I don't even know what a hippy is. I mean, hippy is an evolution of the Sixties movement. A time when people were trying to make a difference, trying to write songs that were political. People grow old. The hippy camp kind of breaks off into different sects.

We all have our vices, you know. One of my vices is ice cream.

I don't think I'm getting better, quote unquote, as a singer or guitar player. But I'm more comfortable in this particular space. I get better at being a bad singer, so to speak.

I can see my songs in a movie as long as it's a movie no one will watch.

Whether I'm on a major or an indie, I don't think this is important, but at the same time I do.

I support things that are very close to my heart: mostly LGBTQ rights.

I live in a total bubble where I assume everyone is super-liberal and democratic.

I don't make art to make money, I make art so I can make art.

Dad had four world records, and they happened to be Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Ali Farka Toure. I tried singing like these people, and it didn't work.

At 15 I discovered girls and '90s ska.

I want to say that Beck is incredible. He is an art machine.

I look at making records like you make a dish. A culinary experience. The way you throw in a tambourine, it's like spices or herbs. The main part of the song is the stock.

For a long time, soul music was maybe one of my favorite kinds of music.

A soul singer is always singing to their crowd. They're always singing about their woes to you. And I really appreciate that when a singer is making you feel... when they're directing it at me. When they're including me.

At some point in your life, if you live in Venezuela, you come across or own a cuatro. Either at school, either at camp, either at a friend's house, at a birthday or Christmas or bar mitzvah, you end up with a cuatro. It's like a must.

Let's take fashion seriously, but not ourselves so seriously. Or reverse that, maybe don't take fashion so seriously, but take yourself seriously. Actually, don't take yourself seriously, that's for sure. So, yeah, take fashion seriously, just not yourself.

Growing up in Caracas, Venezuela, the ubiquitous music is salsa, cumbia, merengue, a little bit of samba.

When I came home my parents were listening to Pakistani Qawwali music, like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, they're listening to music from Mali, like Ali Farka Toure, they're listening to Brazilian songwriters, like Gilberto Gil, to opera, to Neil Young even, things you don't hear as a kid in Caracas. I love all the music they turned me onto.

I was just a huge fan of Blur, Suede, Elastica and Pulp, of course, even Menswear and Ocean Colour Scene.

John Cage is someone I got into as a visual artist, before I even knew his music. I don't think a lot of people even know that he does visual art.

Venezuela is incredible, but Caracas? Oh God, I hate it. The sidewalks get smaller every time I go back.

Caracas was a crazy place in the early Nineties. For instance, when I was 11 years old, I pierced my ear. No big deal, right? But everyone was so scandalised that they shut down the school.

I believe we are all dual beings. Some cultures actually believe we have two souls.

Canada has really grown and grown as this unexplored and very mysterious and exotic place to me.

Personally speaking, Canada is becoming more and more beguiling and mysterious and I feel as though I really need to explore it.

Coming to Canada, I'd really like to see Sasquatch.

I guess I don't want everyone to know what I'm doing every second.

I've always said that musicians are the comics of my generations and comedians are the politicians of my generation.

People love to take sides, but it's not effective. It's not really an effective way of communicating something, because you're either already part of the side or you're going to feel attacked and get defensive.

I was born with a beard. We're quite hairy down in Latin America. We don't have to use sponges when we wash dishes. We just use our baby beards.

I love 'Star Wars.'

I don't ever think of myself as a dark person or a ruined person in any way. I just feel happy to be alive, and to be able to love.

I'm very lucky my parents were into different kinds of music.

I do have very small handwriting.

I've always lived in small places.

With music there's so many limbs and facets. Video and touring and merchandise and all those little things require attention. They're artist things but I tend to joke around too much with those things.

I can't imagine anyone approaching art without the joy of experimentation. The joy of it is inherent... and that is how you flow with the reality of change.

I come from a school of artists, the Mission School in San Francisco, and there are a lot of artists I look up to.

One not-to-be-mentioned major said they would sign me if I worked with a team of songwriters to help me finish songs, ha! Of course, in hindsight, I should've done it just to see what that would have been like.

I've been doing visual stuff for as long as I've been making records; in fact, for longer.

I like clothes. I really do. I like going through colors, in a way. I go, 'Greens, man. Greens. Oh, yellow. This yellow feels good.' So it shapes your psyche in a way. But I don't think about it too much, even though I'm interested in it.

Green is one of my favorite colors.

I remember when I was a kid I thought I could either be an athletic water drinker, like an Olympic-level water drinker, or I could invent Windex. Which I thought was really smart, because it already existed.

I sometimes feel like I should be in the hotel business.

The real hippie is trying to create something inclusive, something holistic, something loving and healthy which isn't in perpetual conflict with authority and actually knows that the only way to disarm the entire game is to step aside and not take any sides.

It's embarrassing to quote Gandhi or something, but being the change you want to see in the world is pretty powerful.

The first paid show was in Los Angeles at an art opening and I was paid maybe, I don't know, twenty five bucks?

I practice Rasayana Buddhism.

I love Meredith Monk, and with Instagram, I get a chance to see if she has a cat, and what's she reading.

I was born in Texas, you know. I was born in Houston.