Sometimes things reveal themselves to you a little bit. I think it was Joan Didion that said, "We write to find out what we're thinking." And sometimes that happens.

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.

Someone should have a record that doesn't have any singing. It's my favorite Miles Davis record. I love hanging out in the summer, in New York, when it's miserably hot. I love electric Miles Davis in the summer. Jack Johnson, the songwriting especially, is a premier example of that. It always makes me feel hot in the city. It's also nice to have something not yelling in your ear. For me, as a lyricist, it's nice to put on something without any words.

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.

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.

Being on a microphone nightly has made me better at what I do, made me better able to sing a little bit, but also more confident at trying it.

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