"Me and Stevie have a really good relationship. He’s just a music making machine, he doesn’t stop. Anything he does is good. He’s got the magic ears. He’s the line from Elvis and Roy Orbison and The Beatles to the present day. His musical pedigree is the best. His dad was the bassist for Roy Orbison and he grew up with Jim Reeves around. He grew up as the son of the most badass bass player who was playing with all the big hitters. He has the most solid-roots rock pedigree, and he’s an appreciator of music. Him and his dad disagreed about stuff because the British Invasion hadn’t really hit Nashville. They thought British people were weird, funny people. Stevie was beyond that. Not only was he into The Beatles, he was into The Mothers of Invention. The freakiest most degenerate shit ever. Stevie appreciates really freaky shit. With his sounds and development and process of recording, you get a real glimpse into a different era, that’s the magic with him."

"Flawless again. She's a poet! I knew who she was, she was in my peripheral, but I discovered her, god, maybe ten years ago. The beauty of being in your 30s is the beauty of being able to admit that you didn't hear The Wipers first. Or that you knew the Hole version of 'Credit In A Straight World' before you knew the Young Marble Giants version. When you're 20 you're a little more self-conscious about it. But yeah, and I'm glad that I had a relationship with her as an adult. I didn't grow up listening to her as a teenager at all. In Arkansas she wasn't on the radio. God, that's another record where every song is my favourite song. 'Kimberly'? My god. 'Free Money'? I don't even know where to start. It's poetry set to music and it's done so well. Other people have tried to do that and it doesn't really work and she just really pulled it off in a way that was beautiful and not trying too hard. She's effortlessly cool and she gets cooler."

"As often happens the first record you really get into by an artist, sometimes it's hard to replace that one. She's had great records since but this is the first one that I was blown away by. This record came out in the summer of '98 and my band had been dropped by Elektra. Right after that I moved into the guest room of my best friend's house. I had nowhere to go, I didn't have any money and now I certainly had nothing to do. My relationship with my girlfriend was on the rocks and this was the record I had on in this very bleak moment. Constantly on. It was a thing where it hurts to put it on. It hurts to listen to 'No Sense' and 'Metal Heart'. It's too raw almost. But again, I like being able to feel something in music. I still love it and play it and I still feel like I'm sitting in my friend's extra room in October with the window open and the rain is coming down. It still gives me that feeling."

"There's a song on our new record called 'Us' that is sort of free-flowing, a little ambient, more of a soundscape than a song. For the most part we haven't gone there a lot. The only thing I would say is that I have a tendency to try and write songs where you stay in one mood the whole time. I've broken out of that a few times but that's my general tendency, to not add a bridge that changes the mood of the song. I want to get into the feeling of a song and stay there, and find a way to keep that interesting. And I think that's what is happening on records like this. It's all about a mood. This record makes me feel like it's, you know, I got into it when I was a sophomore in high school and I was going through my first real relationship. I still feel it listening to this record. It sounds like cold Temple Texas and falling in love for the first time. "