THE BELIEVER: Do you think composition and improvisation are the same thing? Or are they inherently different?

TREY ANASTASIO: I think they’re the same thing. The struggle is not giving up the best element of composition, which is the time to figure out that it’s all right, and also to not give up the best element of improvisation, which is that it’s happening in real time, so you can’t stop to ruin it. You don’t have any time to screw up.

BLVR: So you think in the best instances, improvisation and composition would produce the same results?

TA: Yes. Yes. I’ll give you an example. On the song “Billy Breathes“ there’s a guitar solo I like a lot. That’s a composed solo. I didn’t labor over it. What I did is, I walked around the kitchen—my daughter had just been born and we were living out in the woods in Vermont. I was in my union suit, chopping wood. I was not thinking about anything, and then I just started singing [sings melody] the first four notes of the solo. I had a cassette player and I’d run over and get it recorded. Then I’d forget about it. And then the next part came. It was a lot of wearing headphones while walking around. Cassette player in my pocket. Change a diaper, go to the store, and whenever I can disconnect from whoever I’m talking to in the room, I’d put on my headphones. So the point I’m making is that it still felt like improv.

BLVR: You were just capturing moments out of your daily life.

TA: I would just wait for the moment to come. It didn’t feel any different than what happens on stages. I was busying myself with other things. I wasn’t sitting there working, like capital-W work, but, in the end, it took days and days.

BLVR: You write a lot that way?

TA: Yeah. And since you’re feeding the cat and you’re not paying attention and then you listen to what you just recorded, you can really hear when it’s wrong. If it’s wrong, it’s like when you put on bad music in the background. But going back to Coltrane, it sounds like he just wants to be doing that in an immediate way when he’s onstage. I’m starting to think that patience is the biggest part of the whole thing. And, you know, another thing that just popped into my head, and I’m not sure if this answers your question, but like a week ago, I was writing this thing. Single lines and chords moving and blah, blah. I was going...