I look forward to so many things about going to Japan. The shows are early. It's great! They're really early, so it helps make dealing with jetlag a little easier.

Every show I play is like a little celebration of something in my life that has gone really well.

I don't focus on one thing. I play guitar and bass and keyboards and drums, but I never stay on anything long enough to become a specialist at it.

My voice is not very dynamic.

I don't really have friends in general. I never have. I didn't go to college and didn't have friends in high school.

I was cripplingly shy. When I was in high school, my teachers thought I was mentally disabled because I wouldn't be able to say anything or do anything. They thought I didn't speak.

I always felt weird. I don't feel particularly likeable.

It's kind of crazy how music helped me overcome the anxieties that I have.

I'm the haphazard engineer of my own music.

I like to collaborate with other people for studio recordings because I believe collaboration, in any form, makes music better.

I really don't have a method. I gravitate towards the organic/acoustic, but I still often complete songs musically before attempting to find the lyric.

Most of the times that I've written break-up songs, it's been different because I was always trying to get back to something: get back to a situation or talk my way or sing my way back into the relationship.

I've learned by experience that, if I get too clever with lyrics, or if I'm not totally embodying my own wants and needs in the songs, I can't remember them.

Young bands are so angry. There are young bands that are so incredibly successful, getting incredible reviews, and they are totally angry.

I've managed to alienate most of what would be considered the core audience that I'm supposed to have had.

It's cool to think about nursing, because a lot of people decide to go into it later in their lives. I could slip into school to be an LPN or an RN as a middle-aged man, and it wouldn't be unusual.

Early on, I really liked the idea of being confrontational. I loved the idea of making songs that made people really uncomfortable.

I hear people telling me a lot that the production of that particular record - 'One Part Lullaby' - really influenced them. I'm like, 'What? We were dropped from the label after that!'

'One Part Lullaby.' It was our big major-label record. People reference it quite a bit, but it did absolutely nothing. It's like the 'Kids' soundtrack. It did nothing. It didn't start anything for me.

Some people play steel string beautifully, but I'm not exactly a world-class picker.

When I first started writing songs, I did play with my fingers, and I had these kind of weird strums. There's, like, three or four strumming patterns that seemed kind of unique to me.

I have to focus and keep things together as much as anyone with a real job... It's just that I know, from experience, that the more fun I have doing something that the more successful it will be.

I just write... I follow the melodies that I can't forget/the ones that pop up in my brain the most.

Simplicity is at the core of Sebadoh.

NYC is a wonderland full of passionate music fans. Once I got over being intimidated by rock critics and finicky hipsters, I realized that NYC was a great place to play.

There are very few songs I really hate.

I don't want to meet anybody famous, usually.

The minute we first started recording 'Defend Yourself,' I thought, 'Yeah. We're going to have to deal with a really terrible review from Pitchfork for this record.'

Music doesn't always bring me to tears; if I hear 'Love' by John Lennon at a vulnerable moment, it will bring me to tears.

The Music Machine is my favorite rock band ever.

Within Istanbul, there's a ton of people who are totally hip - like, the hippest people you could ever meet.

A lot of times, when you record something, the album becomes less about the music and more technical.

I just like it when I can understand things, and the simpler it is, the easier it is to understand.

After discovering the Ramones, I discovered really crude ways to multi-track by taking another cassette recorder and plugging that into the eight-track, playing it back, so that as I was recording with the mic in my guitar, I could have another cassette player I had recorded on feeding into the recording.

It's weird to say, but Sebadoh is kind of Dinosaur Jr. Jr. My two bandmates in the early Sebadoh era, Jason Lowenstein and Jeff Gaffney, were huge Dinosaur fans. They were very influenced by Dinosaur.

I keep the tantrums to a minimum because people don't want to see that.

I have an aversion to taking care of my gear, a wayward manifestation of my punk ethos.

'Brace the Wave' is an acoustic-electric record recorded with electricity on analog-digital and digitally-analog equipment.

I have really severe tinnitus.

I think people, just because of digital recording and how computers have become such an important part of our lives, I think the means to record music now is in more people's hands. It's a lot cheaper than it used to be.

I think musicians naturally gravitate toward music that sounds real.

Maybe I can't write without painting myself into a corner first.

All the issues you deal with get more complicated as you get older; it takes more focus to write songs that reflect what you've gone through.

I put all my big revelations into songs when I was in my 20s; as you get older, revelations are harder to come by.

I'll figure something out by writing a song about it.

Worry is a big part of my life. I definitely worry a lot.

Sebadoh were always kind of the un-band. We never really lived in the same town.

I'm realizing I need to be in close proximity to everyone I'm working with because that - I don't know - it keeps me engaged.

It just takes me awhile to get comfortable in any situation.