I think people learn best and are more engaged when it's just normal relatable situations that illustrate the principles they're discussing.
I don't like to believe in canon.
One thing I'm super aware of in my music when I'm writing is: 'Am I overcomplicating this?' I'll write a song about some deep existential quandary and explore all these dumb thought waves, and then think 'Is it effective to say that? Or is it effective to say one simple thing that communicates the feeling better?'
I like Telecasters because they are so versatile.
There is something familial about punk. There is something positive. Even though some punk is destructive, nihilistic, explosive.
My parents wouldn't let me listen to 'American Idiot.' So it felt very rebellious to go over to my friend's house after school and listen to it in secrecy.
Ultimately, I feel like there is just a pervasive evidence of God. Though I know that is maybe a controversial thing to say.
My dad took me to the skate park every single weekend to see alternative bands.
There's no musician who just wakes up one day and decides, 'This is what I want to do.' It takes some development.
Music and musical instruments were proximal to my life from very early on - I took piano lessons for a brief time, but then my dad had a guitar and when he was not playing it, I would pick it up and mess with it. He jokes that I used to complain that it hurt my fingers.
My parents were always playing records: My mom was really into the Beatles and Fleetwood Mac, and my dad was more Billy Squire, Whitesnake, '80s hair metal. But I think there's that crucial point where you become an adolescent and you don't want to listen to your parents' music.
I feel like it's a necessary part of musical development to go through that phase where you think that your favorite style of music is the only style of music, and I thought that for a while.
I had a lot of fear about coming out as a kid.
I feel really privileged to have gracious and merciless people with a lot of perspective and patience in my life.
If 1,500 people are gonna see me and they each pay $20, I want to give them everything that I possibly can. They just made an exchange that allows me to live a dream of mine since I was a child. And that's not lost on me. So I want to expend every ounce of power and energy I have.
Some shows feel very reverent - when you're in a seated theater, no one really sings. I love it when people sing! I wish people would sing all the time. Because one of my favorite things when I get to do as a musician is step away from the microphone and listen to everyone sing together.
The thing about music is that it gives voice and names to anguish and also addresses how to comfort it.
When I am writing alone I try to just write for myself without thinking, like, this will go on a record.
Appointments' is largely just derived from pieces of dialogue with another person, and then also what's going on inside of my own mind, or a person's own mind. They're intended to be a little bit exaggerated and a satire of things that we're not sure are entirely true, or maybe biased.
