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But the reality is when you write a song, you should be able to strip away all the instruments and just have a song right there with an acoustic guitar and a voice, and the song should be good.

Generally my songs are just some riffs slung together as an excuse for a guitar solo.

I am a self-taught guitarist. I just try to piece together passages that have some melodic value!

To me and my band, guitar riffs are what it's all about. We know that every time we jam on a great riff, we've got a fighting chance of writing a great song!

But when you get to a song, not only do you have to do a vocal melody, you have to write words and not be redundant and make some semblance of a story.

Weirdly enough, if I'm having trouble with a guitar part - not the playing of it but the writing - I'll mess around with echo and other effects, just turn everything up and make it as crazy as can be, and it winds up taking me somewhere. I've found so many guitar parts from echo. It's limitless.

And I've also come to the conclusion that, as far as guitar solos and things like that are concerned, it's more important to complement the music rather than take away from it.

Unfortunately, most of the songs that I write I don't write them with guitar in mind. I just write it as a song and that was probably one of the ones that left an opening for it. The song's all right, I wouldn't choose to sing it now.

When I write a song, it's all about the riff - the riff first, then the words come later.

My voice is my improvisational instrument, the melody instrument. The guitar is harmonic structure. I'm not a good enough guitarist to improvise on it.