People are born with the knack to write poems and songs. I'm not a poet at all.

The first song I wrote was "Look Both Ways Before You Cross" from Imaginaryland. I started the song by singing a bass line, "hoo hoo hoo hoo."

Our dad played us a lot of old country songs by The Carter Family and he would sing along to it. I loved listening to him sing.

I got a new 4-track cassette recorder a year or so after high school. For a while I would just stare at it thinking, how am I going to do this if I don't play guitar or keyboards? How am I going to write and record a song if I don't know how to play any instruments? I mean, I played the violin, but I didn't know anything about how to work a 4-track.

I played violin from when I was about eight to thirteen, so I could read a little bit, but if you put a piece of music in front of me now, I would probably know the notes, but not the timing, how they're supposed to be played, and I just don't know how to read chords. If I'd stuck with it, I'd probably have more jobs.

The Conversation was a movie I saw probably for the first time in the early 2000s. I immediately loved the piano and just how simple it is.

My forte is playing along and singing along to music I love. I mean, who knows, maybe I could develop that knack or develop that ability to write, and I do actually co-write with people and friends, which is fun, too, because then I don't have to worry about writing lyrics, because for me writing lyrics is impossible.