Every show I play is like a little celebration of something in my life that has gone really well.
I don't focus on one thing. I play guitar and bass and keyboards and drums, but I never stay on anything long enough to become a specialist at it.
My voice is not very dynamic.
I don't really have friends in general. I never have. I didn't go to college and didn't have friends in high school.
Literally everything I do is either write songs and play music, or I'm immersed in my domestic life.
I was cripplingly shy. When I was in high school, my teachers thought I was mentally disabled because I wouldn't be able to say anything or do anything. They thought I didn't speak.
I always felt weird. I don't feel particularly likeable.
It's kind of crazy how music helped me overcome the anxieties that I have.
I don't know if i have a 'take' on L.A. The music community is enormous, from the studio musicians to the bands trying to 'make it' to the indie bands... so many bands... it can be overwhelming. But it seems healthy.
I'm the haphazard engineer of my own music.
I like to collaborate with other people for studio recordings because I believe collaboration, in any form, makes music better.
I really don't have a method. I gravitate towards the organic/acoustic, but I still often complete songs musically before attempting to find the lyric.
Most of the times that I've written break-up songs, it's been different because I was always trying to get back to something: get back to a situation or talk my way or sing my way back into the relationship.
I've learned by experience that, if I get too clever with lyrics, or if I'm not totally embodying my own wants and needs in the songs, I can't remember them.
Young bands are so angry. There are young bands that are so incredibly successful, getting incredible reviews, and they are totally angry.
I've managed to alienate most of what would be considered the core audience that I'm supposed to have had.
It's cool to think about nursing, because a lot of people decide to go into it later in their lives. I could slip into school to be an LPN or an RN as a middle-aged man, and it wouldn't be unusual.
Harmony Korine, the screenwriter, was really into my early work. I did a lot of stuff under the name Sentridoh and a lot of 4-track cassette stuff that he was into.
Early on, I really liked the idea of being confrontational. I loved the idea of making songs that made people really uncomfortable.
I hear people telling me a lot that the production of that particular record - 'One Part Lullaby' - really influenced them. I'm like, 'What? We were dropped from the label after that!'
