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It's great when you play to an audience that knows the words to all your songs, and sings them back to you.

Music tells you about the artist and what they were thinking about at the time, because the person has to think about it to sing it.

I usually don't write songs by people calling me and saying, 'Write a song about this.' Usually I'm just going with what I want to write, so you never know.

It's nice if people ask to use your song. You have to make a decision as an artist how you feel about that.

To make a song is a gift, and once it's done it keeps evolving and changing and becomes a tool to interact with other people. It's like a conversation.

When you're writing a song, you have to know two things. You have to know who you are, and you have to think about other people.

When you write a song you have an idea of how it should be sung but it doesn't work out that way if someone else records it.

When I go to see people, I always kind of hope they are going to play some kind of songs I know. So you've got to know your audience. It's kind of something that is a blessing and a curse in a way. You're obligated to play some of that stuff that people know, but I don't think that's all you have to do.

I know that often times a lot of people who work in music, whether they be labels and so on or even artists, want personal recognition. We want to be recognized for something, for what we did. I'd rather my song be recognized for what it's doing and that's important. It's not so important how many people know me.

It can be an educational thing to play your songs to people because you see where you've gone right and where you've gone wrong.