- 2 days ago
Role Model joins The Rolling Stone Studio for a wide-ranging conversation with Brian Hiatt, explaining how his girlfriend, Dakota Johnson, ended up on his new album; why he killed his viral Sally guest-star bit; and describing his nerve-wracking first day acting opposite Natalie Portman in Lena Dunham's 'Good Sex.' Along the way, he gets into the two-year post-breakup spiral behind 'Chuck Timely & The Hourglass,' his case for bringing back heartland rock, his lifelong grudge against Pitbull songs, whether he'll ever drop his stage name, and much more.
Category
🎵
MusicTranscript
00:00were you thinking of one instance when you wrote that yeah it was it was a one-time thing that
00:04happened like twice over the span of like a year or whatever and it was like a one-time thing
00:08can
00:09happen i know i know but you know what i mean it was like each time it felt like one
00:12a one-time
00:13thing twice over the course of a year now that sounds like a country song by the way yeah exactly
00:24hey welcome to the rolling stone studio i'm brian hyatt i'm so happy to be here with tucker
00:29pillsbury aka role model who has a great new album out thank you so much it will be out by
00:35the time
00:35we do this at least and it's called chuck timely in the hourglass as i was saying we spoke before
00:41the album came out when the single came out and you told me all about it thankfully the album more
00:46than
00:47lived up to your descriptions uh really really it's it's both what you described but also really good
00:52so congratulations thank you so much i'm so glad to hear that it's really interesting the lane that i
00:57think you're steering into for yourself because i think you're really trying to make your own lane
01:01we discussed that the box that people have tried to put you in is pop star and that's not necessarily
01:08the box you want to be in well it's tough because i i do say that i make pop music
01:17and i think as soon
01:19as you say that and you're like thrown into this list of like names of all these people who make
01:27pop
01:27music all of a sudden it's like there's just constantly this debate of like who's going to be
01:34who is like the pop star who's like the pop boy right now or whatever and i mean pop boy
01:40i just want i just
01:41don't want to be in that race because i'm not trying to be a pop star um and i think
01:49you can hear
01:49in the music being a pop star is not interesting to me i don't i don't want to do that
01:55um but i love
01:57pop music and i love making it as part of it you just don't want to wear the outfits yeah
02:01you know
02:01it's the shiny outfits for me and the background dancers there used to be a lane called heartland rock
02:07and that was you know john mellencamp bruce springsteen tom petty jackson brown was pulled
02:14into that a little bit although he was like the la version of that he kind of was the credit
02:17one of
02:17the predecessors of that because he started in the 70s but i feel like that's part of the lane you're
02:23steering into you you and noah khan are really in there right now yeah i mean everyone you just
02:28named is on was on the playlist and was fully referenced all throughout the album um those are the
02:35heroes maybe that's my my maybe we bring back heartland rock i i think your team also maybe
02:42calls it lake pop is that yeah there's one guy at my label um i remember him just being like
02:49it feels
02:49like it's like lake music like lake pop pontoon pop music i think there's pieces of the like early
02:572000s like toby keith or whatever and like that lake americana country but lyrically those songs
03:05don't really speak to me but sonically i love that feeling and so i think that was a cool thing
03:11to play
03:11with is like apply a different type of songwriting to that sonic landscape um yeah that's usually used
03:20for like beer cans and dirt roads and stuff it's it's cool to you don't want to write like a
03:26toby
03:26keith like america's gonna kick your ass song yeah yeah i'm not i'm not sure i'm feeling that your
03:31relationship with country is interesting to me because a lot of the people who drew on those
03:37references we just mentioned in recent years have been more in the country realm and you know you could
03:45take a lot of your songs even like sally even you know if you know you were marketed a bit
03:51different
03:52and you know down that lane and played those award shows it's not inconceivable that you could be seen
03:58as a country artist it's i wonder what your thoughts are about that when i put out kansas anymore and
04:04especially with like the deluxe i remember for the first time like being accepted by a lot of these
04:11like country artists and it was so cool like that was enough for me i didn't want to like be
