I've been writing and collecting songs on the ukulele for at least 10 years, so it was time to clear them out of the apartment building and make room for some new occupants.I need to make room for the bassoon record.

Before music videos first came out, you’d listen to a song with headphones on, sitting in a beanbag chair with your eyes closed, and you’d come up with your own visions, these things that came from within. Then all of a sudden, sometimes even the very first time you heard a song, it was with these visual images attached, and it robbed you of any form of self-expression.

I don't work so hard at trying to get every song to be three-dimensional and mean so much. I just want to breathe, right now, with the music.

I think music is the greatest art form that exists, and I think people listen to music for different reasons, and it serves different purposes. Some of it is background music, and some of it is things that might affect a person's day, if not their life, or change an attitude. The best songs are the ones that make you feel something.

When I was 13, I got my first guitar, and I could sort of play Ted Nugent songs, but I couldn't play the solos. But I could play along with entire Ramones songs.

Pretty much at all times music motivates me. How can I say this without sounding in any way proud of myself? Obviously I've always written songs that are critical of our government, and talk about our times. Hopefully you attempt to be timeless while doing it.

If at noon you sit down and there's just silence or blank tape, in an hour if you have a song, that didn't exist an hour ago. Now it exists and it might exist for a long time. There's something empowering about that.

Singing someone else's songs is like keeping your clothes on.