I try to be careful not to do single concerts where I fly out, do my show, turn around and go home.

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.

How I long to fall just a little bit, to dance out of the lines and stray from the light.

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

...we're all in a soup of trying to live by words, and trying to live by poetry. It's both humbling, and really flattering to know that my words are part of all that.

Mortal City was really influenced by geography. [The song] "The Ocean" is the Pacific Northwest. Southern California and New York also figure into songs, and Iowa. "February" is very much about New England. "Mortal City" is Philadelphia. The whole album is this anthropomorphized landscape where the metaphors live in this geography.

I'm just trying to be part of the movement that decentralizes and hopefully creates peace. By supporting smaller, democratic structures, you can effect change.