Some of your best songs come from a desperate attempt to escape, so sitting in an airport for hours I can just start pulling out little fragments of songs from my head. A lot of times a melody will just occur to me and be my companion for a couple of months.

Well, my main instrument is violin, but I think of myself as a songwriter who happens to play violin.

A good espresso to me is a little bit salty; you just become used to a good taste. Anytime I go into a new place and they don't clean their machine properly or the water temperature isn't right, it tastes awful.

Most records, you build from the drums and bass up. This one, we started with the vocals in Nashville and recorded them live with just the guitars and tried to make that complete and lovely-sounding without any adornment at all. I really wanted to get something with the vocal that I've never gotten before Armchair Apocrypha.

I guess I'm attracted to more archaic words because they can be imbued with more meaning, because their definition is elusive.

I put a lot into my records, and I won't release anything I'm not totally thrilled with.

It's not set in stone. I like to keep it rolling and changing, and so I am like, "Great, I get to remake my song."