I'm so hard on myself. I play these sketches in my computer for friends and they say 'Gee whiz, the vocal's beautiful.' I hear, 'It needs to be better.'
I think the way I play the guitar is very percussive. I play a lot of rhythm chops as though I were playing congas or something.
I'm buying records a lot, like, every week I'm just buying old reissues or old originals or new records that I have heard about.
You can say we're trying too hard or that we didn't try hard enough, but we're not trying at all; we're just doing what we do.
I've figured out what to do with my hands... onstage. I'm a percussion player, so I grab a tambourine as much as I can.
We have our own language. Christianese... We don't say 'He's out of his mind,' no, we say 'That's our youth pastor.
I write all year long, and at the end of the year I pull these forty or fifty things out and say, 'Which of these things do I want to record?'
I think you have to ask questions that are scary to ask, and you cannot apologize for that, and you cannot worry what anyone else thinks about your journey.
I think that there are a lot of things that come along with being a musician, but I don't want to whine about them. I don't want to complain about my job.
My point of view as a writer has to be a lot more ego-less than just like being some performer on stage with a hairdo.
I'm a writer, first and foremost, and I sort of take my cues from the songwriters of the '70s, who are talking about what's really important to them.
If you want to save a species, simply decide to eat it. Then it will be managed - like chickens, like turkeys, like deer, like Canadian geese.
Look what venison does to a goofy guitar player from Detroit? I'm going to be 54 this year and if I had any more energy I'd scare you.
I clearly understood the concept of wise use before I ever heard the actual words, for my father wouldn't allow us to waste anything.
While I now own more guns than the 82nd Airborne, my first gun is still the most important gun I've ever owned.
The first song I ever wrote was when I was 12, and it had, like, four lines in it. You progress and get better.
I wouldn't mind being the male Adele. She came along, and people were like, 'Damn, we haven't heard anyone this real for years.'
I used to play the piano when I was younger, and I loved Alicia Keys. I wanted to be Alicia Keys; she was such an idol to me.
I always write lyrics first and the rhythm and the melody come from the lyrics. It always comes from the lyrics: words have rhythm and words have melody.
When I see my kids totally into their Legos, it brings me back to the days I was hanging out and playing with my monster models. It brings me there in a second.
If a guitar is too easy for me to play, it makes me too laid back. I like to battle with my guitar.
