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You always have a lot of time on the road, and you have to fill that time up with something.
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Terrible things happen all of the time, and they can happen in a second. The best thing is to be prepared to react. If you try to control every little thing, you're going to end up miserable - and you're going to fail.
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I try to read a lot and listen to a lot of good songwriters, and I try to actually work on the craft of writing a song rather than just leaving it up to inspiration.
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Any narrative, whether it's fiction or not, you have to approach it as though it really happened to you. I think that's the only way to get inside the characters and make the narrative work. It's a storytelling tradition, and I think to come off as genuine then you have to really approach it that way.
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I feel like people have a lot of the same good times and the same interests pretty much anywhere.
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I have modes, mental modes that I get in, and when I'm on the road, I focus very much on doing the work. On playing the show, on being good every night. And part of me just gets switched off. The part that's very private and very personal and very intimate. That especially, that part of me gets shut off.
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The Police could get away with doing an entire record with really no audible reverb, which I have always admired and thought would be a lot of fun to try to re-create.
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I'm not trying to steer people in a direction. I'm just trying to move them. Wherever it takes them, it doesn't matter to me. I just want them to be moved in one way or another, and that's a hard thing to do, I think.
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There are so few people that wake up every day and go do something that they don't dread... I'm very lucky.
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I've never been someone who's very prone to boredom. I don't know, boredom seems like something you should grow out of at about 15 or 16. There's so much that needs to be done.
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I don't write a whole lot about one person that exists in reality; it's usually characteristics of different people that I combine into a character. I tend to think through and try and make characters behave in a natural way. I follow the character and think about what they would do, what decisions they would make.
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I don't think I'd be happy if I were satisfied. I enjoy challenge, and I wouldn't say that I'm an ambitious person career-wise or financially, really. I would like to travel more comfortably, but that's really about all I need.
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When I was playing with the Truckers, a lot of really good things happened. And we had a good trajectory for a long time. For that kind of a band, for the kind of music that I've always made, we had a lot of success, I think.
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When somebody asks me what a song or a line is about, I feel like I'm not done writing it yet.
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When I joined the Truckers, I was 21 and riding in the van with guys who were a generation older than me.
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Something that really helps when it comes to writing songs is you start to notice how children learn and how we all had to learn in the first place, starting from the ground up. It gives you a new perspective.
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If I could write rock & roll songs on purpose, I'd do it all the time. But most of what I write comes out slow and sad because that's most of what I listen to.
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A lot of the world turns into checklists for me when I'm on the road. Like, OK, this person's alive, this person's fed, this person's good. Soundcheck is done. Everything becomes a checklist except for the actual show.
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At some point, I'd like to make a record that's more of a self-serving guitar album, because I really love to play. It's not really something I'd expect a whole lot of people to buy, though.
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A great story poorly told doesn't do anybody any good at all, and nobody wants to hear it, and nobody wants to read it. The craft of it is really more important than the subject matter.
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When I was still drinking, I thought I was kind of in control of everything in my life and other people's lives and realized at some point that that just wasn't the case at all.
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Songs like 'Outfit' and 'Decoration Day' and 'Dress Blues,' those were good songs, but the output wasn't as consistent in those days.
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I think probably songwriters are gonna be the toughest critics... I think of it as a community. And we all sort of feed off of each other.
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The good thing about songwriting is you don't have to delineate between what's true and what's fiction; records aren't put on the shelf that way. Books are, movies are, but records aren't.