Some people I've talked to have had really an interpretation of this record as being nostalgic. But in some ways, when we were writing Stay Positive, I was really obsessed with age. I kept saying it was a record about trying to age gracefully. This record, I think actually was us aging gracefully.

I graduated high school in 1989, and there was no alternative rock radio, and there wasn't really good college radio you could get on a car stereo. Once you get a car at that age, you're spending all the time you can away from home, sometimes just driving around aimlessly. Listening, or not even listening, but subconsciously soaking up this classic rock barrage.

I'm not a horror movie guy, but I think the guy that did Saw, or maybe House or something, he was saying you love that age as a storyteller because a nineteen-year-old is still dumb enough to make really bad decisions, but he's allowed to be out on his own.

Some people will totally get restless, since you can make demos pretty easy. It's not unreasonable for someone to say, "All right, can you just record this and go home and work on it?"

People think of songwriting as a very personal thing: A guy gets up there with an acoustic guitar and he sings his heart out, bares his soul.

I think you want to write a song that's like the songs you are into.

There's a lot of ways to be honest that don't necessarily involve absolute facts being true. I think that's something I absolutely try to do.