I wanted to talk to you a bit about your songwriting. Can you tell me a bit about how you write? Do you actually write stuff down?
No. I don't like to involve my brain, so the last thing I'd do is take notes and carry around pieces of poetry with me. I really don't have the stomach or the attention span for poetry so I don't involve myself with that side of it (laughs). The only time I have to see it written down that way is on the records, and that looks sooo funny! You know the song "Teller" from this record? Written down it is so hilarious. It is just like this lady going, "I don't know! I don't know! Ahh!! I don't know!" So that is entertaining in a way. The lyrics, I hear after the music as syllables. They all fit together phonetically and they turn into words. I find, when the words sound beautiful, it is because they are necessary. So they tell the right story. Um, the less I have to do with it, the better.
Is it almost like they are coming to you from somewhere else...like maybe it is something you can't intellectualize but it just happens?
Yup. And it feels literally like hearing. So if I am not in charge then the stories and the morals are more realistic. They are surprising and they are down to earth, and they are not limited to what I already know.
Are they surprising to you every time? I mean, do you usually step back and say, "Wow, where did that come from?"
Oh, every time.
Really?
Yeah, (laughs). And I don't know what I'm saying half the time...even long afterwards. We sat down to do the (media) bio for University, and the lady says, "Why did you make a water record?"
A what record?
A water record. I thought that was like a music business term I had never heard of. So I said, "I'm sorry, I don't know what a water record is." She said, "No, I mean, the oceans and rain and glasses of water...there's like 150 references to water."
I hadn't noticed that, but now that I think of it, it is so true.
Well I hadn't noticed it either, and I looked at the boys and they were just kind of nodding.
So this is your water record, huh?
Yeah, well, apparently! (laughs)
It sounds like songwriting comes in a really unique, natural way to you. Was that the case when you started writing songs when you were 14?
Um, I started writing when I was nine. They weren't that way at all. They were just a nine year old making up songs, that's when I started playing guitar. Then when I was 14 they started writing themselves that way. The other was learning the craft of songwriting by imitating people.
Who were some of the people you imitated, just out of curiosity?
I would find myself writing an X song or a Violent Femmes song, just thinking I liked the way they sounded. It was a stupid way to write songs. X was already doing it. (laughs)
Well, I think everyone has to go through that stage.
I think so. I think that is a good stage to go through...but it might not be. It should be that it colors your perceptions of your own voice. I went through it, and I went through a self-expression stage too where I had to get my psycho-garbage out so I could be clean enough to hear real songs. And those songs are just about me. End of story. No one else needs to hear them. It is like telling people your dreams. They are not for anyone else.
And an awful lot of bands today are simply imitating other bands.
I think that's more attractive to people than what I do. There is something about pure inspiration that makes people mad or scared or something. They would rather hear something they have heard before with a twist, with a moral. They want to know that you can make a song. But for me, songs don't push you around, they don't give a one dimensional picture, because that's not the truth. So I can't go back and do that, even though it would make a lot of people happier than they are now with me.
They can't put a finger on what you do maybe?
They think that I am not coming to any conclusions, and I'm like, "Well, yeah." (laughs) "Did you come to any conclusions? How long have you been alive?"
