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.

At any given time, on our band Drive-by Truckers' shows 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. A lot of Republicans come see us. I've got many friends and family that are Republicans, so our following definitely cuts across the political lines and all of that. Which puts us in the unique position of not just preaching to the converted. I respect and value that.

The biggest thing this has in common with almost all of our records is the dualities are still there. We kind of stripped down the other things we were writing about, and that's what was left. A lot of good things have happened to us in the last couple of years both as a band and in our personal lives. But something as wonderful as having children also brings along these new fears and terrors and responsibilities.

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.

I'm more interested in writing about the personal stories of people. Sometimes I don't agree with them.

Racism is a worldwide problem.

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