Treating your audience like thieves is absurd. Anyone who chooses to listen to our music becomes a collaborator.
Even the most dismal and hopeless-sounding Wilco music, to my ears, has always maintained a level of hope and consolation.
I always found the concept of a tortured artist distasteful.
We live in a connected world now. Some find that frightening. If people are downloading our music, they're listening to it. The internet is like radio for us.
Writing songs has always been hard and easy. It's not always easy when you want it to be, and then sometimes it's just like turning on the faucet. That's just the nature of it.
You obviously don't really forget how to play the old songs; you just don't have to spend so much time convincing yourself that you remember them. Way less mental energy is spent swimming around in lyrics you've already written and chords you've already played.
I always think I don't have any songs, I don't have anything I'm working on, and I get in the studio and realize there are 20 things I'm thinking about. It's just kind of second nature.
