NEM#246: Robert Deeble in His Talking Voice

What It Covers

Singer-songwriter Robert Deeble discusses his seventh album The Space Between Us, spanning a career from 1989 to 2025. The conversation explores his songwriting evolution, collaboration with producer Rich Hordinsky, use of nylon string guitar and string arrangements, balancing a therapy practice with music, and detailed production choices on tracks from multiple albums including Earth Side Down and Beloved.

Key Questions Answered

• •Poetry-First Songwriting: Deeble writes songs two ways: poetry-first where lyrics dictate structure, creating unusual phrasing and long stanzas, versus melody-first where lyrics follow song structure. The Attic of Desire exemplifies poetry-first composition, originally titled A Formal Apology, featuring extended lyrical introductions that required strategic string pauses and structural breaks during studio production to give listeners breathing room between sections.
• •Vocal Production Philosophy: T Bone Burnett advised Deeble to sing in his talking voice, guidance he followed from Earth Side Down onward. This shifted his style from 1990s emo-influenced lower-mixed vocals with falsetto to front-and-center Leonard Cohen-style delivery. His vocal range has a dead zone between high and low registers, leading him to choose one extreme or the other rather than attempting middle range notes.
• •Strategic String Arrangement: Producer Rich Hordinsky uses backing vocals as instruments rather than traditional harmony parts, bringing in vocalists Chaya Jones and Lacey Brown separately to create layered textures. Jones provides prominent melodic lines functioning like horn parts, while Brown adds shadowing effects behind lead vocals. This approach transformed The Attic of Desire from its original 2003 indie rock version into a lush orchestral arrangement.
• •Sustainable Touring Model: After years of van touring that strained his marriage, Deeble established a four-week maximum tour length rule. He now works three days weekly as a therapist with a five-person practice in Seattle, flying to regions for four-to-five day concentrated performance runs. He alternates between house concerts for 40 people and club dates, finding both intimate and sonic environments valuable for different reasons.
• •Tempo Recording Process: Deeble creates home drum loops and skeleton guitar-vocal tracks, sends them to Hordinsky in Cincinnati, then gradually builds arrangements with players on both coasts. For The Attic of Desire, he scrapped three-fourths of completed recordings after realizing the song worked better slower, requiring drummer Dan Phelps to re-record at a different tempo, demonstrating how studio becomes its own creative instrument during production.
• •Open Tuning Discovery: Earth Side Down introduced an E-based open tuning inspired by Sunny Day Real Estate's use of dominant seventh chords, where the G string drops and D string rises to create dissonance. This tuning became standard for most subsequent work but requires dedicated guitars since retuning breaks strings. The technique creates the distinctive riffs heard throughout his catalog from 1998 forward.