People don't tend to notice, but in the past 10 years especially there's been a lot of growth in how I write songs and what goes into them. You can listen to Mountain Goats from 1991 to 2007 and never hear a seventh chord. In 2007 or 2008, I started working on the piano to grow as a songwriter. I started throwing major sevens in and sixes and more interesting stuff.

I think The Sunset Tree is really the album on which I really learned to trust other musicians, which is so important.

I consider myself a lyricist first and foremost, but if you get something else out of what I do, that's fine too. I'm not sitting back here telling people how they have to take my stuff. We just want to play music, and hope that people like it.

The fact that somebody's telling you a story about people who didn't exist doesn't make the experience of the story any less real in your heart and mind.

Diagnoses exist to help get people services they need - but there's no such thing as mental illness. We're all mentally ill.

People say friends don't destroy one another. What do they know about friends?

Conservative forces in the South have a lot of power - almost dynastic - dating back many years.