You feel the camaraderie that you're all driving around in vans, you know, engaged in musical enterprise. It's pretty much the same for everybody except for the 40 minutes that you're on the stage. Other than that, I do feel like we're off on our own path. It's sort of exciting.

I don't consider myself a very religious person in any.

It may be a product of me being raised in episcopal church, but I have a love for ritual and theater and the significance of doing the exact same thing over and over. So I really love knowing every little thing I'm going to do during a show.

When you make a record, you probably are not going to hit exactly what you were aiming for. You also have to let go at a certain point, and just trust it. I remember feeling we had fallen short, or that it had fallen short. At the same time it was great to see a good critical reaction to it, and to hear people were enjoying it, which made me think, "Well, maybe it's a good thing I didn't get exactly what I wanted." Now we're testing that theory.

I don't feel [the] excitement you have when you first walk into a recording studio. It now feels like a tool.

I just like dealing with scientists for awhile and then going over and dealing with musicians for awhile. They both have qualities that kind of counterbalance each other.

It's not like I'm narrating stories with music behind them. It's all kind of one thing. You hope you can provoke a specific emotional reaction, but in ways that aren't quite plain.