I enjoy the collaboration. I always envied people in bands who got to have that interaction. I've done so many albums where I've been in the studio for 14 hours a day for six months just trying to come up with things on my own. It's a nice change helping other people with their music and not being all about what I'm trying to do myself.

Art is the child of Nature; yes, her darling child, in whom we trace the features of the mother's face, her aspect and her attitude.

In recording, you're trying to make something work sonically - getting the right inflection on the right guitar sound - and maybe a part that would be musically great doesn't sound as cool.

There’s an infinite amount of possibilities and detours and things that can distract you from actually just performing the song and having whatever emotion that’s invested into the song come through in the recording.

When I pull out vinyl – which isn’t that often anymore – it’s undeniable that I get a different feeling. There’s a different physiology happening between the sound waves and the body that doesn’t happen with music playing off the computer.

I didn’t even have a computer until like 10 years ago. I was still using a typewriter until 2002.

Back then, Pro Tools only had four or eight tracks, so we couldn’t actually hear all the tracks. We could only hear eight at a time, so if a song had 25 or 30 tracks, we wouldn’t be able to hear it until we went into the studio an put it all on tape. The process was a little bit backwards.

It was disturbing to me that an idea or a song could become something so different from what you originally intended. It’s like if a friend took a stupid picture of you at a party on their phone, and the next thing you knew, it was on every billboard.

There are certain records that you love because the songs are great, but you don’t go to them as an example of great production.

I didn’t want to be on a major label. I wanted all the attention and the noise to go away because I wanted to be something a little bit more substantial.