“I wanted to write some lyrics that had some meaning to them, lyrics that were meaningful to me and hopefully people can take something from that.”

Lyrically we tried to just not be the same as a lot of the other crap that is out there right now.

You don’t want the biggest record deal as far as money goes, you just want to make sure that the people at the label really support your band and the music and stuff.

We really try to make sure that the band writes the songs, not just one person.

A lot of big labels will just sign bands like a write off.

So you have to just be really careful and make sure that when a deal comes along, that it’s like the right deal for you… not necessarily the most money, because you have to pay the record label that back in like record sales and stuff.

Being on Ozzfest has been a great way for us to break out and show metal fans that we have a heavy side.

We’re definitely not a metal band, but we’re a band that focuses on meaningful lyrics and melody.

Actually, we got signed in November of 2000 with Dreamworks which is the most amazing label.

Hopefully people can look at our band and see that we’re a heavy rock band.

Being a new band, I just can’t think of a better way to get your name out to all of the Hard-Rock crowd than playing with twenty of the biggest Hard-Rock bands in the world.

That was our first major tour and we got a chance to play in front of like 5000 people every day so it was like a Rock and Roll boot camp for us really

We knew that we wanted to play heavy music but I hadn’t gotten into melody and things like that.

Musicians don’t respect a lot of the stuff that is on TRL and a lot of musicians think that stuff on the radio is not good musically so when musicians say that they like us it obviously feels good.

Everything is completely democratic in this band so far and that is the way that we would like to keep it.

We just wanted to get as far away from the rap-rock scene as possible, because its been done and other bands do it better than us anyway.

I think that every band tries to mature their sound through their existence, you know?

It is no longer possible for lyric poetry to express the immensity of our experience. Life has grown too cumbersome, too complicated. We have acquired values which are best expressed in prose.

Man is lyrical, woman epic, marriage dramatic.

I have been accused of being a very simplistic, very lyrical player, and that’s okay. That just comes from the blues, which is my background. But every day you wake up and transcend. You can’t ever rest on your laurels.

I don’t really know what inspires me to write the music I do, but usually, the music will set the tone for the lyrics.

A song is a song. But there are some songs, ah, some songs are the greatest. The Beatles song Yesterday. Listen to the lyrics.

If you really look at my lyrics, nobody’s exempt. Nobody’s exempt from observation, criticism or what I think is correction.

I stopped telling people what lyrics meant to them when I saw them tattoo it on them, because it clearly meant much more to them than it ever did to me.

I feel like ‘Next To Me’ is a great introduction because it’s a simple song that has a simple message for me. I wanted to introduce something that lyrically I’m proud of and introduces me both as an artist and as a writer.