Brendan Cavanaugh – “Writing definitely became a way to get out of my own head and became a way to search my own heart for how I really felt”

Songwriting can be a powerful thing. Not just for the eventual listeners, but for the songwriters themselves. Like any creative medium, it’s about vulnerability, introspection, and hard work. Brendan Cavanaugh’s musical project The Writing South is a collection of his passion for writing, a love for music, and a journey to search his own feelings for the type of songs he wanted to write for himself. I was lucky enough to talk with him, and he told me about his creative process and what songwriting is like for him.

Noah: Brendan, it’s great to meet you. Why don’t you tell me a little bit about The Writing South?
Brendan: Hey Noah! “The Writing South” started as something to go by as I started songwriting. Its style lands somewhere in the Indie Rock / Post-Punk genre. My biggest influences mostly come from 90s grunge, alt-rock, and the pop-punk/emo explosion in the early 2000s.

N: What lead you to start songwriting first? Where you always interested in writing/playing music?
B: I started songwriting in college and battled a lot of anxiety and self-doubt to get there. Up to that point, I had only been interested in just playing music. When I started kicking around the idea of writing, I struggled with what I wanted to say and if people would listen. I had to get to a point where that didn’t matter and ironically, by that point I felt like I had something worth saying.

N: What is your creative process like?
B: My creative process is very laissez-faire. I’m pretty busy, so I do a lot of it on the fly and on my phone. A lot of my songs come from spiritual meditation, processing the world around me, and journaling. So I’ll jot down ideas in my notepad or in my voice memos until I find time sit down and actually work on them in a meditative state. From there it’s very exploratory. I usually write a lot of songs and arrangements myself. However, I love collaboration and as often as I can, I’ll get friends who are musicians to come in and play around with what’s been written, to see if it can be made better.

N: Would you say that writing helped you conquer some of that doubt? Even understand yourself a bit better? Or did it take a while for you to find how to express what you wanted to say?
B: It’s a weird juxtaposition for me because I still struggle with it. The ‘battles’ just looks different. It’d be irresponsible for me to say it’s just magically gone. We all battle something. I think we all may be battling things until the day we die whether its self-doubt, anxiety, ego, etc. We just get better equipped as we grow. But I’d say it led to a healthy path at the very least. I think the biggest blow you could give to self-doubt is most definitely learning to love yourself. I didn’t really learn how to do that until my mid 20’s, and I’m 31 now. 

But I think for me and others like me, once I get too deep in my own head, things become this weird echo chamber. It becomes increasingly loud and difficult to sort things out and orient yourself. Writing definitely became a way to get out of my own head and became a way to search my own heart for how I really felt about a thing or issue and not just writing in reaction to whatever is going on around me.

Brendan was a great person to talk to. Amid all the chaos of the pandemic, as we tried to organize and play a bit of email tag, he remained understanding, responsive, and genuine. I’ve got to listen to his music over the past few weeks and I’ve become a big fan his roots-rock and grunge sound. His writing shines. I really recommend you check his project out.

You can listen to The Writing South on Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Play, and many other places where music can be streamed.

Follow The Writing South on Instagram at @brendancavanaugh for more updates on the band and to discover another great artist.