I can remember back as far as age 8, performing with the Boston Folk Song Society. It was a Woody Guthrie song.

I initially felt shy about doing painting because I wasn't a professional painter. I almost felt like I didn't deserve to paint. But I have gradually adopted a different kind of attitude about this.

My most cryptic, strange songs might be my most personal, but that isn't how people are going to receive them, because they don't know the code.

As soon as I got into music, I tried to be a working, real artist who gets paid for what he does, who doesn't have a day job.

I'm an untrained musician. Untrained musicians don't really have any music theory, they don't have a lot of rules. We break the rules, but it's mostly because we don't know what the rules are. It's easy for us to go to certain places, so I'm not surprised that a lot of people were amused by my songwriting style.

I like visual images and there are certainly other bands that have strong visual images going all the way back to Elvis Presley, but it's kind of like that's never really been my bag. Probably because I'm too shy.

But the truth is that critics are by definition critical. That's their job.