Basically, I was pretty ostracized in my hometown. Me and a few other guys were the town freaks- and there were many occasions when we were dodging getting beaten up ourselves.

My image had always been very heterosexual, very straight. So it was a nice experience for me, a chance to clarify my own feelings about gay and lesbian civil rights.

We've got no fairytale ending, in God's hands our fate is complete. Your heaven's here in my heart, our love's this dust beneath my feet.

If I have a song that I feel is really one of my best songs, I like it to have a formal studio recording because I believe that something being officially released on a studio record gives it a certain authority that it doesn't quite have if it comes out on a live album or is just a part of your show, you know.

When you have three teenagers, it gives a whole new meaning to "homeland security."

For me, once I count the band in, and I delve deep into my song, I feel a certain sort of integrity and integration that I rarely find in my daily life.

When I was very, very young, I decided that I was gonna catalogue my times because that's what other people who I admired did. That's what Bob Dylan did, that's what Frank Sinatra did, Hank Williams did, in very different ways.