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

This time, we're living in such a crazy moment in history. People still write and talk about Watergate, which was such a huge, looming backdrop when I was coming of age and when I was a kid growing up. I think we're living in one of those times right now where, in 20 years, people will be writing and talking about it.

A lot of the music that I grew up loving has a really political bent to it.

I'm lucky enough that people tend to agree a lot with what I say. But really if anyone in the band has a really strong feeling, it carries a lot of weight.

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.

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.