At university, I had been obsessed with reading about the lives of Rimbaud and Baudelaire, and I was steeped in the crazy poets, and I came to view my early subjects through that prism.

Stages are getting higher and higher, and I'm getting older and older.

I find it hard to focus looking forward. So I look backward.

I'm a little bit damaged in about 15 different ways, and it's been nice that no particular damaged area has become a major issue. I'm a more than moderately healthy 65-year-old male who has gotten away with a lot of stuff.

The people who were learning from me tended to be more commercial performers who were gonna rip off the salient idea to do it in a way that will sell, but they weren't going for the music.

I thought that if I practiced doing melodies for a year or so at home, I would learn to think melodically, and when I went to work it would come out, and it did, on this album. What else was important to me...? I spend a lot of time in the grocery store, shopping.

Cigarettes and coffee, man, that's a combination.