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I always wanted the world to hear my music, but I didn't know how I was gonna go about it.

I never set out to write songs about the world around me... it just kind of came about as a result of paying more attention to things.

I didn't take music seriously in the beginning. It just kind of a hobby to me. It was something that I love doing for fun.

In the past, some of the songs that were the most fun, and the most entertaining and rocking, fell by the wayside because I was concerned with what I was going to say and how I was going to say it.

I think songwriting was the biggest way that I found my identity.

When I was younger, I had a much better connection between words and music. Somewhere along the way, I had kind of an aspiration to disconnect them, to just kind of go into a totally musical world.

I was an absolute idiot, wearing polo-necks, reading Kerouac, watching Woody Allen movies, and jazz fitted right into all of that. My interest in that whole world became very genuine, but perhaps started off a bit affected - a mixture of right and wrong reasons. I was always drawn to non-commercial music, perhaps pathologically so.

The problem with music was always that the sound system often obliterated the words, and words, not music, have always been what I was about.

I think I definitely learned how to structure songs, just from listening to a lot of 1960s, 1970s pop music, although I'm sure my mother's watchful eye had a lot to do with it.

It was writing about music for NPR - connecting with music fans and experiencing a sense of community - that made me want to write songs again. I began to feel I was in my head too much about music, too analytical.