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Singer-Songwriter Tift Merritt Shares Songwriting Insights

Tells Duke audience inspiration can come from ‘wanting to feel the world’

Tift Merritt discusses songwriting Thursday in Nelson Music Room

If you see an animated Tift Merritt talking into an iPhone while driving, don't interrupt her. She might be preserving an idea for her next song.

It's one of the ways the Raleigh-born, Grammy-nominated songstress captures her muse, Merritt told about 80 people Thursday during a talk on songwriting held in the Nelson Music Room on East Campus.

"The songs that I truly remember writing are the ones that came easy," she said, adding that inspiration "can come from just being open, wanting to feel the world."

Merritt, who studied creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has released five albums since her debut release "Bramble Rose," in 2002. She has toured with artists such as Elvis Costello, been a continual critics' favorite, been Grammy-nominated for Country Album of the Year and nominated for three American Music Awards.

Seated on a chair and flanked by her guitar case and a piano, Merritt shared insights to her songwriting craft and took questions from the audience in a talk that lasted beyond the scheduled hour and a half.

"I would say I usually start with a chorus or a first verse, or a verse," she said. "I really try to be my own best editor."

Asked if she likes to collaborate on writing songs, Merritt said she doesn't because she's "such a stubborn person."

"The most personal thing I do is go off and write music by myself. (Collaborating) feels like having to go on a very unusual date," she said.

She uses a computer with recording software to record her song ideas. Merritt said she used to use a 4-track cassette recorder to preserve her ideas, and then jokingly asked her mostly student-aged audience: "Do you guys know what that is?"

She won't share a song even with her band until she feels it's ready. "I'm so protective of that moment of origin," she said, adding that responses to a song too early in the songwriting process can taint that spark.

Merritt then pulled her notebook from a hold-all bag and played several minutes of an unfinished song on her weathered acoustic guitar, interrupting herself in the middle to say she still needed to write a bridge for the 6/8-time ballad.

"Only in songs," she sang.

Merritt performs Friday and Saturday with classical pianist Simone Dinnerstein at Reynolds Theater.