I'm the band leader. That's not to say that the other people are my minions - they all put in a tremendous amount of personality, and push the music in ways I would never expect.

I'm just as comfortable performing solo with just my acoustic guitar and vocal as I am with a band. The main thing for me is that the performance remain rooted in the words and voice, that there be no place to hide.

As far as playing playing festivals and everything, I feel like that's what I was born to do. I'm an entertainer, hopefully in the best sense.

I like loud electric guitars because I like how you can just lose your entire being in the sound. But I can't find myself in a situation where our band Swans is doing typical chord progressions - it just seems cliché to me. Even changing chords sounds like a cliché sometimes, though it happens occasionally in our music. But you find ways to push yourself into the sound through repetition. It doesn't stay the same. It morphs constantly.

I went to art school and never thought I'd be a musician, but then punk rock came along in the late 70s and kind of ruined my life. So I quit art school to get involved in music and I've been doing it ever since.

I'm pretty confident that people are going to come along for the ride. If they don't, tough.

I like loud electric guitars because I like how you can just lose your entire being in the sound.