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I made my own fictional land, which is 'Bell Choir Coast.' It was a response to feeling really, really lost, and it was what I was looking for.

I always seem to get inspiration and renewed vitality by contact with this great novel land of yours which sticks up out of the Atlantic.

All my stories take place on the West Coast - not the beach, but smaller inland towns. I feel homesick, and I find inspiration in capturing that.

It sounds like a cliche, but it... you do sing about what you know about. And I grew up in a small town, and I grew up in a place where your whole world revolved around friends, family, school, and church, and sports.

I've written a lot about southern California, but I don't use the same characters. Leave the people in the songs in the songs, is my philosophy.

I'm really drawn to West Coast composers and I think it has a little something to do with looking across the Pacific instead of looking across the Atlantic.

There's the historical part of The Beach Boys' music; it's pretty incredible, pretty vast and pretty varied too.

The virtual choir would never replace live music or a real choir, but the same sort of focus and intent and esprit de corps is evident in both, and at the end of the day it seems to me a genuine artistic expression.

To be on 'Coast to Coast,' you have to be willing to stay awake in the middle of the night. But in return you get a great audience of millions of listeners all across the nation.

Let's pretend my career in music is a bell. Whether you like my music or not is up to you. But you've got to admit I rang that bell pretty hard and pretty often.