Music is a permanent art, it will always go through phases where you like it and are in tune with it, but saying that music "got bad" is infantile. The same is true with your life.

The studio's a collaborative environment. I just try to let people bring their own ideas to the songs and see what happens.

It makes me envious of anybody who can say truly that they don't care what anybody thinks of what they do, because I care a lot about the people who like my stuff.

As important as politics are to me, the life and the spirit of people's emotions are much more important. People live real lives where they love and grieve and feel pain and joy and that is a whole separate sphere. All that political stuff, I believe in it strongly, but not as strongly as I believe that at some point you or someone is going to need a song to sit with and comfort them in a hard time.

Gender relations are a sad story of men talking trash about women all over the world.

What's scary is the unknown, the stuff you can't put your finger on.

I'm not really a goal-oriented guy. I started doing the Mountain Goats just for the sheer hell of it.