Pastoral Resources

You are ugly when you love her, you are beautiful and fresh, vital and free, modern and poetic when you don't... you are more beautiful as an orphan than as your mother's son.

I'd just recorded it in Mariah Carey's studio. THey thought the song was perfect for Nina, because she's so shy, so it was nice to have that connection with Nina in the song. It was special.

Well, Neighbours wanted to do a song on the show, and they asked me what songs I had. I told them I'd just written this song, called Born to Try, and I had just gone overseas and spoken to some people from Song about it.

And then, I was thinking of doing a record just like starting with voice, because I did this one song that was just kind of a cappella, and I did it for this art piece I did where people could come and play music to go with a voice.

If part of the purpose of making an album is to get some radio play, then you might as well think about that. But that's not really how we picked the songs.

We have been trying to play a lot of different kinds of music, and probably the next album will go back more towards the direction where you couldn't classify each song as a certain kind of music. This album you can.

There's no way we could play a country song as well as a country band or a Latin song as well as a Latin band. We could never expect to do that. We just keep doing what we do, what we know how to do. We sound like ourselves.

Last tour my bass rig was breaking down every other night. That was a pain. We would get on stage and Trey would count off the song, and I'd play the first note and nothing would be there. Those guys would just roll their eyes.

I feel like I want to write some songs and I don't know how to go about doing it. Usually it's the lyrics that are a problem, and I think I am not really cut out to be a lyricist.

I haven't written enough songs to be able to say that I have a system. I've only written a handful.

Actually, the funny thing is, after all these years, I've got all these new songs to learn for the show we're doing at Joe's Pub, so it's kind of fun to get down and rehearse new things, and also rethink some of the older songs, how we're going to do them.

It creates a conflict of interest - what songs would I use for me, and what would I use for the band.

Once I'd chosen the songs, it seemed like it would just be a question then of recording them. But it's a case of trying to re-invent the songs; taking them in different directions.

People are People still gets played to death on '80s stations. It was our first big break in America. It's not exactly my favorite song.

I tend to like songs that are very emotional, that strike a chord with me emotionally.

I always hate explaining away songs, because for me they mean something, and for other people, they'll mean something absolutely different.

I didn't write songs for a very long time.

I do a cover of a Velvet Underground song, and they were one of the most important bands, for me.

I can tell jokes. I can talk to the audience. I can relax. I can change my songs whenever I want. I can change the tempos. I can change the mood, because I'm in charge.

When you sing a song the way I sing it, you have to use your whole body. It's almost like working out.