Being off the road is one of the greatest things ever. It’s hard for me to be around my friends who are on the road.

I wanted to make a very cohesive-sounding album. Anyone who has listened to me and brought me into their living rooms and their bedrooms – I am making this for them.

I didn’t retire, I became irrelevant – there is a big difference.

The new solo album sounds like me: I’m singing about bad business transactions, bodily fluids, and courage.

I have great relationships with all my exes, and everyone in my life, because I honor the time and the love and the energy of those relationships. I’m happy to say that I can have everybody over for dinner.

There’s nothing better than striving to be a better man.

I am 36 years old, I can’t change. I have tried, trust me, but I can’t. It’s nice to get over yourself and just do it.

What inspires me is anxiety and the quest to try to change things in my life. ...I got addicted to endings and beginnings and to the idea of always moving around. ...Obviously, whenever you're going through something that's the best time to create, if you're going through something amazing, or horrible, or nothing at all you should be creating. Unfortunately the songwriters of today generally torture themselves to make sure they're writing good songs and take it a little too seriously.

Rules are what governs us as humans, but it was wonderful to meet a man who said "There are no rules. You gotta be what you gotta be and you gotta believe in it." I know that's a feeling I used to feel a lot at a younger age, and through the sense of responsibility and working with so many and taking on so many duties and actions, you lose if you don't stay on top of it. So that's what I love about this man, that there are no rules.

I had never really written songs for anyone before. With [Broken] Social Scene, you're writing songs for others and your passing them around and exchanging things, but for a man who has the history that Andy Kim had, and has lived the life that he's had, you see such a youthful aspect of how he just wanted to create something again.