Besides, going on tour and playing songs and arranging things, going to practice, it's all I know to be productive.

So much of rock lyrics is just a mirror of real feeling. It doesn't feel dangerous to me. They just feel like "rock lyrics."

I like that band Get Hustle. They're cool live. I haven't heard their records, though.

There's always a chance, a goal to make something different and get it right, finally.

Lyrics are back, maybe. It seems like there was a bit of an attitude that lyrics are not important.

With lyrics for me, it's usually musically-based. It's not really poetry- or writer-based. It's rock-based. It doesn't mean that I'm aping rock lyrics, but I'm writing from a music standpoint. I'm thinking more of music heroes, if they're in my mind. Not William Blake or John Ashbury. Sometimes maybe I thought of him a little bit. Or Wallace Stevens. I don't even really fully understand either of them.

Lou Reed is something like a personal favorite of mine, but you could always put me into that drawer of singers who can't really sing, who speak their songs.