The people who are making money are the ones who are writing and singing their own songs.

I usually know what kind of song I'm after. I know what I'm trying to do when I start. I don't always get there. But I try to visualize what it's actually going to be.

Particularly in my early days, I did very little rewriting.

We are really in a rut with the three-minute song. You know where it's going to go. If you're trying to get your message across sometimes it's wise to say, Why don't we stop here and have a moment of silence, then go in a completely different direction?

In the end all that matters is climbing and pushing your personal limits. No matter the grade, if you climb something that was hard for you, then that's sick.

Songwriting is Hell on Earth. If it isn't, then you're doing it wrong.

Even if chords are simple, they should rub. They should have dissonances in them. I've always used a lot of alternate bass lines, suspensions, widely spaced voicings. Dfferent textures to get very warm chords. Sometimes you're setting up strange chords by placing a chord in front of it that's going to set it off like a diamond in a gold band. It's not just finding interesting chords, it's how you sequence them, like stringing together pearls on a string. ... Interesting chords will compel interesting melodies. It's very hard to write a boring melody to an interesting chord sequence.