Pastoral Resources

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

When I was young, I just sat down and started playing Chopsticks at the piano. I got so far and then lost interest. Eventually, I regained it and started writing songs.

I always figured it was best if I write my songs, take them to my publisher and just lay back. There used to be so many things going on - getting to the artist, getting to the publishers - you know, politics. I just didn't want to get mixed up in all of that.

The grandmother, the mother, the worker, the student, the intellectual, the professional, the unemployed, everybody identified with the songs because they were descriptions of life in the city.

I didn't want to be on the losing side. I was fed up with Jewish weakness, timidity and fear. I didn't want any more Jewish sentimentality and Jewish suffering. I was sickened by our sad songs.

It's taken a long time but eventually when I had the songs in place and demos right and I found myself a manager, that's when everything started happening quickly but I think that's always the way it is.

I've written more songs for this record than I ever have in the past so I'm trying to give it a lot of special attention to be sure my ideas really get translated right.

Someone told me there was a publisher that could find a good home for my songs, but I didn't want to give up my pursuit of a career in the business as an artist.

I kept looking to do songs that were written years ago and would live or outlive all of us, and the one thing they had in common was Sinatra.

When you have great songs that are going to live longer than the composers, everything you can do to bring those different elements and nuances out, serve the song.