You have to have a work ethic and you have to be educated in what you're doing. You have to take it seriously. It doesn't mean that everything you do has to be serious. But you've got to have the tools.

Tolerance can lead to learning something.

To us, there was Bob Dylan, and there was dad. As for what he meant to other people, that was never glorified in our house. There were no accolades there, no gold records.

There's only one thing that's certainAnd that's everybody, everybody's hurting

The songs I write should only be gauged by what other writers or peers are doing today. If the barometer for all songwriters was to match his body of work, then anyone you might mention alive or dead is a failure. But I've learned to not be too hung up on what's fair or not fair.

I always saw songwriting as the top of the heap. No matter what else you were going to do creatively... writing songs was king.

My songs have always had hope and perseverance in them - I never write songs that have no escape hatch, no positivity.