What are those other things you're interested in?

I like to read when there's windows of time that I can actually concentrate. Which usually goes on for several months and then I find that I can't focus on anything for a month or more. Those times usually coincide with the least interesting parts of my life, when I'm feeling like time isn't moving, I'm not getting any new things to think about. Like when I'm playing my songs over and over again on tour. I love playing music, but it's not healthy to have what you're doing for months at a time revolve around ... yourself. It gets really weird. People have different reactions to it. Some people really like it. It feeds some sort of need in them to really get a lot of attention all the time. They can become addicted to it and when it goes away they become all bummed out. For some people the experience freaks them out so much, they get drug problems to just dull everything out, so they don't feel anything. For me, it's kind of in between those things. I get tired of hearing my voice all the time, I wish I could sing in different ways. But in general I like it. At this point I have enough songs to choose from, so I don't have to play the ones I'm sick of.

Do you think you'll ever get to the point where you may not want to play music anymore?

I feel like if it got to the point where I didn't want to play music anymore, or couldn't, that would signify that something had just sort of gone irreparably wrong and I probably wouldn't be able to do anything creative. But I don't see that happening. There's a million songs to make up, even though people who don't write songs say, "It's all been done before." They're so wrong! There's just millions of things to do, particularly lyrically. For a long time there's been more people interested in the musical side of things and less people who think it's fun and interesting to play around with words and be imaginative with them. I think there's a lot of lyrical things that haven't really been touched on.

When you tour, I imagine the best times are when you are connecting to the audience, speaking to them not just lyrically, but through the music. But I'm not sure if there's any way of making sure that happens.

There are certain things you can do to make that more likely to happen. Certain kinds of bullshit you can avoid. That's what's so great about touring. Sometimes it's like, "Tonight is going to be amazing and I'm going to remember how lucky I am to be doing this." But it can also be, "Tonight is gonna suck and I'm going to wonder why I'm doing this. I'm not cut out for this!" But I guess, like we said earlier, it would get boring if it was one way all the time. I do think people can go a long way on the moments of pure happiness in their lives. It's like getting a big shot of vitamins -- you don't get sick again for weeks!

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