I grew up in the Midwest and never really felt at home there, and when I got to New York, I was really fearless. I feel like I really fell in love with the the place. But then, it's a place where your world is really big at first and then becomes really small. I found myself hardly leaving my neighborhood, like I made it into a small town.
I'm a really big Fiona Apple fan, and more times than not, when I put her on in the car, people are surprised. I think they associate her less as a songwriter and more as a '90s MTV generation artist.
I had a very easy middle class upbringing and never had to worry about anything. But my parents came from nothing and from broken homes, and their stories were always very interesting.
I'm very impressionable: I get very taken away by stories and certain feelings. With writing, sometimes I want to feel like a character.
Anytime I'm locked out of somewhere with another person, I can usually pick the lock successfully. And then I feel like James Bond.
When I think about the most exotic, beautiful places, Porto is at the front of my mind. It's incredible, man. You have an idea of what Europe is like as an American, and people talk about Paris, Berlin and Stockholm, which are all great, but it wasn't until I went to Porto that I felt that idea of this exotic, beautiful, timeless place.
I write all the time, and I write a lot of songs, but before I started putting out records, those songs always just ended up on stuff that I did with The Babies.
I feel like 'Harlem River' was me putting one foot out the door of New York, and 'Still Life' is between Point A and Point B. It's the grey area.
When I first moved to New York in 2006, I spent most of my time hanging out at and going to shows at a punk house in Crown Heights called The Fort where, amongst many roommates, my friend Johnny lived. Johnny loves The Germs, the legendary L.A. punk band fronted by the late, great Darby Crash.
To be alive at all is so crazy, to experience the wide spectrum of feelings and emotions is so wild, but we have nothing else to compare it to, so it becomes normal.
'Harlem River' is about the Harlem River in uptown Manhattan. I don't know much to say about it. I came upon that river a couple of years ago. I was doing a walk the length of Manhattan, from the top to the bottom, and I had never seen that river before.
Paris has always shown a lot of love towards my music, and I am very grateful.
I always considered myself a songwriter, but I didn't move to New York with plans of doing that; it just sort of happened. Everyone thinks that I moved to New York strictly to play music, but I totally just happened to fall into playing with Woods, and it all got started from there. I just went to New York to hang out.
'Singing Saw' was exactly seeing through my eyes; 'City Music' let me write from somebody else's perspective, somebody living in New York.
