It was funny to just take a backseat and be like, 'Wow, I might be in this crazy place, but maybe I don't need to understand everything, maybe I don't need to be someone else.'

I feel like I've met most people I look up to musically. I just want to meet Chef.

I mean the reason that I started writing close to home, "Santa Fe," et cetera, was a kind of looking back on past events. I don't know, it's just some of the dark spaces I've been. And it feels like with a music career and whatnot, I've been able to crawl out of those places. So it's interesting to look back on them and try to hold on to the feeling of what you went through.

I felt like I needed to get a few side projects out of my system before I settled in to do the new record. Usually what's asked of you, everything's a year cycle. When you get caught up in that cycle, it can be kind of brutal, actually. It was good I got to take a year off, with no pressure coming from anywhere.

When I came back to America, I realized that world music is no joke, it really has a lot to it.

I'd been living out of a suitcase since I was 17 years old, and it just got to the point where it was ridiculous. Besides, it was really hurting everything I was trying to do in music; to feel so consistently homeless was no way to endure touring and stress.

You can never not feel like that, as a working artist these days. It's funny - time off makes me nervous, but so does time on. At least the pressure wasn't coming from outside.