Five Habits I Learned Writing Songs on Swiss Trains (That American Artists Can Steal Today)

Every serious American musician I meet has the same tour story: the van, the interstate, the 4 a.m. load-in, the gas station coffee, the show played on four hours of sleep. It's a rite of passage. It's also, quietly, one of the reasons touring wrecks people.

I tour differently, and not because I'm virtuous — because Switzerland made it easy. My last three tours, I moved almost entirely by rail. Bern to Basel, Basel to Berlin, onward across borders with a guitar on my back and no steering wheel in my life. And somewhere around the second year, I realized the trains weren't just changing how I toured. They were changing the music itself.

Here are the five habits I picked up. Steal them, even if the closest thing you have to rail infrastructure is a Greyhound.

1. Write in Motion

There's something about a moving train that unlocks the brain. The landscape slides by at exactly the right pace — fast enough to keep your eyes busy, slow enough to let your mind wander. Psychologists call this soft fascination. I call it the reason half of my verses exist.

My rule: no headphones for the first hour. Just window, notebook, pen. The rhythms of the track do half the metronome work for you.

The American version: you don't need Swiss rail. A bus, a subway commute, a passenger seat — anything where you're moving and not driving counts.

2. Arrive Rested, Play Better

This one sounds boring until you feel the difference. When you sleep on a train — and yes, European night trains have actual beds — you walk into the venue with a functioning nervous system. Your voice works. Your hands work. Your patience works.

I played the same set in two cities a week apart once: one after a long drive, one after a night train. The recording of the second night is just better. Not because I tried harder. Because I arrived as a person instead of a zombie.

3. Treat People-Watching as Songwriting Fuel

On a highway, other humans are other cars. On a train, they're characters. The man who boards in Olten with a briefcase and cries quietly for forty minutes. The teenagers sharing one pair of earbuds. Every one of them is a verse you haven't written yet.

American songwriting already knows this — it's the whole tradition of the road song. But the road song is about distance and freedom. Train songs are about proximity and witness. Different emotional material entirely, and I'd argue richer.

4. Let the Schedule Do the Discipline

Trains leave when they leave. This sounds like a limitation; it's actually a songwriting tool. When I know I have exactly 56 minutes to Zurich, I don't dawdle. I work. The deadline is external, gentle, and completely non-negotiable.

Open-ended studio time is a luxury that often produces nothing. A fixed window of motion produces something, every time.

5. Downsize Until It Matters

Here's the sneaky one. When your gear has to fit on your back and your lap, you make ruthless choices. What's essential? What's sentimental? What actually shapes the sound?

Every American tour van I've ridden in is full of "just in case" gear that never gets touched. Train touring killed my just-in-case habit, and my setups got cleaner, more distinctive, more me. Constraint is a co-writer.

The Bigger Point

American cities are slowly waking up to rail again — new lines, real debates, actual money moving. I hope it happens, and not just for the transit. I genuinely believe the infrastructure shapes the art. Highways gave America the road song, the tour van, the burning-out-at-28 mythology. Rail gives you something else: arrival, attention, and songs written at 80 kilometers an hour with snow on the window.

Both can be great. But one of them lets you sleep.

Take the train. Write something.