I was part of punk's second generation, so, not the first wave of '70s punk, but the American hardcore scene. I had a really strong love for music prior to that, but punk created a new template.

I started wanting to inject more colorful chord phrasings from the music I actually grew up on, which was Hendrix, Rolling Stones, and stuff like that.

A lot of the bands I loved, I didn't know where they came from or where they were going.

I think I took a few stabs at writing socially conscious lyrics. I had never intended to write a song about the Gulf War, but when I wrote "Before You Hit The Floor," I didn't know what the hell was going on in the world.

Everything I'm doing musically is for its own sake. I'm recording at my house, trying really hard to write songs with a four-track tape recorder.

I'm trying to play guitar every day. I think I have a gift, and I've not been nurturing it for a long time. So I'm trying to pick it back up.

It sounds a little cliché, but I wanted to capture some of the feelings or sounds that I heard when I listened to music that actually took me places.