Somewhere between this kind of cruising freedom, and this understated moment where all these little things intertwine to create a bigger sound. You don't want one thing to be bright, or too prevalent.
I tend to think about so many different things on a recording. I'll be trying to tune into what the drummer's doing, trying to keep everyone playing the groove and other things like making sure the piano's in a nice pocket.
With 'Slave Ambient', I was writing things on top of loops. Now I really get the structure of the song down, but I leave room for improvisation in the studio.
I've seen people who like a certain song write on their Instagram what they think the lyrics are - which they aren't. I'm like, 'Oh, that's interesting - you can create your own adventure with some of these songs.' Which is really cool.
When you're in the moment and not over thinking the song is when things tend to really work. You're not so focused on the minutiae. You're focused on the overall feel, and that's the stuff that I get from the demos.
In terms of tone and style, I've always been influenced by a lot of different players. I love Nick Drake, Mike Bloomfield and Sonic Boom. I like those three a lot!
Touring is a rough thing. You don't have any time to look around or stop and think if what you're doing is making you happy. The more you tour, the better the band gets, and you get caught up in a lot more things than just traveling.
I mean, Philadelphia, if the Eagles were to win the Super Bowl, you kind of wonder how it'd change the city in some way. At the end of the day, as intense as Eagles fans are or as Philadelphia fans are, they really just love their team and they'll be happy either way. The Eagles have made Philadelphia proud.
I think from an East Coast point of view, you'd be like, 'Oh, a California record's a sunny record.' It's like you spend three hours in the studio because the rest of the time you must be at the beach.
That little window like 2004 through like 2010 was probably the most, like most inspiring time of my creative life, for sure.
My kind of music is probably not going to shoot to the top, but I'm fine with that. There's still enough rock'n'roll soldiers.
I was the guy who didn't get a cool little apartment. I took one for the team. I liked having the place we could make noise in, the place that could be the center of the music. I sat down and calculated it one day, and over the years, I've had something like 38 roommates.
I remember that in the past I was overwhelmed with the mystery of anxiety, or the mystery of depression, but now when you feel that feeling coming on you no longer go into fight-or-flight mode. You go: 'Oh, I know what this is' and you ride it out.
My mom and dad never really had friends, never went on vacations. We stayed home. And I see a similarity there: A general anxiety runs pretty deep.
It's cool that our stuff is received as it is, and our stuff is fairly long. But from a songwriter's purview as well as an exercise, I'm trying to write shorter material and find ways to condense ideas.
I think where a lot of the stuff came from is that it started as something else and then it was transformed into something that worked in the context of a song that I might have been working on.
The Heartbreakers were what you imagine being in a band would be like - best buddies and great players and guys who took it all really seriously.