I always wanted my music to influence the life you were living emotionally - with your family, your lover, your wife, and, at a certain point, with your children.

Somebody who can reckon with the past, who can live with the past in the present, and move towards the future - that's fabulous.

In the past, some of the songs that were the most fun, and the most entertaining and rocking, fell by the wayside because I was concerned with what I was going to say and how I was going to say it.

You make your music, then you try to find whatever audience is out there for it.

That's what being a front man is all about - the idea of having something supple underneath you, that machine that roars and can turn on a dime.

Every good writer or filmmaker has something eating at them, right? That they can't quite get off their back . And so your job is to make your audience care about your obsessions.

I held four clean aces. I had youth, almost a decade of hard-core bar band experience, a good group of homegrown musicians who were attuned to my performance style and a story to tell.