The same song on a different day was a different song.
I was gifted with a life that was full of adventure. I've always believed, if you're gifted, that it's incumbent not to think about giving something back.
We'd just signed with Arista, the record company. Arista was freaking about the phenomenon of tapers showing up at our shows. They were insisting that we put an end to this. And we just didn't want to do that.
We wanted to establish a new fan base over here. And second, we wanted to challenge ourselves. We wanted to bring what is ostensibly new music to fresh ears and see what lights them up.
Obviously I believe in reincarnation and all that kind of stuff - I don't think anyone's going to be surprised to hear that.
I'm looking forward to some more solo acoustic dates. That's a lot of fun for me, because I get to be alone with the song. And I get to hear every little nuance; if my instrument does something that I wasn't expecting, I get to chase that. Chase that down a little bit.
The premise that we're working with is that when most people go to a show, they're not really watching what's going on onstage. They may be watching what's on the screen. But when the songs are playing in their mind's eye, they're actually watching a movie.
One of the things that the Grateful Dead did, way back when, was we spent a lot of time just turning each other on to music. If somebody was listening to something that really caught their ear, they'd make sure that everybody else in the band heard it, and that came home for us in innumerable ways.
They're protecting an archaic industry. They should turn their attention to new models.
I don't know if I discovered I had any talent. It was dogged persistence. I had to have the music.