you augment that? How do you present it? The song is the script for a film, and the record is the film itself, which is a combination of performances, sets, lights, props, and atmosphere. And that's what we try to build.

Lawrence Peryer: How often do you know, when you turn in a record—not that it's going to be a hit, not that it's working? I'm curious about the experience of turning in a record and you're like, "I wish I could take my name off this," or "I just didn't achieve the original task I set out to do." What is that experience like? It must happen.

Bob Ezrin: Not often, though, thank God. A lot of it has to do with this thing about working with the same people over and over again: we've developed a methodology and a standard that we set for ourselves. Every once in a while, we do have something where we kind of look back and go, "Oh, shit, I wish we had done better."

There are very few things that I've made where I've walked away saying, "I wish I hadn't done that," because I tend to not take a gig that's not going to work out. I have a pretty good sense for when the chemistry's going to be okay. And I like to think that I'm good enough.

I've done this for so long, God knows, that I should know what I'm doing by now. And if I don't, man, somebody put me away, please. (laughter)

Lawrence Peryer: Is there one that got away, in terms of an artist that was on your wish list that you didn't get to, and the chance passed? Or is there one you aspire to that you might go after? I don't know if you'd want to say that publicly, but I'm curious about that—if there are still aspirations left for you.

Bob Ezrin: There's a ton. I must tell you, every day I hear something from somebody where I go, "Man, I wish I'd made that record. I would love to work with that person." I would love to work with Rosalía.

Just in terms of the pageantry of her music, that's right up my street. I love that. There are so many that when I hear their stuff, I just go, "Oh God, I wish I could work with that person." But there are only so many hours in the day, only so many weeks in the year.

And again, back to the thing about having relationships where people repeat: I have, like, a two-and-a-half- or three-year cycle that's pretty predictable because of the touring schedules and the release schedules for the people that I've been working with for a while. So a lot of the time, I just don't have time to take on something new.

Lawrence Peryer: You'd have no reason to remember this, but when we first met, I said to you, "My mother would like to have a word with you, because you corrupted me at a very young age with your music, young man." (laughter) So many of those records.

The thing that's interesting about that body of work is that sometimes pop music's ephemeral, but so many of those records—you can look on Spotify. That's the funny thing. We can see the transparency. Those records get played, and that's one measure, right? People revisit that music.

Bob Ezrin: Yeah. I hear from people all the time who still want to talk about Killer, or still want to talk about Destroyer: "What did you guys do?" These things are half a century ago, more in some cases. I'm surprised that they have survived in people's imaginations for this length of time.

And I'm gratified. I'm so glad that the stuff that we did was that meaningful to somebody, because what's the point if it isn't? At the end of the day, our goal really is to touch people and to give them an experience that lifts them up. I would never be comfortable with a death metal band or something like that.

I don't really want to appeal to people's anger—and maybe death metal is the wrong genre to point at. But I wouldn't want to be in a project where the idea is to make people angry, or to put any people down. That's just not interesting to me.

So what are we doing? We're making stuff that we hope moves people. We hope it elevates them, lifts their mood, gives them something to think about. That's also good. And maybe, maybe, maybe, if we're super, super lucky, it infects them with an idea that improves their life.

Lawrence Peryer: It seems like a good place to leave it. Thank you. It's really fun to talk to you.

Bob Ezrin: It's great to talk to you, Larry.