I'm sort of a cavedweller: I miss my house, my yard, my kitchen, my wife. The trees. When I get home, I like to get down into my office neighborhood as soon as I can.

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

A bands first albums usually not great. When you made the first album, you had a day job and you were still trying to be serious about it.

I am at a place in my life where the more like a cave I can make my surroundings, the happier I am.

I get nostalgic about having lived in Ames, Iowa, even though being a vegetarian in Iowa is not fun.

Take dance music: I like enough of it and its history to be able to say a word or two about this or that record, but I'm nobody's authority.

Over the past 40 years, the tradition of Southern progressivism has been somewhat successfully erased by right-wing revisionist historians.