No one else writes like Gord Downie, so it's difficult to compare him. He can work in the abstract and still somehow be really specific. He lets parts of his consciousness in that most writers aren't able to do, myself included. I don't feel like I have that access to the surreal and the somehow beautifully meaningful non-sequitur - that fits perfectly. I can never figure that out, how he does that.

I try to write lyrics that will be able to function on their own if they get separated from the music. But I wouldn't want to take anything away from poets, who work without the frames songwriters get from melody, and I think lyrics should be considered as their own thing.

That's something I've certainly taken from writers like Gord Downie is that there is a whole potential for breaking out of meter. Even if you don't do it, you're permitted to. He gave a lot of writers permission to do that, to expand and push out the borders of what a rock song can contain.

I think of Gord Downie voice as Whitman-esque. He has a poetic voice that contains multitudes, both the suppleness of the instrument of his voice, and just the lyrical boundaries that he pushes, which are really always thrilling to me.

I listened to lots of other kinds of music, but punk is what allowed me to actually play music.

I think we all have a certain number of "coming of age" songs, and then a writer has to expand and grow into more varied and specific themes. And the music industry is, like Jawbreaker says, "selling kids to other kids," so it makes sense that those early songs in a writer's life are often the ones that catch people's ears, and later work is more difficult and less immediate.

There are definitely parts of me in most of the protagonists I write, but I find a bit of distance can be useful, so I often find myself better able to write from a point of view that isn't exactly my own.