One of the benefits of playing to small audiences in small clubs for a few years is that you're allowed to fail.

I like a good story and I also like staring at the sea-- do I have to choose between the two?

I think that if they want people to listen to ten or twelve songs, they have to give the listener a reason to listen to ten or twelve songs or to buy ten or twelve and listen to the whole thing instead of just pulling one or two for their iPod or their computer.

It seems almost backwards to me that my music seems the more emotional outlet, and the art stuff seems more about ideas.

Ninety percent of all music is always crap, and when too many people decide they're going to have guitar bands, then ninety percent of them are going to be crap. It's just a given law.

It's more about the stuff you think about when you're getting from place to place on a bicycle than it is about actually riding the bicycle.

I still feel like if I can get a song to work with, say, a basic beat, a rhythm, some chord changes, and a melody, a vocal melody - if it works with that, then I feel it's written and there's something there. So I intentionally don't get involved with arranging stuff or fussing over the sounds and the edits and the beats too much, at least not in the beginning, because I feel like then you can fool yourself that you've got something there, when you might not.