04:18labeled as a country artist which is you know why i didn't i'm not still wearing the hat i didn't
04:24wear
04:24the hat at every show and i didn't i was trying to ride a thin line because as much as
04:30i wanted that
04:31acceptance from the country artists and that community um i didn't want to be like locked off
04:38into that box if there's a commonality to the way that you talk about the various aspects of your
04:44career it seems to be this thing of avoiding being boxed in and categorized it comes down to you know
04:51you make sure that the influences on a particular song are mixed enough that no one's going to say
04:55oh this is a Fleetwood Mac song you make sure you want to draw from country but you want to
04:58be a
04:58country artist you also keep like taking on all these different personas there's the chuck thing with
05:03this new album that kind of float around so that it does seem like and even you know choosing role
05:08model and not your own name it does seem like you're not hiding but like weary of being kept in
05:14one place
05:15yeah that scares me i don't but i also yes that scares me but it's also a really fun thing
05:23to
05:25challenge yourself within the studio like me mason stoops and taylor mackle and everyone else that
05:31helped on the album it was just such a battle every day of like writing these thin lines and and
05:37not wanting a song to lean in a certain direction too far there's like two challenges that i love it's
05:43like one bringing these artists that i love and applying it to pop music i like that about pop music
05:50it just feels like this umbrella term like it can be anything i wouldn't say that anything about this
05:54album is sort of on trend for current pop which is really cool except the fact that you do pay
06:01a lot
06:01of attention to making sure that almost every part of every song is hooky and that you have multiple
06:09hooks in the song and that the bridge could be if someone sliced it out and made a tiktok out
06:14of it
06:14that it would work on its own which has already happened to you is that just songwriting craft is some
06:20of it because people say that the fact that tiktok exists has changed the way that people write songs
06:26that they're more aware of making things hooky and if so i'm not sure that's a bad thing because it's
06:30just improving the craft so where do you stand on that as far as like making anything with tiktok in
06:38mind or like clips of the song i don't think like that in the studio i don't think any of
06:46us do
06:47and if i ever did like mason would kick my ass like i'd like that would not fly i think
06:52i i do try
06:54to like rope people in immediately like i i think i have an ear for that but as far as
07:02like making
07:03things for the purpose of going viral or whatever like sally was a great example none of that was
07:09planned um all the way down to like bringing people out and all that stuff nothing about sally was planned
07:14and i did not have any expectations for that and so i think i learned from that that you can't
07:21plan
07:22anything and so that makes being in the studio a lot less stressful when we last spoke you were
07:27about to do a primavera which was going to be i believe your first show where you didn't do
07:31the sally bit did it feel like anything not to do it that first night and has it felt like
07:36anything
07:36or was it just kind of like it's gone and nothing i don't think anyone cared like aside from people
07:42like coming up to me with like their daughter and being like can she be sally when you play like
07:49red rocks in the fall or whatever and then i have to like break the news i'm like i'm so
07:53sorry like no
07:53but um aside from that like i don't think anyone cared if i didn't believe in this album chuck
08:04then i probably would have kept doing the sally bit doubling down bring like three to four sally's
08:09a night but i don't feel that way and i think as much as i love the song sally it's
08:14not it's a pretty
08:15low bar of a song um in my mind that was like a silly song with like lyrically the dumbest
08:21bridge
08:22i've ever written yeah you have a real beef with your own bridge on that what how did you end
08:27up
08:27writing that bridge that you end up thinking is so dumb which i don't really see the dumbness of it's
08:32fun
08:32it was just it was bridgeless for a long time and then i went in um after tour or something
08:39and
08:40i just was like i think it just needs to be this loose thing like let's not overthink this and
08:45i just
08:45did that looking back as much as i love that song and i always perform it till i'm done but
08:51uh lyrically
08:53i mean that bridge is like a children's book so i don't again if that is the biggest part of
08:58that song
