“It’s funny, people often ask me, “Why do you do bike tours where it takes three times the effort and you make one-third of the money?” My answer is that I’m trying to do it ethically. What does that mean, exactly? That conflict is a big part of my art.”

Art is consumed in so many different ways. You could say people don’t stop to appreciate art. On the other hand, people can consume art more quickly.

Everything he asks gets me thinking. If I’m going to do this, sacrifice time with family and friends, sacrifice resources, I need to think carefully about what I going to say and how I’m going to say it.

When we cut off access to certain parts of our cities to people on bikes or in wheelchairs, we’re not only doing economic damage, we’re also doing culture damage.

I’m interested in questions my son asks me, like, “Why do animals fight? Why do you have to leave us to go on the road?” Everything he asks gets me thinking.

New York is the culture capital of the world because people are running into each other on the street all the time. They are forced to engage in creativity and problem-solving.

But that would put me on a path that would make me totally divergent from who I am. I don’t have to go through the heartache many other people go through, of figuring out what makes them “wealthy.” I know what brings me joy.

There are not a lot of paths through the woods for someone who sings, plays the cello, and wants to tour on a human scale and create change in the world. I’m on my own path. It’s pretty awesome.

I’m definitely musician and storyteller. But I always like to take an active role in things I care about socially and environmentally.

The reason I make art is because I get to make a choice about who I am, what I do, and what I put out into the world, the footsteps I leave behind.

You pull into the venue, check into the cheap hotel you can afford, eat whatever is there, sleep, wake up, and repeat. You’re not really participating in the community.

For every show that we do, anyone that rides public transit, bikes, or walk, we offer them a $5 voucher at the merch table. It gets people using the infrastructure in the area.

I’m a husband and a dad. Two thirds of my day is spent being that character. It’s a huge part of my identity and why I pursue things I do. I’m interested in questions my son asks me, like, “Why do animals fight? Why do you have to leave us to go on the road?”

I’m a husband and a dad. Two thirds of my day is spent being that character. It’s a huge part of my identity and why I pursue things I do.

I felt like I was cheating myself of those communities and cheating the audience because I wasn’t able to know them. That’s what the bikes did, without me having to put any arbitrary philosophy on what it was supposed to be. It enabled human connection.

Hopefully, the venues where we play will lobby city council and say, we need bike paths, sidewalk repair. That stuff affects so many people’s lives.

Cities like Portland, Seattle, and Long Beach, which have made these investments in their infrastructure, are seeing not only health advantages, but also a lot more exchange in the community, which leads to better policy-making and stronger communities.

It’s nowhere near as intense as what I imagine an actor experiences backstage, but I feel a fluttering nervousness before a curtain goes up on a play. I mean, any play, anywhere – on Broadway or the Bowery or in a church basement.

You can be horrified by the state of the prisons, the misery in certain neighborhoods of its cities, or their level of poverty.

I’m a great believer in karma and the vengeance that it serves up to those who are deliberately mean is generally enough for me.

The problem with being Comeback Player of the Year is it means you have to go somewhere before you can come back.

Sherlock [Holmes] is on the side of the angels, but don’t think he’s one of them. He uses similar means, but it seems to be for a better purpose, one would hope.

If moral precepts alone could have reformed mankind, the mission of the Son of God into all the world would have been unnecessary. The perfect morality of the gospel rests upon the doctrine which, though often controverted has never been refuted: I mean the vicarious life and death of the Son of God.

The only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government is the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by means of the Bible.

Very often we mean the same thing. But what we do mean, what in the Western world we call human rights, in the Islamic world, they don’t talk about rights. Now they do, but in the past they didn’t. It wasn’t part of their terminology. But really it’s the same thing.