Rich kids who write songs about food stamps always piss me off. I'm not going to write any songs about that, either.
I think I have a lot of empathy for animals and nature in general. Those things just make me comfortable. I grew up in the middle of nowhere, around a lot of animals. I feel for them.
It's like sometimes, you can just lay back and it takes the pressure off of you.
I try not to be overly literal. When I'm writing songs, I write down a lot of words, and then I try to simplify it. I like to give people hints or words that make visual pictures for them.
I know that I can sing really loud. It's like having that really big Evinrude engine on the back of your fishing boat. But I've been trying to be more dynamic with my voice and not just singing on ten all of time out of terror.
You can't just play the same thing, over and over again.
The only ones that stand out to me are people like Jonathan Richman or Robyn Hitchcock, who can make you totally cry while their music is so funny and they're hilarious. They know they're great but they also don't think they're better than you and they really invite you into their show.
Being the boss of your own career, you get used to having veto power and getting what you want, or as close to what you want as you have mapped out.
Everybody in my band is married, pretty much, and have lives at home, and I don't want them to be away from their families so long that they just start to feel psychotic. You have to go home and stand around in your bathrobe doing your dishes to feel like a normal person sometimes.
Every band wants to go believe me, not everybody makes it, but they want to.
Everyone has to kind of fend for themselves.
I don't feel nervous or fearful when I'm on stage.
I like to think that I'm not old yet.
I remember people would talk about Country Music like it was this sexist, lame thing. Well, no, because Dolly Parton is writing songs and playing her guitar and producing. She's doing it all and she's got hits on the radio.
I'm not very interesting. Birds are interesting. I could stand there lip-synching all day long, but it would feel funny, and people would be able to tell. I'm not a good actress.
When you're making records, you develop, and so you hear the things you want to move away from. It stings a little, but you know, you gotta own it too. You've got to just go, "You know, I wasn't afraid to learn in front of people, so I give myself a little credit for not being afraid of anything."
There's no grand excellence to it. In my experience it was just almost the gulaggy boringness of it that'll kill you. You're just in this murk. And you're with other humans, but you lose all your human skills and it's just like you're in this plastic bag and you can't quite connect with people. You lose your ability to transmit electricity or something, and to receive it.
All I want to do is sing on other people's records.
When you get an idea, it's not going to be a great idea until you push it. You’ve got to push it until it’s uncomfortable. And then you’ve got to ask yourself, ‘Does my project say to my audience what I want it to say?’ ”
There's just kind of a sweetness about Canadians. Americans are a little more pushy, I mean, in a way that I enjoy - they're basically pushy because of their enthusiasm - we're a lot clumsier than other people.
The Bible tries to make humans not animals the whole time. I think it's a bit of a mistake.
I tried to have more than one emotion on the record.
I think my songwriting might be a little more on the darker side maybe.
I should have been an abortion. The only reason I wasn't was that my father was a Christian.
The men who have gotten women pregnant need to be accountable if we are. If we are going to jail, the men are coming too. Religious rhetoric will bite its own ass trying to nail only women in a two-person process.
