A lot of artists lose sleep during the writing process, but Jenny Lewis took that idea to a scary level while prepping her recent solo album The Voyager. Ryan Adams tried to help with her insomnia by forcing her to listen to Creed.
At one point, the former Rilo Kiley singer did not sleep for five full days.
"I prayed for a spirit guide in my nondenominational way," Lewis told KRCW this week, via Billboard. "It appeared in the form of Ryan, which isn't what I expected. But he really helped me and he really got me out of my own head."
She added, "He was a really important figure in my life and I learned a lot from him."
Adams also concocted an avant garde meditation session featuring one of the most villified bands of the century.
"He sat me down midday and he said, 'Lewis, I have something I want you to hear,'" she said. "And he just started blasting Creed. After one song and my kind of started bleeding and I was like, 'What is this method?' And I'm still not sure I totally get it."
Jenny explained her crazy insomniac experience to NPR this summer.
"It was such a strange thing that happened," she said. "One night, I went to sleep. I woke up about an hour later, and that began the journey. It really affected my life. It's amazing how quickly things start to change when you haven't slept. Your memory goes. Physically, you don't feel well. Emotionally, you're all over the place — you know, if you miss one night of sleep. You can only imagine five nights of not sleeping. I was in an alternate state of reality.
"I worked on my lyrics while I was lying awake. And I also discovered a hobby: I started watching boxing matches. For whatever reason, the sport of boxing, at that desperate point in my life, really appealed to me — just the fact that there was a beginning, a middle and an end. And I learned all about the back stories of the fighters and the struggles that they had overcome in their personal lives."