08:59on my biggest song it's feels like a pretty low bar um
09:06to beat at the same time i think you said that you were pleased that and surprised that it connected
09:11in part because you started to say it's such a tom petty which it is it's like it i didn't
09:16think of
09:17that which is an interesting case of you successfully sort of burying hiding the the influence but i think
09:22what surprised me was like oh kids connected with a tom petty influence song and maybe that opened the
09:26door be like oh i can bring in these other influences and the kids might like it that was exactly
09:29it and
09:30i already kind of saw it with like high hopes like yeah i really didn't think people were gonna like
09:36that chorus also like production wise it just had this georgia's satellites like yeah kind of like
09:43masculine yeah don't give me no lines keep your hands to yourself yeah exactly yeah this like masculine
09:48vibe to it and i was like i feel like people are gonna hate this um and they didn't i
09:53was surprised i was
09:54like cool kids that knowing that they would probably love that song by georgia satellites
09:59for joy which is the second single and i think you said is even better than high hopes which it
10:05may be
10:05i really like that one vibe wise i got things that maybe you didn't intend like uh yes mellencamp a
10:11bit
10:11but steve miller uh and just like kind of a real mix of things stones too yeah stones yeah yeah
10:18i can hear
10:19that even on the album it's a little bit of an outlier it's like yeah the stonesy thing makes it
10:23a
10:23little more rock a little it could it's it struck me that the same way that sally was sort of
10:27a pivot
10:27that you followed on this album that this in theory could be one of the pivots you follow for
10:32your next album because it does seem to take you into a different place it is kind of an outlier
10:36in a
10:37way an album um but it's it was one of my favorite things like i think the story and the
10:45message that i was
10:46getting across is like so buried in a way that i wanted it to be like listening to the song
10:53i know
10:54no one's thinking about this theme of like losing childhood joy and all these like darker themes it
11:02felt like a really cool cocktail of a song that i was proud came together you spoke of this album
11:10as
11:10sort of a journey you know from from being single and figuring yourself out but i really thought about
11:17it i think there's something deeper and i think joy gets at it which is there was sort of like
11:23a
11:23spiritual malaise happening where you're just sort of having a crisis of meaning too like something
11:28deeper beyond being single not being single and then i heard you went into therapy when you finished
11:33the album and i was like oh yeah yeah maybe maybe that's what it is yeah i think i learned
11:38a lot
11:39about myself through writing the album and also just like my personal life what was happening
11:47while writing the album like it was all just at the same time and it was i was writing in
11:52real time
11:52about these things and feelings and and like quarter life crisis moments and yes identity crisis i think
12:01it's not the first time i think i touched on it a little bit with kansas anymore and definitely having
12:06moments of like what am i doing with my life usually while i'm writing an album i'm sure that will
12:11always happen i'm sure there's always going to be a song like halfway through the album writing process
12:16where i'm like what am i doing with my life uh is this what i'm is this my purpose i
12:22mean reading the
12:23lyrics it's listening to lyrics it does seem like part of the narrative is someone who had a bad breakup
12:28and then kind of sprawled into something like a depression yeah i think that's true i think
12:35i mean two years is a long time it was it was uh i just didn't know what was best
12:43for me like i didn't
12:44know like do i go straight into another relationship or do i really hold off and like fix myself first
12:54and
12:55then go do that and there were all these questions and and no therapist at the time to help me
13:01figure
13:01that out so it came out in songs and does love come around or do you come around to it
13:05is sort of
13:05actually that same question exactly yeah yeah then there's songs like uh chasing midnight which is real
13:11nice one and that seems maybe about a one night stand specific thing or just general vibe like were
13:17you thinking of one instance when you wrote that yeah it was a one-time thing that happened like
13:22twice over the span of like a year or whatever and it was like a one-time thing can happen
13:26i know i
13:27know but you know what i mean it was like each time it felt like one a one-time thing
13:31twice over the
