When you get respect from the people who are buying your music and coming to your shows, there's an expectation that you have to live up to your own standards.

It's hard for us to talk about how we disdain file-sharing when in fact it probably has been a great resource for us.

I pretty much draw the line when people want you to do original music for commercials.

When everybody is playing at the same level, there's so much more noise. And there's less incentive for the people who should be rising above that noise to take time and invest in what they're doing. It just becomes about hustling and grabbing attention.

When you get respect from the people who are buying your music and coming to your shows, there's an expectation that you have to live up to your own standards.

I'd rather have a strong career, playing and selling records to a loyal audience, then having one record that exploded. That would be devastating.

An old bandit adage: A bell is a cup until it is struck.