I come from an art history background. I studied at a master's degree level; I chose to dork out on art for much of my adult life. A lot of my heroes are artists and a lot of my musical heroes have an artistic side.

The first thing that inspires any song is a chord progression. When I have one I really like, I get into the lyrics even more.

I think everybody has a painter inside of them somewhere.

I'm not saying that people have to listen to rock music. It's a great, cool thing and it can really be liberating for a lot of people but, hey, so can Charles Dickens so I'm not going to judge.

For some artists the live performance is the chicken before the egg of writing or recording of repertoire. For other artists the writing or recording of repertoire is the chicken before the egg of live performance.

It's sour grapes, I admit, I want to be more famous so people are examining my work couplet by couplet, you know what I mean? That's the level where I want to go.

I come from an art history background. I studied at a master's degree level; I chose to dork out on art for much of my adult life. A lot of my heroes are artists and a lot of my musical heroes have an artistic side.