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.

The jam stuff doesn't appeal to me in general. My newfound love for the Dead came from Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia's songwriting, not the elaborate guitar solos. I'm a song person. Once it starts to break out of that structure and become loopy, it's uninteresting to me.

I was in school for literature, and read so many 19th century and early 20th century novels that it was hard to break out of that and read an average Jeanette Winterson book or something.

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 don't feel like we're setting ourselves up to be exclusive. I don't want to set up an attitude where we're telling people 'You can't listen to our music if you don't have a college degree.

I think the music should definitely underscore the sentiment of the song, and it can work for or against it.

Early on I was a lot more unsure of myself on stage. When our band The Decemberists was getting bigger audiences I was more concerned about alienating them, so I wasn't as willing to take risks and do weird stuff on stage. But once you get more accustomed to it you tend to have more fun with it and not worry about being pilloried for acting out. Whenever you play in front of 400 or 500 more people than you're used to it's always a weird, transitional period.