I think you can find yourself in life perhaps not really being the master of your own life and it is within your own will and tenacity whether you switch the roles or not. So I think it has more to do with that, a person's individual will to be master or servant. I've been both in my own life and I prefer the former.

When you get a chance to play with people - informally is one thing, but when you hook up and make something that's going to last or mean something to someone, I take it very seriously. I take it no less seriously than the band I was in for 15 years; it's just a new place that I'm in. I'm in the Gutter Twins right now and that's what I am. But if I'm a Twilight Singer next year, it will be with no less passion.

Music is an individual pursuit - it is made to please yourself first. The pleasure of other people is a byproduct of the pleasure that comes from yourself so again I cannot judge or look down on someone who does whatever they feel like doing.

I think when you're young and you get together with a group of guys who think like you and you start to make something that moves you as a group of people and you have a common goal, that's an exciting time. The more years you put behind you, hopefully making music that surpasses what you did before, you're playing bigger places and it kind of weirdly becomes a business. In my opinion young bands have a shelf life and it ranges in time.

I can certainly see a band like Nirvana, like when they started having to play to the kind of guys that beat them up in high school - that was probably shocking. But you make music to move people and you don't get to pick who you move. You just don't. It's exclusionary and elitist and I just never felt that way about music, of all things. The great unifier.

That's what I've always loved about music, that I could go be another guy for two hours. But ultimately it all comes back to: do you have the songs, can you sing them, do you have a great band that can play them with you? You're charging money to have people come watch you play; I want them to feel taken someplace good or provoked into thinking my way for an hour and a half or two hours. I have been a provoker and I'll probably always be one in the public arena for the rest of my life.

The only time Valentine's Day has any bearing on my life is when I'm dating someone, or if I'm in a relationship. I would call Valentine's Day the path of least resistance. If I buy you gifts, take you out to dinner, then you won't bust my balls. That is Valentine's Day in a nutshell.