For instance, we have the largest Polish population of any city except for Warsaw, and the largest Lithuanian population outside Lithuania. More Italians, Greeks, Irish, Latinos, Serbians, and Croatians than you can shake a stick at. Chicago has it all, I don't know why I'd ever leave.

The latest thing that has caught me by surprise is Maryanne Amacher. I like sound that affects the listener physically. Traits such as complexity or simplicity don't really become a factor then. It's just the sound that I pay attention to.

I only use the computer for editing. I don't have an eight-track, otherwise I probably never would have bought a computer. When I first got my Mac, I was exploring its possibilities and had fun with all of the sound hacking software, but I'm not interested in that approach. I toyed with the idea of releasing a 12-inch of all the stuff I did early on but good sense prevented me from doing so.

For some reason, I deliberately allow for simple things like three chords to mystify me. It's kind of fun that way. Like Billy Gibbons' guitar sound isn't the way it is because he uses a quarter as a pick or anything as simple as that; it's because he's in touch with a different sector of the cosmos that we know nothing about.

A lot of the projects I've allowed myself to get involved with over the past few years have made me a bit unfocused. It's just so ridiculously easy to do things here; if you're part of the scene, in five minutes you can wind up with two gigs within three days of each other. There's too much going on here and that's a bad thing, to me. Unless you want to jam, and then it's good.

As a kid, image played a huge part. I'm sure most kids find the image of the guitarist exciting.

For instance, we have the largest Polish population of any city except for Warsaw, and the largest Lithuanian population outside Lithuania. More Italians, Greeks, Irish, Latinos, Serbians, and Croatians than you can shake a stick at. Chicago has it all, I don't know why I'd ever leave.