Maybe I am a jerk sometimes. Maybe I'm not. I think most people are kind of a jerk once in a while.

You can imagine several scenes from Star Wars? The way they looked? For me, that's how music is. Sometimes I'll be developing riffs for songs, just while I'm sitting around and not playing.

There are times when I want to be plainspoken about my feelings in a song. But there are other times when it's really good to try and get my head around different kinds of song structures, or maybe I might get turned on by trying to write a song that would fit in this one scene in a movie. And by the end of all this, you just end up with a bunch of different ideas. And songs are really just ideas.

That's why I played music; my social skills were limited. I think a lot of people that experience that pick up guitars, because they can't communicate otherwise.

For any producer I've ever worked with, their toughest job is to convince me to not to obscure my vocals. A lot of people don't like the sound of their own voice on, like, cassette tape or something. It's like that for me, and other songwriters I know. Like, "Oh God, that's what I sound like?"

I think I've been incredibly raw my whole career. A lot of people spend a lot of time trying to look cool and spend time being guarded and putting up walls. I just never had the time. It seems more honest to say, 'Hey, this is who I am.'

It's really very easy for me to be in The Cardinals, because I bring my voice, my guitar, and my songs to them, and then we all play around to find out what works.