“It comes down to building your own world out here on the road. It’s who you surround yourself with. My band and crew are really positive guys.”

I try to write like the writers I admire – I rip them off in form. It comes from George Strait and Merle Haggard records, and country music in general is really good at that, the twisted phrase… So Im always looking for that angle in my own work.

I ruined my health drinking to other people’s.

The nice thing about the world that I’ve been able to inhabit for the last couple of years is that I’m given a lot of freedom. Not all artists really get that.

I get to cry to Barbara Walters, when things don’t go my way. I’ll get community service no matter which laws I break.

When they say you’re the best, I always remember that the majority of the audience probably thinks someone else should have gotten the award.

Someday I’m gonna be famous. Do I have talent, well, no. These days you really don’t need it.

Guitar playing isn’t really for everybody.

There ain’t a woman in the world that wants to hear the word yes when she asks if you think that she looks chubby in that dress. And if she cooks all day you better eat it with a smile; it doesn’t matter if it tastes just like bad gravy on a Goodyear tire.

Rock Band never got anybody a date. Never.

I can fall in and out of love, have marriages that barely last a month. When they go down the drain, I’ll blame it on the fame.

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.

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.

People always – when you rise, whenever you’re getting to a point where you’re a very big band, which is a very rare thing, there are always going to be people that aren’t going to like you.

I’m my own worst critic and I think everyone in the band is a perfectionist.

You wouldn’t be a complete band without a slightly cocky frontman, would you?

I’m a bass player from way back and Paul is a guitar player and we’ve been in many bands.

As far as the grunge thing, there are three bands from Seattle that I would call true grunge.

You can’t just listen to The Smiths anymore. But then there are plenty of people that do only listen to five bands and six albums and that’s it.