You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made.

I'm Rishikesh Herway.

This episode contains explicit language.

Band of Horses released their fifth album in June 2016.

In this episode, the band's frontman, Ben Brudwell, breaks down the song's solemn oath,

and how in the process of writing it, he confronted writer's block and balancing his life in the band and at home as a husband and father.

This interview was recorded on the road in Austin, Texas in a hotel room.

I'm Ben Brudwell. I sing and play guitar in band of horses.

With this song, I was beating myself up a bit about what I'm going to do for this record.

I was like, oh, I've used one of my weird tunings because I'm...

That's how I learned to play guitars. I just detuned all the pegs.

It makes no sense to anybody that plays guitar.

There's no way to make a normal chord out of it.

But I was like, my hands are comfortable here.

And this was around the time that I was starting to hone in on, okay, I am compiling demos now for an actual album.

These aren't just little exercises I'm doing to pass the time.

I was like, okay, I should make this a song and start telling a story.

So it started with some guitar stuff and then I was like, what are you going to talk about?

If I'm dissatisfied with some of the songs I've written, I thought it was just something to talk about.

How tough it was for me to write a new song.

So that kind of set it in motion.

I think I was like promising myself that I wouldn't complain about being in a band on a band recording.

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