Quotes

I would spend about eight months on a song, leaving it alone and going back to it later on. I just kept layering things on, building them up in to epic songs. I let the songs evolve - it's really daunting.

All those crazy Impressionist painters in France were friends but they would write about how jealous and competitive they were. That's what makes good art.

The Heartbreakers were what you imagine being in a band would be like - best buddies and great players and guys who took it all really seriously.

I've never set out to do anything other than get better at guitar and record and have fun. I feel like the Jazzmaster's just your comrade on that journey. It can be really subtle, it can be angry, it can be chill. It can be anything.

I like to work hard and I like to work for somebody. I like to stay late and clean up the back and show the boss in the morning.

In terms of tone and style, I've always been influenced by a lot of different players. I love Nick Drake, Mike Bloomfield and Sonic Boom. I like those three a lot!

I've seen people who like a certain song write on their Instagram what they think the lyrics are - which they aren't. I'm like, 'Oh, that's interesting - you can create your own adventure with some of these songs.' Which is really cool.

I tend to think about so many different things on a recording. I'll be trying to tune into what the drummer's doing, trying to keep everyone playing the groove and other things like making sure the piano's in a nice pocket.

I love playing guitar every night, and to be at this point where it's like, the songs are done and I'm happy with the way they are on record, and I get to hear them be reinterpreted by the live band? That's kind of the icing on the cake. It's the best.

In high school, I was head of the lab. I dumped a whole five-gallon bucket of D-76 on my head once. It ruined all my clothes.

I was a bouncer, if you can believe it for a while in a sports bar. I let everybody in.

I'd think the house was the source of great sadness or pressure. I knew it wasn't. I knew it was just where I lived. But I'd walk up the stairs and the second floor was just desolate. My old bedroom: empty. My old rehearsal room: empty. First floor studio: messy and empty. Middle room: broken gear everywhere.

It was definitely strange to come home and all of a sudden have to shift gears into creative mode. I kind of had to figure out what it was about music that made it exciting, and question what it was that made it worth sacrificing all the other parts of my life that weren't as satisfying.

Sometimes it's hard for me to just be the guitar player and lose myself.

You can't really take it for granted that people listen to your music. I want to write songs that are on par, at least in my mind, with the ones I've loved for my whole life and that will be around forever.

When I was a kid I was definitely into Neil Young.

My mom and dad never really had friends, never went on vacations. We stayed home. And I see a similarity there: A general anxiety runs pretty deep.

With 'Slave Ambient', I was writing things on top of loops. Now I really get the structure of the song down, but I leave room for improvisation in the studio.

Every show with my Jazzmaster is like a new show.

In the past, we never really had that kind of spontaneity on record. When you start touring, you play songs in a certain way and then I start to feel like it's tough to really get lost in my playing.

I work off of my early demos. I'll keep adding on top of that, but I usually gravitate towards whatever that original idea was.

I love when things can repeat and you can make things slightly different each time and just react to the music and react to the recording.

I remember that in the past I was overwhelmed with the mystery of anxiety, or the mystery of depression, but now when you feel that feeling coming on you no longer go into fight-or-flight mode. You go: 'Oh, I know what this is' and you ride it out.

I never have a clear goal or a theme when it comes to writing an album.

I just need to work. There's no other thing with me.