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I would make far more money if every song were my own, but I don't write to fill up the album with my songs.

I hadn't been a recording artist all that long when albums came on the scene, and I was one of the first singers to point the way to how varied an album's contents could be.

With the first album, I wanted to do so many different things, and I was fighting with myself to try and see if I was worthy enough to do it.

With Dollars And Cents on the album, we had it as a band jam and I sometimes spend evenings playing with records over the top of things we were working on to see what works.

I really just dabble in music; I really just did a few albums for my fans.

I did a lot of writing for a lot of different kinds of bands that I was in and out of during those five years and that left me with a little body of songs that I liked better when I played alone, so I ended up going out solo and very soon made my first album.

An album is such a personal thing. It's something I always wanted to do. It's me doing me, singing as me.

I began the process of recording myself seriously in the fall of 1999. If I could finish an album of my own music, I would. Five years later I am happy to say I have.

I was an artist, I was executive producer on my first album, so I've always had to manage both. I couldn't get a record deal. It wasn't by choice - I couldn't get a record deal, so I had to figure it out.

Those albums are so important to me because, for the first time, I was making my own music, paying for it, finding strengths in it, and going through the process of finding the right music for the record.