“It’s rare in life to look at all the people around you and realize that they’re all invested in what you’re doing.”

They’re all a huge influence on me. For me, just following rock history and watching Darkness On the Edge of Town and realizing that’s it’s okay to be obsessed with a snare sound because Bruce Springsteen was obsessed with a snare sound.

With a song, you can shove it in a dark closet and tell it you’ll be there when you’re ready.

The more you tour, the better the band gets, and you get caught up in a lot more things than just traveling. It becomes a way to survive.

When you start getting into a full-band, democratic context the little things almost immediately get thrown out the window because you don’t think they’re important.

Touring is a rough thing. You don’t have any time to look around or stop and think if what you’re doing is making you happy.

Neil Young, who isn’t really evident when you listen to my music, is probably my favorite of the legends, besides Dylan.

I know when the time has come to throw it in the trash can. With a child you’ve got to go to therapy and put it in daycare and buy it birthday presents.

I think that’s why it feels like songs are really connected, and I like that. They’re all worked on kind of like a little family.

You’re not so focused on the minutiae. You’re focused on the overall feel, and that’s the stuff that I get from the demos.

I always work on the songs all together up until the very end. I never mix a song and think, “Okay, now that one’s done.”

First impressions are always the most important.

When you’re in the moment and not over thinking the song is when things tend to really work.

I love when people will say, “Oh, my songs are my children.” I understand that, but I’m also not afraid to kill my kids.

I usually know the general emotion of a song, or the general feeling of it, and then I think I just get so excited by the act of recording. I love that process so much that I feel like if

As the music played over the speakers and the waterfall in the pool filled the silence around us, I knew that without a doubt I had just been ruined.

The work that the kids saw around them was so odious, so boring, so worthless that they came to regard WORK as the only dirty four-letter word in the English language.

We don’t look at each other [in the car], but instead do so only when we want to. We’re allowed to look around without appearing rude. We have a big screen in front of us and side views.

The older I get, the more I realize that you don’t have to be around people you don’t want to be around, and you don’t have to be in a situation you don’t want to be in. You have the power to rise up and leave.

The guys who stick around are the smartest guys and the guys who are the most self-driven. You have to have drive. The coaches can only take you so far. You have to want to learn and work.

I’ve always been supremely confident in my abilities. But the biggest confidence boost is when the guys around you, you feel like they have confidence in you.

I sing around the house, in the shower

Observe the world around you everything you do, and especially everything you hate to do.