I started playing guitar when I was 12 and probably from that age knew that I wanted to make music and make my own music. Playing with other bands like the Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan Stevens was more like an apprenticeship for me than anything.
Fashion, for me, is anything that's aesthetic and beautiful. Art, food, film. It's something that I appreciate and really like.
All you can do is make something that you like and feel proud of and then just hope for the best and try to get out of its way.
Generally my day-to-day is pretty much the same. Just busy and working and on tour. And trying to put on the best show possible every night.
I think in some ways, it can do a listener a disservice to explain a song. I think I'd rather leave a little room for people to put themselves in it.
I was a lusty kid who loved Tennessee Williams.
Guitar is just something I can do. So much of it now is muscle memory, just instinct.
I was always just kind of obsessed with guitar, even before I started playing.
And if I'm honest about it, I was obsessed with Nirvana and Pearl Jam. This is like '92, right in the throes of Soundgarden and Pearl Jam and Nirvana. I think I probably wanted to be Kurt Cobain.
I've always been pretty ravenous about pop culture, highbrow and lowbrow.
Musically, I have more things in common with tons of bands that have no female members.
The Lilith Fair thing was Bummer Town - hey, hop aboard the marginalizing train. I guess you had people come out of that and have careers, but I think there was a pretty intense backlash, too.
I think a lot of people who want to be musicians terrify their parents because they don't have a living example of it in their families, and I did. So I always knew that it was possible.
I wrote 'Actor' all on the computer. I didn't touch any instruments until I was in the studio. So while I had all these ornate arrangements, I didn't have any songs.
I've been so entwined with technology since I was about 15, recording myself and multitracking and producing things on my own.
I grew up around a lot of various religions, so it's a part of my consciousness in a way. Everything from heavy Catholicism to followers of Indian spiritual masters to Unitarian universalists - all in one family. Though the family aspect was stronger...
A song has a life of its own. It's an autonomous thing, separate from your own experience, almost. And the mere repetition of it means it's subject to change; it means approaching it differently, expressing different emotional aspects of it. It doesn...
I grew up in Texas and we used to go to Padre Island, eight hours in the car down to the beach.
My dad used to love Steely Dan, the Stones, Jethro Tull and all that. There was always Steely Dan going in my dad's car, but I remember The Royal Scam in particular because it has 'Kid Charlemagne' on it.
In regards to being a fashion aficionado, there's a certain amount of taking yourself seriously in the professional world. The self-effacing person can't completely go down the serious road. But I design, and love when things are beautiful.
