I always stayed away from the studio environment as much as possible. But I just wanted to see if I could work in one. It's not easy. Just having an engineer's assistant around is enough for me to be uncomfortable. With more than one person there in the room, it feels strange.

I made a rule for myself in my early 20s not to become a record collector in the sense that I reference all my old records. I can't live like that. I'd just be trapped in comparison, trying to emulate something, so I made a rule to just buy what I need, just the records I need.

Inspiration and creativity, they ride right next to one anotherNot everyday are you going to wake up, the clouds are gonna part and the rays are gonna come downsometimes you gotta just get in there and force yourself to work and maybe something good will come out of it.

I can't imagine being anything creative in a major town because everybody's doing the same exact thing you're doing. How can you not get confused about what you yourself are doing?

Technology is a big destroyer of emotion and truth. Auto-tuning doesn’t do anything for creativity. Yeah, it makes it easier and you can get home sooner; but it doesn’t make you a more creative person. That’s the disease we have to fight in any creative field: ease of use.

I came up from growing up with a lot of Catholic guilt, a lot of punk rock, hipster guilt in the later years where I think people have thrown a lot of things on me. Where I always felt like I'm not supposed to tell the horn section what to play or I don't want to come off egotistical.

Some guys are afraid of "fashion" even those this isn't really fashion. It's more "style". A lot of guys don't want to look like they care too much. The idea of standing in a fiting room and trying things on and saying, "How does this look?" I think maybe that experience is a little bit intimidating.