Iowans are super talkative, like me. I'm very talkative. I'm very curious about strangers.

I left the Midwest feeling like, "People are small-minded, they don't want to ask questions, they don't want to think out of the box." Some of that was true.

There was a time in my late teens and early 20s where I was motivated by this wanting to get out, to prove to the world that I had something to offer - that kind of youthful spirit, where maybe I had my eye on fame and fortune. I mellowed out in my late 20s and now that I'm in my early 30s, I'm coming to peace with it.

[My ideal] is being able to be outdoors, have a labor intensive life, and then have this other life, where I hop on a plane and go sing to people in Norway.

You need to get out of your comfort zone, return to the Midwest, see some family, and, as cheesy as it sounds, work the land - plant some trees, maybe take up watercolor.

I don't want to get into an argument at the bar with some old racist homophobic person.

Whether I'm a hero or a zero doesn't really matter. It's all perception.