To Set The Record Straight For The

You Can't Please Everybody All The Time, But I Think For The Most Part We Tend To Maintain A Healthy Level Of Self-reference To Kind Of Make Sure We Continue To Push Things Forward.

Bands Who Are In Their Early 20s Today, They Are Living In Their Own Time And They Have A Series Of Parameters They Have To Work Around. Ten Years Ago, Our Reality Was Spending A Lot More Time In Obscurity Before Anyone Really Knew Who We Were. I Don't Feel Like I Have Any Real Advice To Give Anybody Who Is Starting A Band Today. As Mike Watt Said, "you Know, Not Everyone Has The Ability To Be Born At The Same Time." We Wanted To Be Like R.e.m., But The Reality Is That 15 Years After R.e.m. Was Putting Out Those Records, The Playing Field Had Changed Drastically As Well.

You Look Back At A Time You Idealize Now And You Only Remember The Good Stuff. You Tell The Stories About The Hard Stuff And Just Laugh About It Now. You Don't Remember How Difficult It Was To Be Stranded In Austin After Driving 52 Hours From Seattle In A Rainstorm And Having Nowhere To Stay For Five Hours. You Remember That Stuff And Laugh About It Now. You Don't Feel It The Way You Did Back Then When You Were So Scared And Nervous And Tired And Hungry. We Always Idealize The Past Because We Don't Feel The Painful Stuff The Way We Used To.

I Kind Of Dropped A Lot Of Bad Habits About Three Years Ago And Became Kind Of Accidentally Straight-edge. I Don't Have Xs On My Hands, But I Guess If I Wanted To Go Back To Calling Myself Straight-edge, I Could. Around That Same Time I Started Running. I Never Saw Myself As The Kind Of Person Who Would Become A Runner. It Seemed Unfathomable To Me That I Would Ever Run Three Miles, Let Alone 26.2.

I Take Things A Little Bit More Critically Now, Like, "what Did I Think I Was Saying In That Song? What Is This Song About?" I Thought The Lyrics Were Incredibly Descriptive, And Now They Sound Really Cryptic And Weird. I'd Like To Also Think That When I Listen To Songs From Something About Airplanes That I'm Proud Of My Development As A Writer. I Don't Think I Was Doing Anything Poorly At That Time, But I Can Certainly See How My Writing Has Changed.