"The Bob Dylan song “Mr. Tambourine Man,” was like a psychedelic version of a Woody Guthrie song. But then the Byrds turned it into something unlike anything my young ears had heard before. It sounded like jangly pots and pans, bells. If you’re someone who grew up in the suburbs of Baltimore, the song is like a little telegraph from someplace else. Hearing that, I realized: I have to get out of here, because there are people in other places. There’s a whole world out there that I don’t know anything about. I had an idea that I would play great literate rock songs in coffee houses around Baltimore. I did that for a little while, which was kind of ambitious for a high school kid. I’d do songs by the Kinks or the Who, or songs with really insightful lyrics that the folkies had never heard before. My parents went to my shows once in awhile, but not a lot. A few years later, when I was still in the art school orbit, I visited New York City. A friend and I had a group where I played ukulele and violin, and he played accordion, often in the street. We played standards and were kind of eccentric-looking. I would dress in old suits and had a long beard, and kids would come up to me and say, “Mister, are you one of those men who don’t drive cars?” I was not. We’d heard about the Warhol scene at Max’s Kansas City, and so my friend and I went in there—with the full beard and everything—curious to see where the cool people were. We were so out of place, and I remember David Bowie came in dressed in his full glam outfit, with the orange hair, the space suit, everything. And I just thought, We don’t fit in here. We better go."