By the time I wrote those first three songs for his new CD ... I wanted to push the poetics as hard as I could push them, and not decide the songs were finished until I committed them to whatever the recording format was. I went through drafts right up until I recorded every single one of them.

If there is such a thing as a workaholic, I'm it, and that's what passes for leisure.

We're Americans. I don't consider us to be evil, I just don't think we know any better. We're a really young culture. We're hillbillies, and the rest of the world sees us that way. I travel all over the world, and probably the only worse rednecks than us are the Australians. And they're an even younger country.

You see things differently at 40 than you do at 31. Especially if you got to 40 the way I did.

New Orleans is a unique environment.

Actually, in its purest form, Islam is incredibly tolerant. That makes what's going on in the world really bizarre.

I wasn't raised to not write about issues, and I'm just living in really politically charged times. You know, I'd rather write songs about girls, but it's just hard to do right now.