I dropped out of high school and I tried to go to community college for a little while. I can't be a student. I always hated that lifestyle.

If every element of the song doesn't come within the first hour of writing, then you're never going to get it - if that makes sense. It's kind of like you need to be in a mental state where everything is so reactionary that you don't double-think anything, and so if it's not immediate then it's probably not going to happen at all, and you should probably toss the song.

I think that within the world of music that we work in, which is so not perfect, I think that you really do have to learn to accept your own mistakes as part of the beauty of music itself.

As much as I try to grow as a lyricist, I tend to laugh at even calling myself that, because I think that my actual talents lie more in arrangements than they do words.

It's a little cheeky; growing up in Santa Fe was kind of a weird experience, because it's such a touristy town. So sometimes it feels a little like you're in a town that's just on display. You walk around downtown and all the shops are galleries or high end boutiques, so it can feel like you don't belong there even though you are from there.

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

In the age of the mp3, you gotta make the package special, something that's worth owning.