I hated old people as a young kid who thought he knew anything about punk rock. I just thought old people sucked and I thought their opinions sucked.

For a really long time, I've been trying to find balance where I can talk about my feelings and be upfront with people, confront issues and not have to beat them to death or ignore them.

I don't think anything has changed about me but my priorities have changed. At one point I was living my life and I didn't see a direct correlation between who I was affecting with my actions. I'm not as reckless, I'm probably not as fun or funny. I've turned to my dad's sense of humor. I think that having a family has put a lot more focus on what I do.

It does feel really good to sing songs about somebody that I really respect, admire, love, care about and am so passionately attracted to after all this time.

My mother, father and brothers (I was the youngest of three boys), were all very sarcastic and we were a complete Irish-Catholic family. We didn't talk about our feelings ever, and if we did, we were yelling about them - there was no in-between. That's just carried over so many ways in my life and sabotaged relationships, sabotaged creative stuff.

As far as keeping my sanity, it's something I've only recently tried to focus on as a means of self-preservation.

I'm three years into my recovery from heroin and all this stuff and I want to be able to help people. But they have to do it on their own.