Pastoral Resources

Growing up in Memphis and listening to all kinds of music and dreaming... So that was one of the first times I wrote a complete song and set it to music and the whole bit. From then on, I was busy with it.

It is the best of all trades, to make songs, and the second best to sing them.

We'll only be playing four new songs live, but all the material for the next album is basically finished.

We're playing the same songs, the same way, that we have for years.

What you hear about the band is always going to be more disturbing than any particular song.

Never hate a song that's sold a half million copies.

Listen kid, take my advice, never hate a song that has sold half a million copies.

It's just a bunch of songs. I'm not trying to cure any major disease.

Obviously the biggest change is that it's me by myself. When you don't have another band interpreting your songs or playing them the way that they have, it's bound to sound different.

There's two facets to writing a song. There's you sitting in your room writing the sentiments of the song; the lyrics, the melody and the changes, and then there's the part where you go into the studio and you put clothing on it.

I always imagine later on these songs I could've played with a band, but it never worked out that way.

I didn't really start writing music or lyrics or turning them into songs until I went to San Francisco.

This is my home. Home is where the disease is. As long as I stay in America, I'll never run out of subjects for songs.

I make no claim that Jewish culture is superior to other cultures or that the Jewish song is better than the song of my neighbor.

Throughout my life I have cared as deeply about the songs of all peoples as I have about the rights of all peoples.

In my world, history comes down to language and art. No one cares much about what battles were fought, who won them and who lost them - unless there is a painting, a play, a song or a poem that speaks of the event.

For a person as obsessed with music as I am, I always hear a song in the back of my head, all the time, and that usually is my own tune. I've done that all my life.

The reason I do interviews is because I'm protecting my songs.

We are not a Zappa cover band. We only play Frank's songs that were recorded by the Mothers of Invention and I think a lot of those songs were complex.

I intend to keep writing Christmas songs. There's still a lot more about Christmas that can be captured and feel like old-time Christmas. A lot of the traditions haven't been explained in song.