The Jersey Shore is the kind of place where the policeman has a little cottage that might have been in the family for years and many other people call home.

The great challenge of adulthood is holding on to your idealism after you lose your innocence.

The different social forces that affected my parents' lives or my friends' lives or I saw around me became essential for me to write about.

I was signed to a record label at the same time as my friend Elliot Murphy, who makes great records to this day.

A time comes when you need to stop waiting for the man you want to become and start being the man you want to be.

Your spoken voice is a part of it - not a big part of it, but it's something. It puts people at ease, and once again kind of reaches out and makes a bridge for what's otherwise difficult music.

I'm used to writing something, it becomes a record, it comes out. Then I go perform and I play it and I get this immediate feedback from the audience. So that's been the pattern of my life.