If you're afraid they might discover your redneck past, there are a hundred ways to cover your redneck past.

Why would I want to sound like Joni Mitchell? I've got Joni Mitchell records, and they're great, and I couldn't possibly be that good.

Everything I write is personal, really. Even when I'm sarcastic, it's quite personal. And on this record, from the production to the singing to the performances, I got it really honest. To the modern ear, it seems soft. When you hear it against other things, it seems vulnerable. Lyrically and musically, though, this is more subtle. And, yes, it's asking a lot of someone who's used to being hit over the head with bright neon to listen to this.

I look to an out gay man or woman as pretty much what I would aspire to. The strength that it takes to do that and the floodgates that open and what they pay for it.

The reason I stop playing songs is usually because I get sick of them, and then they find themselves back into the set list at some point.

I love you more than I have ever found a way to say to you.

My job is to be some sort of music/lyric psychic, to figure out that that's the right song to not fight the lyric.