I like to write early in the morning, like, 5 a.m. If I'm really on my game, I don't have any coffee or stimulants. I'm kind of in a dream state.

I sometimes try a variance of the drawer trick - [I write it] and then come back to it and see if it blows.

Your ego gets activated real quick, you really want to impress yourself. But when you come back to it, sometimes you're like, "Yeah, this part? I don't know. This guy needs a lot of help."

Advice is not really very useful. People gave me terrible advice, and I guess I was just smart enough to ignore some of it.

There's a lot of griping and groaning about wanting to play half-baked new songs live, but you don't want it to just end up on YouTube with like 74 thumbs down: "This is the worst!"

I like to go play shows just to see people, so I'm not in the game of like, "You're at my show, you're gonna listen to it like this, blah blah blah."

If a band isn't coming up with two to four of those when they pick up their instruments, then they have problems - even if none of them turn into a song. If that's not happening in a band, it's time for therapy or breaking up.