I've always viewed my career with some suspicion, like I don't want to count on it to be the only thing I do. Partly that has to do with feeling like an imposter, like we all do sometimes, and partly I like doing other things, and being a full-time artist takes a focus I recognise I don't have.

In this frightening, anxious time to be alive it can be liberating to remember that nothing lasts forever. That can focus and invigorate our hopes.

In my mind I still qualify as punk, though I know four out of five punks would disagree.

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

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 still think of myself as punk, because the way I became empowered to play music is entirely due to punk bands.