For me, the audience is the most important thing in the whole chain, so finding out how they respond to things is a learning curve at all times.

It's an example of when three people think something's brilliant and one thinks it's terrible. I suppose that's what improvising can be like because you just don't really know how anyone's feeling about it. You come off stage like, "Was that good?"

For me, the audience is the most important thing in the whole chain, so finding out how they respond to things is a learning curve at all times.

I know that I can't ever write a song that just sounds completely saccharin. Even if I'm singing about someone being my complete love life, I'm singing about my own inabilities to be as bright as that person.

When a band first comes along, they should be confusing and doing something people don't accept. You don't want the first reaction to just be, "Oh, I get that."

I was listening to a lot more folk music. I love the sound of acoustic guitars but I didn't want to be that person standing up there strumming away.

I'll also listen to music on a Discman and realize how nice it can sound when it's not compressed to MP3 format.