If you’re like us, you’ve probably wondered what famous people add to their carts. Not the JAR brooch and Louis XV chair but the hair spray and electric toothbrush. We asked Grammy-winning songwriter and producer Dan Wilson — who just released a new album, Little Bit of Sun, with his band Semisonic — about the expandable messenger bag, miniature synthesizer, and adaptogenic cacao he can’t live without.
I got into the habit of using Moleskine notebooks 15 years ago. I’ve always been obsessed with pens, a nice flow of ink, and paper that takes up the ink nicely. I was a visual artist for quite a while and I’ve always been very obsessive compulsive about pens and paper. Moleskine is a very comfy, cozy blanket when it comes to paper. It’s nice. I have different Moleskine notebooks for different purposes. I keep my journal in a Moleskine that’s larger and booklike, and I have a couple going right now for drawing, making sketches, and just for fun. And then I have an ongoing Moleskine for lyrics. I put the start date of the first page on the front in white ink, then a dash, and then when I finally finish the book, I write the last date. I put it on a shelf and usually don’t look at it again, but it’s the repository of all the words that I write. I like those to be a little smaller because I like to put them in my backpack and take them to sessions. If I’m in a session and we’re working on a song, I grab it right away and start writing down ideas. Because I started out as a visual artist, I’m actually super annoyed by lines or dots on the paper, even grids, which you would think would go with my compulsive side, but I like it just being plain white. Depending on my mood, my lines of writing trail upward or downward.
This is part of that quest for the best ballpoint roller pen. This particular Muji gel ballpoint is very suited to me. It doesn’t gather up a blob of ink and deposit it on the paper and doesn’t sketch out. It’s just magically very good at the one thing that it does. I prefer the 0.5 in black. In a wild moment of partying, I bought a bunch of colored Muji pens, and they’re just gathering dust. In fact, there’s one right here in my studio. I swear I haven’t used it once, but it’s cool. It’s red. Looks exciting, but no, never used it.
I call it my purse. A very stylish friend of mine gave it to me as a gift years ago. It’s an expandable messenger or over-the-shoulder bag. When you expand it, it develops a new bottom, which is a bright, bright orange crescent. It’s just fun. And of course, the way purses work, once you expand it, you’re not going to be able to go back to the smaller size, so I only use it in the larger size. It’s with me all the time. It holds my keys, ID, a couple of Muji pens, probably a notebook, and glasses cleaning cloth. Nothing very sexy. I like the flexibility of it. It’s also pretty light. It doesn’t have a lot of hardware. I love a very light backpack, one that’s more like a shapeless, unstructured camping backpack made of the thinnest nylon, for carrying papers, guitar gear, and other instrument-type stuff. This Côte&Ciel is pretty close to that.
It means sea salt. It’s a nice neutral cologne that I use once in a while if I want to feel fancy. I can’t even really quantify what those occasions are, but I’ll be like, “Oh, I need a little extra confidence right now. I’ll do this,” and then put a little bit on. A friend of mine, a playwright, is really into scents and took me to a place in L.A. called Scent Bar because he wanted me to enjoy the experience. He made me smell a whole bunch of different things, and then I chose one as my favorite. My friend was very vindicated because it’s the one he likes the best too. Let’s see if I have a good way of describing it: It’s light and abstract. It isn’t mammalian and sweaty and strong. It’s more like a breeze than a hurricane.
One of my engineers brought over a car freshener that he used in his car and left it in the studio. He just forgot it, but it did its thing and emanated into the workspace. And I suddenly thought, “Oh, I need to go online and find some nice smelling candle or scent for my workspace.” And I remembered that an artist whom I worked with had an assistant who smelled great. This guy smelled so good, and he told me that D.S. & Durga was the brand. So I went on to the D.S. & Durga site, ordered several different car freshener cards, then put them out one week at a time in my music workspace. Big Sur After Rain is just the very best, so I bought the candle. It’s nature-y. It’s not like a Christmas tree, but it’s a little bit like pinewood, a little bit like an ocean breeze. It’s probably similar to the Sel Marin. It’s not aggressive. Zero floral and zero musk, just natural and California. Good vibes.
This is like a miniature synthesizer meets drum machine meets analog-style tape recorder. It’s quirky sounding. A lot of the sounds have a kind of Super Mario Brothers, low bitrate, distorted, toyish sound almost. But the simulated tape recorder inside this device is just a great tool for making demos. I’ve done a lot of demos of songs, literally only using this drum machine–slash–keyboard–slash recording device. And it’s super cute, very sleekly designed, and very miniaturized. There’s something about a little tiny screen with its silly illustrations; it just draws you into its world. The company, Teenage Engineering, is a really good source for miniaturized music hardware. I’ve been using it for maybe five or six years. It’s a little bit like what I said about my notebook and my bag. If I can bring something to a session that is very light, I take it out and everyone goes, “Oh, that’s a quirky-looking little thing,” and then I make a really great, cool, big sound come out of it — that’s a fun moment. The way these things work for me, and probably for a lot of my peers in the session world, is somebody brings something and your eyes pop. My friend Ethan brought an OP-1 to a session and I was instantly crushing on it. We went online and looked at some YouTube demonstration videos about how to use it, and I got super excited and bought one.
