I just played at a club in L.A. called the Baked Potato. It fits like 90 people. It's like playing somewhere in a basement in, like, Indiana or somewhere where all your friends show up. It's really fun and there's a very different energy to that than to play to 50,000 at a Tokyo baseball stadium.

I feel like in order to challenge yourself you have to get out of and do things that feel wrong at first and find new things. It's important to look for those things.

Cardiff Stadium was a warm up for the 3 Hyde Park shows. James Brown opened. And I think it may be the only time we played Mini Epic live.

There's something about the rawness of the live thing, there's no rhythm guitars behind the solo, nothing other than what you hear the people playing at that moment. It's exciting, it's about the performance.

I had sort of exhausted all the avenues playing in Detroit. So again, through the stewardship of my brother, I ended up in California and went to the Musicians Institute in L.A. I wanted to get better as a player.

In some of the L.A. clubs, people can act too cool to get into your music. That can get to be a bit much.

Drums all have their own particulars - each drum has a place where they sound the best - where they ring out and resonate the best, and the head surface isn't too loose or too tight, mainly so you get a good rebound off of the head.