It wasn't so much that I had to leave to make it in the music business as I was curious to be out on my own and sort of explore. I never felt that where I was ever influenced my songwriting.

The openness of rural Nebraska certainly influenced me. That openness, in a way, fosters the imagination. But growing up, Lincoln wasn't a small town. It was a college town. It had record stores and was a liberal place.

It became a question of do I want to be on a label where it could take three years to put out a record instead of putting out three records over the same period of time on my own.

They're not your words, but you're reciting the lines.

Girlfriend and 100 Percent Fun were my two peeks, around '92 and '96. The reality is that the times I had the most media success, sold lots of records and played bigger shows, I had the least control of my own life.

The summer of 2002 at the Wilson birthday party I met Van Dyke again and I made plans to have dinner with him.

I'm not in for killing another man, defending my holy land, as if there's a god who would understand.