It sucks to think about, honestly, but when you really consider the resources that it takes to press vinyl records, or the amount of gas that it takes to tour, it's really quite scary.

Being in a band, a lot of times people think of what you're doing in terms of a competition. They talk about where you are professionally in your career, and all this other stuff. And if you're a lifer, you know it's going to be ups and downs. It's not like anybody is always just steady on.

You have to define how much of a cultural politician you are as a performer. There are times where I just want to remain a civilian.

Every declarative statement that comes out of an interview with somebody is actually in response to a question. It's like this very real interpersonal dance where one of the people involved is invisible.

Sometimes you have to wonder if there isn't an ejector seat built into having a popular-music career. We were lucky when we started. We were already old when we started - you could have described our first album as "aging Brooklyn guys." We were in our late 20s. We weren't octogenarians, but a lot of bands were already younger than us. Fortunately, we've held on to our manly good looks.

I feel like musicians have such a precarious place in the political discourse, because musicians are, sort of just by nature, people-pleasers.

So we've done science songs. We've done historical songs. A lot of people would like us to do more historical songs. Our history record would probably be like the people's history of the United States, set to music.