You don't always get lucky enough to have songs that can breathe and shift meaning. But every once in a while you open up a window and something passes through. It's really nice for me when I discover those songs in my catalogue. It's one of the reasons I try not to get too specific about what my songs mean.

Art that I like the most is born out of free association. I try to let my mind open up and see what comes out.

I'm a true believer in not forcing anything. I hate forced art, forced anything.

Instruments of a trade are really fascinating to me. Things that enable you to do your job better. Rehabbing houses is really fun to me. I love taking a space and seeing the potential, gutting it, and putting it back together and I love the tools used to do that.

I'm fascinated by Catholic mystics, even though I grew up Mennonite in Pennsylvania.

There's something about Saint Francis's approach to life, zero expectations but pleasant surprise. In a lot of ways he was a really conflicted person. Some people would say he's masochistic . I don't really know, but I've always loved his reverence and his mindfulness.

Sometimes people will request a song I haven't played in a while and I'll play it and singing the lyrics will mean something different to me as a 35 year-old person than they did when I was 25. I know I'm still that person who wrote it and thought I knew what I meant when I was writing them. They meant something very exact to me in that time of my life. But it's really cool when those same lyrics can transform into something else and mean something entirely different to me.