With modern recording techniques, and living in the Pro Tools era, the process gets really drawn-out, and it can become painstaking.

I know my own limitations. And if somebody says, "I need songs for a cartoon garage band - they look like this and they should sound like this," it gives you a direction. I like having that kind of assignment.

I didn't want to do something typical.

Maybe certain aspects of what I was doing were reacting against what was happening or what people said, too. That's something that happens when you're starting out. After some time goes by and you get a little perspective, you realize that you don't need to react. You can just carry on with what you're doing. That took me a long time figure out; I've only gotten to that point in the last five or 10 years.

Every band I knew or played with had flyers and properly-recorded demos and contacts; I couldn't even get a gig.

[Early on,] the attitude was that what I was doing wasn't music.

I didn't even have a computer until like 10 years ago. I was still using a typewriter until 2002.