13:33course of a year now that sounds like a country song by the way yeah exactly there was like a
13:37beauty in it
13:37i think we both saw and it was just kind of this like song about reconnecting to like the second
13:44verse
13:44was this second time seeing them and having this moment again and being like knowing that we are not
13:51meant for each other but there is something beautiful and to me chasing midnight like i
13:55didn't really know what that meant i meant i had it in my notes just chasing midnight for like months
14:00and do you do a thing where you write down just phrases that sound like good song titles and then
14:04try to and then pull them in and then i put my own meaning to it so like chasing midnight
14:07to me i was
14:08like chasing this thing that you know is not going to last falling in love in this like really
14:13short span of time knowing that there's an end song is all you get is one of the tracks that's
14:19really stuck in my head it's a really good hook and at first i thought before i really dug into
14:24lyrics i thought it was about like oh sometimes you date someone and all you get it out of it
14:28is
14:28that you write a song which is sort of like a teller swiftian idea but that's not really mostly what
14:33it's about yeah it's just about fleeting fleeting moments and like maybe that one was definitely about
14:40kind of wanting to go back in time a little bit and make more of these like little moments
14:46or be thankful for like these little moments you have with someone or people and then trying to
14:54like tell yourself it's okay sometimes a song is all you get sometimes a night is all you get whatever
15:00um and trying to tell myself to be like thankful for whatever you get from an experience or from a
15:08person there's a john hyatt song no relation uh where he goes uh don't you know we're living in
15:14stolen moments which is the same kind of idea my dad loves john hyatt ah that just brought i have
15:19not heard that name in a long time underrated singer songwriter who people sometimes i've been
15:23accused of being a nepo baby of but i'm not related to him at all i just i do yeah
15:27we have the same
15:28yeah i think the most surprising influence that you brought up to me about this album was madonna
15:34and the way she influenced this album was really interesting tell me about
15:38how you kind of brought that in one of the biggest goals was like how i had a rule going
15:45into
15:45the album that was like no um no program drums and no synths mason got around that and used a
15:53drum
15:53machine for song is all you get and stain i think um but i love these madonna songs i love
16:01the self-titled and like how do we get this dance ability without the synths and without the like
16:09synth bass i loved her like drums and the grooves and everything and i was like how do we pull
16:17this
16:17into our palette of this like americana organic piano keys organ drums acoustic um and that was one
16:27of the challenges doing whatever she's doing on synth like doing that with piano or guitar i think dire
16:33straights had really good like these punchy kind of chords in between the drums um from mark knoffler
16:41and we pulled a lot from him trying to like recreate what the synths are doing with different
16:47instruments love iu is about two things i know for sure which is being drunk and being in love
16:56yeah yeah it's a drunk it's a drunken song and the feel is drunken too musically yeah that was the
17:02goal i had i had brought in the verses and um brought it to mason i was like i have
17:09these verses i have
17:10these chords change the chords they're boring and i want to work on this like i need you to like
17:18play
17:18switch the chords so i can just like come up with a chorus but i want it to feel like
17:22drunk and i want
17:23to have this swing we did it in like one day i had the verses but i wrote the chorus
17:28there and
17:31we were like so sometimes once we get going and we find something we have to like finish it that
17:37day
17:37we want this to feel like we're in a bar so we invited a bunch of people to the studio
17:43a bunch of
17:43friends had like a little bit of a party and then showed them the chorus and had them all sing
17:50the chorus together um as if it was like a bachelorette party and it was amazing it was so
17:56fun we just stacks of like 20 of us you can hear it yeah and yeah with some drinks in
18:02us and it's very
18:03that was so fun to like watch that come alive in a day when we all like handed them like
18:08we handed
18:09them all like some sort of a percussive instrument too and we're like let's just do a take through
18:14all of us just like shake whatever you have in your hand or like figure something out and it's
