You Can't Please Everybody All The Time,

I Have Always Been Very Open And Earnest About Some Things In My Life, Some Things That Are Not Directly In My Life, But They're Twirling Around Me At The Time.

Because Of My Age And What I Do For A Living And The Amount Of Time That I've Spent Away From My Family And Loved Ones, I'm Starting To Relate More To The Late-period Kerouac Stuff In The Way That I Once Related To The Fun And Excitement Of The Early Material. There's A Darkness Inside Of Me That I'm Only Now Starting To Come To Grips With And Accept. And It's Starting To Scare Me.

The Photo Album Is The Weakest Record. For The First Time In Our Careers, We Found Ourselves With An Economic Incentive To Be On The Road And To Be Making Albums. We Had Cut Ourselves Free From The Security Of Day-job Life. The Goals Became Primarily Financial, At Least For A While. That Was The Roughest Time We Had Ever Had As A Band, Because That Was The First Moment We Realized That This Was For Real. We Were Not Goofing Around Anymore. We All Threw Everything We Had Into This In A Way Where We All Found Ourselves Really Far From Home, And We Were Stuck With Each Other.

I Just Rediscovered My Guitar.

Bands Who Are In Their Early 20s Today, They Are Living In Their Own Time And They Have A Series Of Parameters They Have To Work Around. Ten Years Ago, Our Reality Was Spending A Lot More Time In Obscurity Before Anyone Really Knew Who We Were. I Don't Feel Like I Have Any Real Advice To Give Anybody Who Is Starting A Band Today. As Mike Watt Said, "you Know, Not Everyone Has The Ability To Be Born At The Same Time." We Wanted To Be Like R.e.m., But The Reality Is That 15 Years After R.e.m. Was Putting Out Those Records, The Playing Field Had Changed Drastically As Well.