You're listening to a song exploder.

Your musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they remained.

My name is Tao-Win.

Big Leaf is a four-piece folk rock band from Brooklyn, New York.

In May 2019, they released their third album, UFOF, to critical acclaim.

Pitchfork named it Best New Music.

In this episode, singer Adrienne Lanker and drummer James Crifchenia

break down a song from that album called Cat Tales.

You don't need to know what you can play.

You don't need to know what you can play.

You don't need to know what you can play.

I'm Adrienne and I play guitar and sing and write in Big Leaf.

When I first started writing Cat Tales, we were just outside of Seattle at this studio called Bear Creek.

We had a bunch of songs that we were planning on recording, but this space was really inspiring.

I found myself writing in all the little pockets of time.

I had just gotten this 12-string guitar that I had bought when I was on a road trip by myself in New Mexico at this little pawn shop.

I brought it with me to the session.

One night after we'd finished recording, everyone was kind of going to bed.

I stayed up late and just started playing this chord progression.

That picking pattern is one of my favorites and is particularly fun to play that on the 12-string.

I just played it over and over again and lyrics just started popping out.

I was missing Minnesota where I grew up and I was thinking about my great grandma.

...