“I was raised on pop music.”
“Everything I write is highly personal, but put in such a way that it's not dropping everything in someone's lap. Although sometimes I think 'The Taxi Ride' embarrasses me, because sometimes I think it's too close.”
“I always seem to find myself fighting the law of equilibrium - the great leveling force that brings things to the mean and takes the 'cartoonishness' out of life. Perhaps I am doing a very unnatural thing... If Einstein were still alive I would ask him about it.”
“I am a musician. I didn't know I would be so when I was young. I do know that I have always heard music in my head that I wasn't hearing somewhere else and I 'needed' this music. And obedient to the laws of nature, I created into this vacuum.”
“I have had the good fortune to experience both the limelight and the traffic light as a musician. I did my first recording on my own and it was available at concerts. The second to seventh were released on small and then large labels. My eighth to 14th were done under my own steam once again, but with the benefit of the Internet.”
“I try not to agonize over my lyrics, though, because that can come across in them. Some lyrics come more easily than others and some you have to spend a lot of time on, but I think you have to watch that you don't take the life out of them by worrying too much.”
“If you ask someone if they like music, they look at you strangely. It seems to be a universal given. Like asking someone if they like breathing. It is like breathing. Or air, rather. Flowing without and within. A matrix within which our lives are set. The setting for the tableware of our beings.”
“Maybe a part of me recognized how right the improvising spirit of jazz is. Not the sounds, but the freedom to work with musicians who work that way. It felt very natural to me, but I think there's a way to do it without it being a jazz record.”
“Since the music industry cracked and fell apart, gasping for the cash flow it had come to expect, much re-thinking has been the order of the day. It is a fine time to be a musician. Like walking through Sodom and Gomorrah while it is still smoking, on your way to the next gig.”
“So many of my friends are still trying to get record deals, and I've had one for 10 years now, where my only goal is to make the best music I can make. I've been very lucky. I have great faith that I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be, and whatever happens is going to be absolutely right for me.”