When I was first starting out, I drove myself around the country in my Honda Civic, playing anywhere that would have me. This is a chance to strip the songs down to their roots and let the audience hear them the way I write them.

I think my music tastes keep changing, so I think the music I make changes a little bit.

It's always weird when I meet people who don't know how to crack crabs open and eat them the right way. I take a lot of pride in my crab-eating ability.

To me, there are 3 parts of the album process: writing, recording, and my favorite part: getting to sing the songs with the fans every night.

I was raised really strongly on The Beatles; they were huge in my family, my parents loved them, and they used to quiz me on who was singing which song, and we'd play certain records for certain events, and things like that. So I mean, they were sort of my introduction to pop music.

I've never really presumed to know what my fans want or like. When I'm making the music, I just chase whatever I find interesting that day and luckily there are people who find it interesting as well.

I used to play trumpet when I was a kid, and then I got braces, and I couldn't really play it anymore, so sometimes I wish I could still play that; I think it's a great instrument, so maybe one of these days I'll pick it back up.