I have a lyric journal that I write in a lot. When I’m going to play, I just sit down and have my books with me and my notes and tapes and whatever I need to refer to. I just play and try different things. It’s a kind of discipline.

When I do solo stuff, when I do anything involving music, it's very collaborative.

At some point I was hanging around with the Butchies - a band I ended up playing with a lot - and it just brought out this thing in me... and it felt very different from the Indigo Girls.

An idealist who couldn't cope becomes cynical.

The impossibility and hypocrisy of a situation where kids are expected to be honest but are judged and alienated from their community because of it should not escape us.

But if you want to be a songwriter-based musician, whether you play punk or rock or country or jazz, whatever, you have to work on your songwriting and you have to work on being able to play in front of people, I think. That performance is how you create the groundwork for a lasting career.

Majoring in religion, listening to TV evangelists interpret the scriptures and dictate my offerings-I found my God inside myself-in every moment and piece of matter. Everything is animate.