To Set The Record Straight For The

At This Point In My Life, I Find Myself Obsessed With Alternate Paths I Could've Taken. I Don't Think About This With A Sense Of Regret, But With A Sense Of Wonder.

I Feel That We Are Currently Living In A World That Is Similar To Late '50s, Early '60s Kind Of World.

The Late '90s Were A Really Bad Time For People Trying To Be Rock Stars, You Know What I Mean? It Seemed Like Everyone Was A One-hit Wonder On The Radio. We Had Friends Who Had A Hit Single On The Radio And Sold 500,000 Records, And Then They Couldn't Get Arrested A Year Later. I Had This Feeling At The Time That That Was Not Possible Anymore, So The Idea Of Becoming The Biggest Band In The Country—it Seemed Laughable. I Felt That Having Those Sort Of Ambitions Was Foolish, Because There Was No Way That Was Going To Be Possible. If You Saw It That Way, You Were Just Deluding Yourself.

The Photo Album Is The Weakest Record. For The First Time In Our Careers, We Found Ourselves With An Economic Incentive To Be On The Road And To Be Making Albums. We Had Cut Ourselves Free From The Security Of Day-job Life. The Goals Became Primarily Financial, At Least For A While. That Was The Roughest Time We Had Ever Had As A Band, Because That Was The First Moment We Realized That This Was For Real. We Were Not Goofing Around Anymore. We All Threw Everything We Had Into This In A Way Where We All Found Ourselves Really Far From Home, And We Were Stuck With Each Other.

I Don't Spend My Time Perusing Message Boards To Find Out What People Think About Me Or If People Think My Songs Are Good Or If People Love That Lyric Or This Or That. I Just Want To Be Happy With It Myself - And If Other People Like It, That's Great.