As human beings we're visual creatures, and it's so easy to play the guitar by looking at it. It's a real challenge to go from that visual way of perceiving the guitar to getting back to that pure sound connecting to the instrument.

One of the things I like to do is to try to jam with everybody.

I'm Not Afraid of the Police' is the first song I wrote and recorded since moving back to Los Angeles. It's a loud-pop, crazy-guitar, big-harmony song with all the police sirens created by guitars and ADA flangers.

While I was writing the songs for 'Fuzz Universe,' I was immersing myself in Bulgarian Female Choir music, Baroque lute and violin pieces, Johnny Cash songs about trains, cows, mules, and mining coal, the Bee Gees, and Ronnie James Dio.

I love my job as a musician, and I am filled with gratitude that good people support my endeavors.

To me, you had to have a least a couple of ugly guys in the band. That's why Saxon was great.

I was doing a lot of teaching on my online guitar school and I started to use vocal melodies as a way of teaching my students. To be able to do that, I had to learn them myself.

Of course, I'm a guitar player, so I'm thinking as a guitarist. I have to work within my physical limitations as to what my hands will do, and also the patterns I'm familiar with, and the places that my fingers are used to going.

To me, the secret of Eddie Van Halen was Alex Van Halen, because the way Alex played was so loose and the way the two of them locked together… Those two are connected so thoroughly they might as well be one person.