There's a perception that if an artist produces another artist, they're going to imprint on them. But I'm the opposite. I want to hear that artist; I don't want to hear me - that's the last thing I want to hear. There are a lot of technical studio things I've learned or figured out, and I feel like I could use those things to help other people with what they're doing.

You have to shelve a lot of your inspiration. There's only so much you can do with one record.

I try not to do email; I try to talk to people on the phone.

I didn't want to do something typical.

I've personally reached the point where the sound of MP3s are so uncompelling, because so much is lost in translation.

Set your guitars and banjos on fire and before you write a song smoke a pack of whiskey and it'll all take care of itself.

Whatever you do has to be commercial and it can't be too distracting - it has to be background music, basically.