I have pretty ecumenical tastes. I'm interested in a lot of different kinds of music, so I don't listen with a jaundiced ear to music because it's in a certain category, whether it's country or opera or hip-hop or bebop or whatever it is.

I look at the artistic process as like experiencing the world, channeling it through your personality and sending it back out there. That's the process.

Instrumental music is increasingly marginalized.

I'll just sit at the piano a lot an play like through different chord exercises and kind of just throwing my hands down on the piano from one chord to the next to see what happens.

In regard to music, I just think that it's always best to have an attitude of being a perpetual student and always look to learn something new about music, because there's always something new to learn.

I think that that's the way the music grows and changes and becomes new and creative and vital. It's by synthesizing elements from all around it and not to maintain this kind of rigid myopic kind of tunnel vision, in a sense, trying to maintain a certain kind of purity, or whatever.

I just kinda like playing. I don't necessarily go on tour to promote my albums. I'm on the road all the time. The fact that I have a new record is out is a coincidence.