- This is sort of cheesy, but I remember after my band Zumpano broke up ..when I was just flailing and I didn't know what to do, I remember hearing that Mama Cass song 'Make Your Own Kind of Music' and it almost made me want to cry. That line about 'Make your own kind of music..even if if no one else is singing along' - I thought , 'Ah, that is so true'. I always try to carry that with me.
- Lyrics are the most punishing for me because I always start with the music. It's very important that the lyrics fit around the melody in a certain way. And that makes lyric writing difficult because I can't always say what I want to say, or at least it's very hard to.
- I think I'm known for writing these pop songs that have a lot of parts and a lot of chords, and sometimes I try, consciously, to write simpler songs, just because it's not what I normally do. But it's always a strange exercise.
- My process is so crazy, I don't know that I even have a process. In a way, I'm always writing. If I'm driving down the road, I might get an idea, so I sing it or hum it into my phone.
- When you put something that's honest out there you don't want people to just shrug and go 'Who cares?' Even though..the final song on the record ['[They Should Have] Shut Down the Streets' ]is all about 'Why didn't the world shut down at my mother's funeral?'..Well, because. And the world's not going to shut down because you wrote a song about it.
- I read books more than anything else. My wife reads a lot of things like the New Yorker, which I wish I could do more of. My reading goes in waves. When I'm busy with other things, I may not read for a long time. I went for about two and a half years one time where I tried to average a book a week. And I did it. I got back on the horse this last tour and started reading a lot again.
- [on 'Shutting Down the Street', recorded 2012] It was sort of a palette cleanser. I felt that I couldn't go on doing what I normally do until I did this, you know? And I made this record thinking 'Oh, this isn't going to be my breakthrough record'. It was hard to escape.
- I'm also always trying to figure out what I can do differently. I don't go into writing thinking, Let's do more of that thing I do. I'm always trying to figure a different approach.
- I think I've always been a big fan of singing with people that are better singers than me. Maybe it feels like they're spotting me, like 'Don't worry, you won't fall, I've got you here'.
- Sometimes a word or a turn of phrase excites me. I'll see a word and think, Hmmm. That's a cool word. Like hipshot, that's a cool word. I think I used that in a song once. That's why I like reading. I'm hoping through osmosis I'll become a better writer, since you have to read a lot if you want to be a good writer.
- You sometimes write music to protect yourself in the same way people listen to music, because it takes you away from who you are.
- I was obsessed with R.E.M. in high school. I had pictures of them all over my locker and I was preaching, always trying to get other kids to listen to them. They were still sort of underground, so the jock guys would always go 'We don't wanna listen to your weirdo music' and I would try to explain to them 'No, it's not weird! It's not that much different from Dire Straits if you think about it!'
- My whole career has been trying to take some sad feeling and turning it into something positive. Not even something sad, but some feeling of hopeless anxiousness. All of our albums have that pattern: The music is very upbeat but the lyrics are bittersweet or cynical or negative.
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