Quotes

I never went through a wave of hating Christianity, even though my parents were born-again Christians, and there were a lot of ideas that were being practiced that I think were misguided.

I had a band and I didn't go to high school, all my friends were older than me. It was pretty cool to have such a focus at that age, but also it alienated me from a lot of people my age. So I felt pretty lonely and I didn't really have many friends when I was a kid.

It's rare for me to sit in a room with my guitar and feel like I can't stop playing, because it just sounds so good.

That's the way I started playing music: just playing guitar by myself in my room when I was a kid, and exploring the guitar and exploring the space I was in, with no project in mind.

I think that being alive is intense for most beings in some way. Even the process of being born is an intense one, and coming to see and understand and experience the physical world, and all that goes along with being a physical being, and experiencing all of these different forms of loss throughout life.

My parents divorced when I was 12, and leading up to that it was... not without turbulence.

So we're in this process of letting go of our own attachments to our physical forms and to the people we love, and... basically everything. Life is like this one big process of letting go.

My mother was really beautiful, and I had to deal with her being objectified my entire childhood. But she also had this depth and purity that was almost otherworldly.

I always said I got my music from my dad, but my mom had these cassettes - Bjoerk and the Cocteau Twins and the Talking Heads. That was her music, and she would just get so wild and free when she listened to it.

There's a natural separation that kids have to go through with their parents, but then when you put that on top of actually having a career, it gets even more painful.

I am always thinking about records I want to make.

I'd gotten used to recording background vocals perfectly, doing 18 takes of them until they line up. Not recognizing the inherent beauty in each performance, but just making something good.

I'm committed to an honest expression, not necessarily a performance.

When I first started out in the band, I had so many walls up.

Some people operate in complete fear that they're gonna lose their stuff and their money. That sounds like hell to me. And then I guess some people operate with hands open, and maybe empty, but at least striving for a deeper understanding of what it means to care.

Yeah it's mostly driving and taking airplanes but I like the trains - they're probably my favorite mode of transportation. They're smooth, steady, and you've got a lot of room and can walk around.

I'll get a few words and then go back to the music and then back to words, and play them off each other - and then I'll bring the song to the band.

I want everyone to feel very welcomed in the space of our music and our songs, it doesn't matter what you believe or think, I just want to cultivate a space of peace and to touch on these things that bind us as humans.

We pop into existence and we know that we die and we know that we lose everyone that we love and we know we even lose our own bodies. And what a paradigm. What a mystery.

I can't really choose how I'm going to connect to music. I find it just has to hit a wave, and just wash over me and take me completely to some other space.

Like, I'd rather tour maybe six months out of the year, instead of nine.

Well, whenever I visit New York it feels pretty romantic, so I sometimes think about coming back here. But then I wonder if it's just 'cause I'm visiting that it feels so good. But also, Minnesota. I could imagine myself finding a place in Minneapolis.

I grew up in the suburbs, sometimes country-like suburbs because we moved around, but mostly suburbs.

Mostly I've just been stealing little moments for myself in order to write - in the bathroom at a hotel, or just slipping away for a half an hour. Amidst all of the touring, life has been happening.

With music, when you finish a record, you are entwined with it throughout your existence in a way which is both interesting and challenging because it's a living form, you have to come back to it.