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.

I wish I had a better range, but I really have a super-limited one. Barely a tenor, dips into baritone - that's about it.

Living in war, and being a wartime band, I don't think there's any way that can't somehow influence the songwriting.

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.

Music has been already devalued by the consumer. There's an expectation that it should be free so the race to the bottom has already been won.

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.

You can't really come into a concept record objectively, because you immediately associate it with Yes, stuff from the 1970s that punk rock kicked against, the pretentiousness.