Yesterday I wrote the majority of a song called 'Burn the Nightclub Down' which was about kind of driving into Cleveland full of dread at the prospect of playing at this night club and actually just the night before I had called my girlfriend whose birthday it was. And it's her birthday and here I am on the road in some hellhole in Ann Arbor in Michigan.

Seeing that the 97's are a democracy through and through, inevitably, some of these tons of songs I write will get vetoed. The first time that happened (and every time thereafter), I consoled myself with the thought that sooner or later I'd make a solo record

I made The Instigator while I was homeless as a result of 9/11, and there was some stuff on there that was really raw and directly out of that experience

I love to rock, but it's liberating not to always have to keep up with the freight train that is the Old 97's

And knock on wood, this one will be a girl.

I picked out those clothes with the help of a professional stylist along with my wife, who might as well be a professional stylist. I've been trying to go in that nice, old-school, Rod Stewart kind of direction.

I knew I loved her right then and there. Everyone else sat down real quietly and respectfully, but she stood up in the front row and started dancing and trying to get everyone else to dance.

It was an obvious foul, it was just a matter of where it occurred.

The band is accusing me of becoming Springsteen-ian.

It's funny, because if Tom Petty or R.E.M. came out today, they'd be alt-country,