I’m a guitarist and I have always liked effects pedals. Chase Bliss is a company that makes really crazy-sounding guitar effects. I’m pretty obsessed with them. It’s almost like they’ve become the company that makes atmospheric sounds that go in the backdrop of hip-hop songs. This particular effect, the Blooper, is their take on an old loop station type of thing, like the kind of thing that Ed Sheeran uses to make himself into a one-man band by overdubbing onstage. This is their ultra-quirky, tweakable version of that loop station that artists use to play live. I only use it when recording. It gets away from me if I have it going live and starts to take over. This guitar pedal has its own opinions about everything. But I use it in sessions because I can make something with the guitar and mangle it or glitch it up so that it turns into something else. That can be a real jumping-off point for inspiration to hear something unintentionally awesome on the guitar.
I love this hat. I have very pale skin. I live in California. It’s good for me to have a broad-brimmed hat. When I tried this hat on, I thought, “Oh, this makes me look like some sort of Silicon Valley, big shot investor guy or whatever.” That seemed like a funny alter ego to me. Let’s get into the details here: The brim itself is mesh, and yet there is an opaque cloth layer underneath the mesh, so none of those ultraviolet rays are going through the brim. And then the mesh on top keeps your head cool. I mean, it’s a triumph of design. The only thing I can’t claim is — I have worn it during soundcheck with Semisonic but I’m not going to wear it onstage with the band. That’s not going to happen. But I’ve been given enough warnings by doctors to not fuck around with the sun’s radiation. They say it’s packable. You can fold it up and put it in a suitcase, but I just don’t quite believe it. I’ve never squashed it into a suitcase because I like it so much. I don’t want to have a sad feeling if it comes out disfigured.
It comes with a lot of very high-minded claims for its health benefits, but it makes for a nice snack. You take some oat milk, heat it up in the microwave, and throw a tablespoon of this cacao in it. It’s very tasty. It’s like a Topanga Canyon hot chocolate — hot chocolate with an atmosphere of organic farming around it. It’s kind of sweet. That’s the thing: It’s not super sweet. It’s only a little sweet, and that’s why I like it. I have it in the afternoon. I think it’s got a little bit of caffeine in it. I’m a very ritualistic person in my writing and other things. It’s good for me to go do something else that has nothing to do with music for 20 minutes and then come back to it. And that’s a very tasty way to do that. I think my wife got some and I just really liked it, so I adopted it.
The Words + Music in 6 Seconds deck is a result of me putting very brief pieces of musical advice on social media. I started out doing it on Vine, and I would say something very brief, encouraging, and hopefully concretely actionable, that I hoped other musicians who were feeling frustrated or stuck in their process might find helpful. When Vine disappeared, I transferred the practice of making these things over to Instagram and my other social media. I made a lot of these very, very brief, one-sentence encouragement, practical things to try, ways to escape your own mind and its false rule book.
Then I made a font for myself because that’s the kind of thing I do when I’m trying to procrastinate making music. I started using it as the presentation font for these statements. For example, one of the statements is, “If you like it, then it’s good. If it sounds good to you, then it sounds good.” I would type that up, center it on the page, and post it. A friend of mine, a producer named Teddy Geiger, told me, “Dan, you need to make this into a coffee table book ’cause you have all these great things there. Each one would take one page, you could just have one statement on each page and it would make a sweet book.” I thought that was great. I came home from my session and I told my wife, Diane, about this conversation, and she said, “How about making a deck of cards so it wouldn’t have to be in any particular order and the person using the cards could randomly choose one of the cards and get one of these very brief, encouraging, interesting pieces of musical advice.” That sounded beautiful to me, and that’s why I made this into a deck of cards.
I’ve heard from a lot of songwriters, recording artists, and other kinds of artists, too, who like to use it when they’re collaborating. They have a little tradition of taking out the cards, cutting the deck, picking up the randomly chosen card, and reading it together, and saying, “Okay, let’s try that.” That makes me feel good. There’s no proper way to use the deck, which is the great thing about it. They’re intended as stand-alone little moments or little sparks of an idea for you. Some people open up the deck, take out a card randomly, and then prop it up on the case and just leave it standing there during the session just to remind themselves of it, which also I think is really sweet and nice.
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