18:19like you listen to it soloed it's horrible but it works in the context of this drunken moment um in
18:27a
18:27bar but all this is so far away from one person sitting in a bedroom with pro tools that was
18:33another
18:34hope when we we had early discussions about just that and how how we want to record it and we
18:41had
18:41our friend omar record everything he was engineering the whole thing and he really
18:46understood it and the importance of yes this is going to be like a modern pop album but let's
18:53not treat it that way let me bring the pop to it and you guys record everything you have a
18:59moment on
19:01that song love are you that makes the song better and so i think that's why he put it in
19:06which is dakota johnson we can't be coy about it anymore you've admitted this uh dakota johnson does
19:13a really really charming back and forth with you and my guess is that you had to decide between
19:19making the song better because that part is awesome and it's super memorable and how could you leave it
19:24out and the fact that it's going to lead to questions and it and eventually to probably a public
19:29admitting that the relationship is there which you did i bet i'm just guessing that as a person you
19:34didn't really want that on there because you'd have to make this admission but as an artist you're
19:38like fuck it it makes the song better i think that you just said it perfectly i mean i had
19:44that idea
19:45and i had my vocal kind of sitting alone in that bridge doing the doing the conversation by myself and
19:51we had a list of of ideas for people mason kept bringing up you know why don't why doesn't
19:59go to do it and i was always like well i don't i think keeping those things separate is probably
20:03good and blah blah and then um one day he convinced her and i was just like yeah let's try
20:11it and
20:13it was amazing like her voice was perfect on it obviously yeah you know that that's gonna like lead to
20:19discussions online but also like it made the song really special to me and what a cool cameo to have
20:28i have to say just on a sheer like sort of talent level the amount of personality and color and
20:34like
20:34sort of hookiness even as just spoken word that she brings to it is extraordinary like oh that's
20:38like that's why this person is a movie star like to bring that much charisma and like a little spoken
20:43bit and it's like stands out like a hook is crazy did it in one try too it's it was
20:48it was very
20:49impressive did you do your the movie with natalie portman and mark ruffle directed by lena dunham
20:55who's awesome was that before recording this album uh yeah it was it was tough because we i had
21:04just gotten off tour and i had this month right before the summer to just kind of like start to
21:10just like get in the studio with mason taylor that was really cool to like we started and we had
21:15a lot
21:15of conversations we made a couple like bad songs but it was fine it was like just trying things and
21:21it
21:21helped me like get back in the mode and then i got shipped off to new york for the summer
21:27writing a
21:28little bit and finding things but like mostly i use that time to like figure out what this album is
21:35gonna look like and sound like and so i made like mood boards and because inspiration was not like i
21:41was
21:41just very busy with the movie so i was like what can i do and it was just that it
21:45was like mood board
21:46and make playlists and get ready to like go into the studio when you're done shooting this with like
21:54a clear mind and that was huge i know the first day was stressful on that movie walk me through
22:01that
22:01like you walk on set they they do makeup you i didn't eat all day i was like truly i
22:06hadn't been
22:07nervous like that in a very long time um and my first day was also like one of the biggest
22:15scenes
22:15it's and it was like when we meet in the movie and there's like a hundred extras watching you oh
22:21my god
22:21act for the first time with natalie portman by the way yes oh my god it's like making me want
22:26to throw
22:26up already but like that day was really nerve-wracking everyone was doing the right thing that like lena was
22:33like holding my hand through it being amazing natalie was so amazing and patient did you up your
22:39first couple days i didn't i fucked up one take and i didn't know what you do it was really
22:47like
22:47awkward like no one had told me what you do right do you keep going yeah yeah so that was
22:51i only
22:52fucked up once which was a miracle but then literally the next day no nerves like i think i just
22:59needed that first day out of the way i was like okay i can do this i made a one
23:03mistake i didn't
23:04give my best performance on the first day but now i'm not nervous so i will and then it made
