Music keeps you young. Having music in your life keeps you open to things.

I always found the Chicago audience to be a smart, fast-moving, violent and cheerful lot, and it's always good to be back.

I come from a minimum wage working world, as we all did for at least some part of our lives, and that is never out of my rearview. I've never forgotten how much your feet hurt after you've stood on them for like 12 hours. And how the drudgery of a job you hate craps on your entire life; how you treat other people, how you treat yourself, and it really was getting to me.

I'd rather work on my radio show, which no one hears but I put about eight hours of programming and writing into it for those 30 people who do tune in.

Trying to write music, be in a band and keep it all happening is one of the hardest, morale-destroying, heartbreaking things you will ever try to do - and that's when it's going well.

I do think that Americans are poorly served by their media, at times extremely poorly served by their elected officials who are non responsive to majority feelings and cut off to a certain degree from the affairs of the world.

America is off-the-hook gay. I will not go all Ann Coulter on you and say, 'Our gays are better than their gays,' but as far as countries go, we are in-your-face gay.