A Bookend To "Pieces of You" (Interview)

I took quite a lot of time off, again, between, uh, 0304 and Goodbye Alice in Wonderland. I try and wait to do records 'til I feel like I really know what I wanna do, instead of just like, I have to stay in the public eye, I have to strike while it's still hot. But I don't know what to say, so you can't strike when you're hot because it'll be lame. So I just, I went away to Texas for a while, I toured a lot, solo acoustic, and it's uhm, it's funny because this record really feels like a bookends to my first record, Pieces of You. I was just turning twenty during the making of Pieces of You, I was just, got out of living in my car and I just got signed to a six record deal with Atlantic Records. This whole phase of my life was ending and this whole new journey was beginning. And on this record I was turning thirty, and it's the sixth record, it's the end of that record deal. And I had just been through this crazy journey, uhm, and so I really started to kind of write a record and collect songs that were about sort of chronicling my life almost, going from Alaska, being raised on a homestead with an outhouse and no running water and milking cows and canning our own salmon and, you know, we made our own butter and, you know, just a really rustic childhood to, you know, becoming homeless in San Diego to being discovered and then really, it's a very bizarre ride, you know, fame's a path so many people lose their footing on and to remain diligent and creatively alive, like what you have to do keep yourself creatively curious and writing well and then it kind of came full circle again when I lived on a ranch but in Texas this time. So the record really started to shape up about mythology. You know, the mythology we're taught as children in America. The mythology of pop culture. The mythology of fame. Mythology of love. You know, we're told many fairytales as kids, and I think we believe so many of them. And life really isn't that way, and as you grow up, you realize life isn't necessaryily like a fairytale and you can become disillusioned because the discrepancy, you know. I think with love, people keep expecting love to be this perfect Utopia, and it isn't. And I think the more quicker you realize that, the happier you can get. And so, the record started to really deal with fantasies and finding the truth out and the willingness to find the truth out without it making you, uh, bitter at all, so. I think you can find romance in real life, you know, but it's sort of like a willingness to let go of the escapist mentality.