I started just concentrating on songwriting when I was abut 20; I'd been in rock bands six or seven years, kinda got that out of my system, I said, "ok, you ain't gonna be a rock star, you don't look like a rock star, it probably ain't gonna happen. So what you should do is write songs and maybe other people will do your songs."

I'm a cosmopolitan sophisticate of culture and intelligence. The culmination of technology and civilized experience.

The piano sounds like a carnival and the microphone smells like a beer. And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say, man, what are you doing here?

Historically, musicians know what it is like to be outside the norm - walking the high wire without a safety net. Our experience is not so different from those who march to the beat of different drummers.

Some of the stuff I'm writing is almost like hymns, some of my first singing and choral experiences were in church, the Church of Christ in Hicksville.

Sergeant O'Leary is walking the beat, at night he becomes a bar tender.

Slow down you're doing fine You can't be everything you want to be Before your time Although it's so romantic on the borderline tonight Too bad but it's the life you lead You're so ahead of yourself That you forfeit what you need Though you can see when you're wrong