There was this moment in 2003 when I was asked to do a fundraiser for someone who was speaking out against the Iraq war when nobody was. I said, "I will do a fundraiser for that guy." And then my friend John Hall, from the band Orleans...He ran for Congress in my district and won. I did a bunch of fundraisers for him.

What happened on "As Cool As I Am" was, you know how in the `90s, "the personal is political, the political is personal"? That was a really big thing. Choices you made about how you recorded and what instruments you used and how much real versus how much synthetic. Those were choices that were seen as very political at the time.

Basically, I have found that people who have tried to start communities out of good feelings or hippie-dippie abstract concepts of love - it doesn't work. But if you just concentrate on what is the identity of your town - its waterfalls, its battles, its notable mill strike or those things - you dig into what your town is from its rock formations to its history to its food. Then this thing called community happens all the time.

I just think the reassurance and the steadiness and the hands-on kindness can make a huge difference.

If a war has to happen, a war has to happen.

There was a lot of distance between the Dar of The Honesty Room and the Dar of Mortal City, so there was no attempt.

[Mortal City ] was also the beginning of the reality of the fact that I was going to have little pieces of my personality identifying with all of these different parts of the country.