"I always admired that idea - that really natural idea," offers a wistfully soft-spoken Kurt Wagner when asked why he decided to pursue the song-a-day writing schedule that filled his creative coffers so full of material that Lambchop could afford to release two albums - intriguingly (and amusingly) titled Aw C'mon and No You C'mon - on the same day. "There are people all over Nashville in little offices who write songs all day. Terrible songs. And they actually get published and played and recorded, and it's actually a horrible system that has probably perpetuated the bad quality of a lot of commercial Nashville music," he continues, raising the question of just why he'd want to put such constraints on the creative process when the temptation to succumb to formula and burnout is so real.

But submit himself to the process he did, spending the period stretching from the balmy days of summer 2002 to the chill of winter 2003 in the process of carrying a song from its origin to its completion each and every day. How could a songwriter, especially one whose work is marked by such sonic precision and meticulous lyrical depth, hold to the standards of his previous work with regimen? 

"Every day was another chance and tomorrow was just another day. There would be bad days and there would be good days," Wagner admits, underscoring the mindset that was necessary to keep him resilient throughout the process. No matter how tenuous, Wagner is the first to admit that the approach presented certain questions whose resolution had the potential to seriously change the way he approached the songwriting process.

"Yeah, I think I learned a lot about being direct...just getting ideas out," he says. "It's one thing to have an idea in your head, and it's another to have an actual thing that represents that idea. It's always that thing. It's really not real. It's a virtual thing. Having it out, then you're able to talk about it," he continues, sounding far more eloquent than it might appear when reading his words on paper. "And can I shorten the length of my songs?" he continues, posing himself a hypothetical. "My songs had sort of been getting longer and longer, and I wanted to force myself to write them quicker. Just write a song a day and don't particularly worry about whether they are good or bad. That's a start."

Where some songwriters might be hesitant to tinker, even slightly, with the minutia of their songwriting habits, for Wagner the new mindset had the dual benefit of demystifying a process that would otherwise be assumed to be totally subconscious and innate, placing it more clearly in the hands of an active craftsman. "It's not like this is magic or a religious experience," he says of the work of songwriting. "It's just something that is a part of life."

"Add up each day and each song - it's that many," he says when asked just how many songs came out of the period. "But some days I wrote two songs, and those were good days," he cackles. "And there were a couple of days when it was just crap. But there were only a couple of days when I didn't try to force myself to write." No doubt even the idea of forcing oneself to create is counterintuitive to the most purist schools of art theory, blurring the line between the highest ideals of art as an exercise of self-expression and art simply as the end product of a job.

"But the Brill Building was a case where it actually fostered creativity," Wagner counters, calling to mind images of the cubicles where pop geniuses like Carole King and Gerry Goffin crouched behind pianos and wrote their nation's next three-minute masterpieces.  "In Nashville, I don't think quality is what they're about. There is a formula involved. It's not something that I feel good about. It's not something that I feel represents me. I'm not afraid to write terrible music, though," he admits, trailing off in a burst of laughter.

But, as terrible music has made scant few appearances over the course of the Lambchop's six full-length releases, only a drastic change in aesthetic direction would seem to jeopardize their status. And while the ethic that created these songs is different by the creator's own admission, the 24 resulting tracks are generally in keeping with the band' s oeuvre to this point.  Still, the question arises of just what separates these two releases from joining the canon of rock's most alternately cherished and ridiculed standard - the double album. The ups and downs aside, it became apparent that the sheer volume of songs that the process bore would allow the band to do something unique.  Wagner just wasn't ready to have this effort laden with the grandiosity of such a release.

"Well, for me, I just didn't want anyone to have the sense that this is like a double album in that it had so many songs on it that people wouldn't be able to sort them all fairly.  I wanted to move past the idea where, yeah, we've got a lot of things out. We put out two records; buy one, buy the other.  Don't buy 'em. It's fine with me. But if you do buy them, I want you to have a listening experience that is doable," he laughs as his dogs bark in the background. "With a double album, I never get around to listening to the whole thing."

For a band that has followed its muses so defiantly, bucking easy categorization at every turn, always swimming against the current of whatever happens to be the flavor of the month in favor of their own home cooking, the impossibly high standards of idiosyncrasy and innovation in their previous body of work can almost become a hindrance.  Just how does a band like Lambchop, largely alone in their wing in the canon of American music, quantify success?

"In my mind, we've put out seven records, and as far as Lambchop goes, that's all that we ever wanted to do," he says with no false modesty. "That's my only definition of success. We're there. I don't have any illusions about being successful in that system," he continues, obviously referencing the Nashville system of songwriting that has for far too long ignored its most creative (and least predictable) talents. "It's happening now, in that we're able to be a band and we get to make records. Is there anything more?" he laughs.  "I imagine there is," he continues, answering his own question, "but I'm sure there are a lot more headaches and problems, too. Success is never one of the definitions on the menu."