I was raised by the Christian Brothers, who believe in that, fortunately. They were, to me, the most rebellious arm of the Catholic Church - and one of the most liberal and forward thinking.
I'm not big on rap, to be honest. I just don't get it. It's angry people shouting. I like a song, melodies, people singing.
Hip-hop is so much about character and caricature that people just see you as a character. Very rarely are you flesh and bone to people.
Hip-hop is an instant gratification, winners and losers circle, and often those who are losing give up after three or four, five years.
I do secret stand-up shows around New York. I announce and tweet this to nobody - I get onstage and I do a quick five minutes.
I want the 'Roots' biopic to be animated - I see Charles Schulz drawing us. I think it would be more hilarious with the voices of children.
The new record started out being about loss, but it's morphed into being about how relationships go on even though one person is not in a body anymore.
I was down with Lucinda Williams and Mary Chapin-Carpenter. We did an acoustic tour, just the three of us, three chicks and three guitars.
I think it is wrong that we went against The U.N. and that we have alienated our allies and invaded a country that hasn't threatened us, that it is a pre-emptive strike.
Once your kids get older and get out of the house, it's not like it stops. They're on the phone with me every day; I'm intimately involved in their problems.
It's about who owns the servers. The servers that store your metrics. The servers that shout the ads. The servers that transmit your chat. The servers that geofence your every movement.
I don't like guitar solos that are like, 'Look at me, look at me!' I like guitar solos that are little songs within the songs.
When I was a kid, of course I wanted to be the fastest, the loudest and the one with the biggest drum set, but obviously my aspirations have changed a bit since then.
About the only other thing I'd want would be a wider neck. My fingers are so fat that sometimes I deaden the string next to the one I'm fretting.
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.
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.'
