Right after 'Backspacer,' my best friend got killed tragically. Something happened to me then where I got super motivated. I had a shelf of all this unfinished music... So I just went to work and made a conscious decision that I was going to finish a bunch of stuff. Life's short.

I love sad. Sadness makes you feel more than anything.

You go to a show and you know the crowd is there because they like the music, not because everybody else was going. That's a good feeling. You look out there and you know, these are our people.

I'm healthy enough to still skate, so I gotta go because growing up I didn't have - I mean, I grew up in Montana so... there was kind of a little half-pipe in my yard, and that was the extent of the skate terrain in Montana. So I've got to go out and make up for lost time.

I'm not going to say no to playing a show in Missoula.

When I moved to Seattle, I was hanging out with kids who had done drugs, had sex a million times. I look at them now and realize their childhood was taken away.

With Pearl Jam, everybody is so good at what they do, it's hard to get up the courage to say, Can I sing this part, or, I want to play guitar. I feel like I have more courage to do that.