Songfacts: With the Lost Dogs there are so many great songwriters in the group. I'm surprised that you don't do more songwriting as a group. Have you ever tried to sit down with Mike [Roe] and Steve [Hindalong] and Derri [Daugherty] and write songs as a group?
Terry Taylor: Well, when you're dealing with any hookup with other writers, you're dealing with their own sets of pace, what's comfortable to them. And the more you add to that group... I think it's too many cooks sometimes. I've seen hit songs where you see like four guys involved with the song, but I'm doubtful with something like that that they're all in one room together. It's probably somebody coming in later and going, "Oh, you should change this to that," or whatever.
So with the Dogs, usually my particular pace in writing is a little bit overwhelming to my comrades. I don't know why this happens, but when it's time to write, when a project is looming, for some reason that is catalyst for passionate songwriting on my part. I'm not bragging about it, I'm just saying it's part of my nature. Randy, for instance, has said to me that he is intimidated by the blank page, that it's sometimes dreadful for him to have to write songs. Which is really interesting. I think Mike might be a little bit like that to some degree.
And so you have to take in all these different modes of operation with each individual and weigh them and find the most comfortable way to work. For me it's sort of like riding a wave. The muse creates this wave and you ride it to the end. And I tend to work almost obsessively writing songs. I can't expect to get everybody on that bandwagon.
Steve Hindalong and I have in recent years been able to hook up more and more. He and I are similar in our approach. He's sort of like that as well. He's a guy that will work till 3 o'clock in the morning right along with me to either write a song or record a part or whatever. And that puts everybody off a little bit. But he's a wild man when it comes to passionately putting himself to work and working till something is forged from the effort. So we're kindred spirits in that way. Mike is much slower, and that's not a bad thing, because Mike writes incredibly wonderful songs. But he works at a much slower pace. And Derri is really a music guy, he's not a lyric guy. He'll show you basic chord progression and he'll hum a melody, and he'll maybe insert a few lines here and there, maybe a title to the song. If he's got an idea of what the song is trying to say, then he'll take that and run with it. And more often than not, it's not with him in the room, but it's taking what he's essentially gotten, going in a different room and working those ideas out. So you're just dealing with a lot of different approaches to songwriting, and you have to weigh those in how you choose to hook up with one another. From: https://www.songfacts.com/blog/interviews/terry-taylor-of-daniel-amos-and-lost-dogs
