Almost every band has somebody who's the main songwriter and who has a vision, a very clear idea of how a song should be.

It's easy to be negatively funny about personalities in the media. It's just kind of a cheap laugh.

Every song has a different genesis, or feeling. Usually the lyrics, I don't really know what it's all about, I just kinda do it. I mean, there's a combination of, like you're saying, that kind of lyrics about commitment or vaguely relationship lyrics mixed with jokey 90s Beck-style non-sequiturs and stuff.

Despite my own doubts of being marketable or crushworthy, my goal was to write a record of peppy pop songs, hopefully without annoying anybody.

My wife is a big fan of George Oppen and I got into him. I could have a career like his. It's not an alpha male situation, George Oppen. It's quiet. It's poetry.He just lived a life of an intellectual poet.

It's sort of irritating now - people always ask me, "You're a dad, and how's fatherhood?" If Bob Dylan or Neil Young had a kid, it didn't seem like it made them a different person. It didn't make you old right away.

I don't want to be in Mötley Crüe or something.