It's hard to convince people when you haven't done anything that the things you're working on are worthy of spending their time and money on: like, "Oh man, I write really great songs, I promise!"

Can you imagine in 1968 some band being like, "Vietnam is the place to be!"

It's impossible to escape from religion anywhere you are in the States.

Had I lived in Norman and those bands hadn't existed, who knows where I'd be, I might be doing something awful; I might be a doctor, or a physicist or something. Having those kinds of experiences at 12...the Chainsaw Kittens had a flamboyant homosexual lead singer, and the Flaming Lips were obviously very weird. I had only listened to the radio before that - things like Willie Nelson - so having people say, "These are the bands around here that you should listen to," I was like "Ok, I guess this is what normal music sounds like." That definitely changed things.

In the process of making the record, I was just so bored all the time working whatever stupid job. I felt like a stagnant pond that has algae and mildew and weird animal cells, and I felt like if I sat around not doing anything long enough, that I'd probably end up going a little bit crazy.

I can't remember who it was - maybe Brian Eno - but some important musician guy said he recorded ambient noise from a city street and after he listened to these field recordings for the millionth time, it was like, "Oh yeah, at 1:23, that's where the car horn comes in." So when you're doing stuff like this, and you've been working on it for a year, you're like, "Oh yeah man, that makes perfect sense!" And then you forget when you give it to people, they're bewildered.

I've always thought, "I could probably write one of these country songs and send them to these places and make up this fake country band. Wouldn't it be awesome to have a completely parallel career and have nobody know about it?" I think I could get away with it. I'd be the guy from Oklahoma with country cred.