The more you release records, in some ways it takes pressure off you.

I guess the drinking and the drugs are interesting to me because the way we use them and our society uses them, we kind of manufacture highs and lows.

A conversation with you is a different thing than projecting to a couple hundred people. It's bigger and more animated and it's on a bigger scope, but still in the heart, it's honestly me.

It's really easy, in a band, to overstate - you feel like everything you do is different than the past. I think this is just another Hold Steady record, but at the same time, there is some evolution. Like, "How can we make this chorus bigger?" "What do we want this to sound like?"

My big thing is to get onstage sober. Whatever happens from there happens. But you get onstage drunk and it's not going to be good. It takes a while. I have to sing a lot, so I can only drink so much. So most nights it's fine; even if I drink as much as I possibly can, I can't get that drunk.

I think when you are doing a song you're trying to give people enough details that they connect.

I would never talk to a girl in a bar, like a pick-up thing. But I could talk to anyone if they wore a t-shirt of a band I like.