At any given time, there might be someone who's eight years old or 80 years old in the audience. Some nights there are a lot of girls in the audience, some nights not. It's so unpredictable, but I like that.

You can be for something and still be damaged by it.

I feel like, as a people, we're sort of stumbling in the dark right now.

Songwriting can be cathartic, but then you just keep it private. If you're going to play out and have other people listen to you, then you need to make sure there's some point to what you're saying.

When Adam's House Cat broke up in 1991, which was Cooley and my band for six years, I put my entire life, heart, and soul into that thing. I mean everything. I ended up getting divorced over it, and then the band broke up and I was left with nothing. I had nothing to show for six years of my life except for a finished record that still hasn't come out. And I went through a pretty deep, dark, two-year depression after that, [which] probably resulted in some of the earlier songs that became Drive-By Trucker songs, for that matter.

I dislike Bush as much as probably anybody on earth could, but having said that... It's not like I'm going to change anybody's mind.

If something's bugging my ass on any particular day, I'm probably going to say something about it, but I'm not going to go on a tirade.