I just wanted to make something in the world and worry about the rest of it later and not get too caught up in rules.

I always find live shows on film kind of boring. Even my favorite ones, I kinda zone out for most of it. It's just so different seeing a band in the flesh and then watching a film of it, even if you have a hundred cameras and it's shot from every angle. There's just a communal, visceral thing that never translates very well.

Music is made by individuals. Some artists will be very politically overt in their songs, some will be more subtle. You have to be true to yourself, true to your nature.

Major labels just lost their way. It's like the housing bubble. They lost a sense of the fundamentals.

When I was younger, bands helped me connect to part of my humanity; bands that had nothing to do with anything political helped to form me. There's a correlation in that: If people can connect to music, maybe they can connect to each other.

There's the idea that you have to know how to solve the world's problems in order to feel that something is morally wrong. I'm always back and forth between optimism and depression about the situation.

There's an obligation to let people know where their money is going, so the tour has an educational aspect, mostly as a way to thank people. But the most practical use is to raise money and do the research to figure out the proper ways to spend it. You want to make sure that the money doesn't just go somewhere where it does more harm than good.