The piano is where everything starts and ends. Everything is based off of it. If you understand that, you wind up understanding a lot more in all other instruments. For me, it had always been something important to try and learn.

When you set out to carry on a tradition as deep rooted as folk music is, you've got to have your story together. You've got to study and have a foundation. Jeffrey Foucault has that foundation, and you can hear it in his voice, and feel it in his music. He's got an understanding that you don't hear that often.

At the end of the day, you can't reinvent yourself past a point, because you are you, and there are things that are inherently you that are always going to be there.

With 'Get Hurt,' we wanted to see where else we could go with the band. We thought it was time to change things up a bit. The song itself is similar to the feeling of a wreck you see coming, but long past the point you can avoid it.

The suggestion that we were pursuing consolidation as a replacement for reaching our financial targets by 2018 is fundamentally a bunch of hogwash.

I never take on anything that is just for the money or just for, you know. I always have to connect with it in a very personal way because I believe the audience will sense whether I'm into it or not, so I don't take on projects that I'm not really passionate about.

Well, I think that California has had a history of always spending more money than it takes in.

We went around and looked and talked to a lot of foundations with those charities and decided upon the Children's Hospital. They had a golf tournament at the time, but it was a small event that didn't raise a significant amount of money.