You gotta lean towards the things that make you like yourself. Forget everything else.
I never sit and fill a journal with lyrics. Most of the time I'm trying to write a feeling, not a story. I'm not necessarily trying to describe the details of a place or event so much as the feeling of the thing. It is a kind of weird alchemy that is elusive until it feels right.
Live on coffee and flowers. Try not to worry what the weather will be.
There are records that you just sink into. They coincide with what you’re going through and become an ally. If our records do that for people, that’s the greatest compliment I could ever receive. That’s one of the reasons making music is so important to me, because there’s a very strange emotional reach. For me—more than books or movies or other things—music is like a mainline to your heart.
It is the melody and the rhythm that are by far the most important and then words and imagery and stuff, story bits will start to stick to a melody and that is the way I write.
I became at peace with the darkness or the personality that I have. I am usually pretty funny and happy.
I've never quite felt totally comfortable up on stage. I've gotten more comfortable, but drinking wine is a crutch that gives me a little courage. It helps me lose a little bit of the self-consciousness and the awareness of how awkward it is standing on a stage with lights and a bunch of people looking at you while you sing love songs.
I drink wine on stage to sort of loosen my grip on reality a little.
My parents know that I have always been sort of a dark melodramatic kid, so they were never concerned.
I think most people start rock bands in their early twenties or teens, but I was almost thirty at the time when the band started really doing anything and it took another several years before people started caring about us.
A song is a song and, if I am emotionally connected to do it, whether it is sad or not sad, I am going to chase that song.
Not all the songs are real events, but I do write about stuff that is close to my heart and it comes out one way or another.
Maybe because I have spent too much of my life in rock clubs. I don't really go to parties anymore either. I'll usually be in the bus by 11:30 after a show.
Sadness is not always the worst feeling. Sometimes it's a really pleasurable thing to be overwhelmed with sadness.
Music has got a community vibe to it that pulls people together, and those communities are different in different places.
I don't want somebody telling my daughter who she can marry, or what she can do with her body. That's what was at stake.
Weirdly, I was still trying to be the older brother, and trying to get him [Tom Berninger] to try to be more like me a little bit. Or not be more like me but... I was frustrated that he sometimes let things stop him in his life, and he let the wind get knocked out of his sails a few times.
A person with grace is somebody who's socially graceful or is a classy person, but sometimes you just feel the opposite of that, and you just feel like a jerk and a loser and a weirdo.
The song 'Humiliation' is kind of about what if, outside of a dinner party or something, I was blown up by a drone missile, out by the pool. What an embarrassing way to go.
When I have just sat down and tried to write the lyrics of a song, usually about half of it sounds like bullshit. I just have to go away from something and come back to it again later. I do a lot of editing and switching around and putting little pieces together to get the right mood and personality, and it takes me forever to get a song finished.
It takes us a long time to write a song that we all really like, so it makes sense that it would take a while for the listener to get there, too.
I'm not saying I'm not a moody guy sometimes, but I think I have a pretty normal balance.
We were always in the shadows of the stuff that was getting more attention. So people learned to listen to us slowly over time. And, frankly, we learned how to listen to ourselves. It takes us a long time to write a song that we all really like, so it makes sense that it would take a while for the listener to get there, too.
Lyrics need to be good, but they don't need to be obvious right away.
I focus on the words and then I have fun putting together the music after.