23:10the whole
23:10process a lot more comfortable how do you silence the that's natalie portman that's natalie portman voice
23:16i didn't have that um there was one i remember there was one moment where we were doing a scene
23:24and i was
23:25she was she had a monologue and i was like i really like got lost like staring at her and
23:31being
23:32like whoa natalie portman is delivering a monologue to me and like that was the one time i got in
23:40my
23:40head i was interviewing mick jagger once early in my career and and and i had like a very similar
23:44thing where i over focused on mick jagger's talking this isn't a documentary wait i can interact with
23:49him and it was just the only moment when i think it's the only moment that ever happened to me
23:52and
23:53it's just because of the the magnitude of the fame and it's just you've seen them on screen and
23:57then you're you know but i didn't have to kiss mick jagger right that's the next level you didn't
24:01get to kiss yeah that's another way of putting it sure yeah so let me put you on the spot
24:05if you had
24:06to name three to five of your picks for the greatest songs ever made i knew that was coming i
24:12i would put
24:13walk of life on there dire straits dire straits why what i love about mark knoffler is like
24:20the things he chooses to write about that song is about street performers and like bus buskers and
24:28you would never know that it's one of those songs that you're just like you you're not listening but
24:33if you do you're like blown away that someone could write a pop song about street performers like
24:38i don't know anyone that could do that today i think long may you run it's like a song a
24:45love song
24:45to his to neil's buick it is correct yeah and like again being able to write such a beautiful song
24:53like that about a car like a love song to a car and it's amazing i love one more night
24:59by stephen
25:00bishop wow kind of inspired my song service receipt on the new album too kind of stole those three words
25:06from him it's a perfect song it's very simple um and as soon as the bridge hits it like pulls
25:13at your
25:13heart this is even harder what song or songs and it can be by someone dead so you don't offend
25:20anyone
25:20what song do you truly hate a song that i hate yeah i like this question a lot better
25:28i don't know if if someone plays like a flow rider song or like a pitbull song like it makes
25:34me sad
25:34sad why i don't know it just like i think very few people have that's not true i think anyone
25:42who's
25:43from the east coast listening to like a pitbull song in a cold car in the dead of winter like
25:50driving to school or whatever like this is a main it's like a micro trauma like i don't it brings
25:57me
25:57back to that i get it because you felt like you were being taunted by it because you're in the
26:01it's like miami pop and you're listening to it and negative 20 degrees driving and like
26:07your little honda civic to high school like you know so sorry i'm sure he's a nice guy and last
26:15thing along those lines you spent so much time clearly sequencing this new album and you know
26:23you clearly think in terms of albums what album or albums sort of shaped your idea of a perfect album
26:30calico by ryan beatty i think that's like a perfectly sequenced album i think we're on drugs
26:37lost in the dream uh is also perfectly sequenced all of their albums ryan's a really good example of
26:46like being intentional about it and i think he doesn't care about singles too much i think he cares
26:53about the like journey of his albums and it shows the last thing you know i introduced you
26:59as tucker pillsbury aka role model and it does feel like your stage name is the kind that kind
27:04of needs that it's not like you renamed yourself chapel roan or bob dylan it's not a name per se
27:10it's
27:11like a name of a project yeah and i know that you sort of have mixed feelings about it and
27:16sort of wish
27:16you'd used your real name so what are the odds that someday you return to your real name or change
27:21your
27:22stage name or anything like that i would love to i just i really have a gut feeling that it's
27:26too late
27:27um but i think what bothers me the most is like no matter what whenever my name comes up on
27:35anything
27:35on twitter every comment is like what parents name their kid role model does like post malone go through
27:43that or does like like lil wayne like who names their kid lil like you just use your brain think
27:51for a second you know what i mean yes i'll probably change my name there you go tucker thanks so
27:55much
27:56for being here thank you so much for having me and we'll see you next time on the rolling stone
27:59studio
Comments