I have a Chamberlain I bought from some surfers in Westwood many years ago. It's an early analog synthesizer; it operates on tape loops. It has 60 voices - everything from galloping horses to owls to rain to every instrument in the orchestra.

Most songs have meager beginnings. You wake up in the morning, you throw on your suspenders, and you subvocalize and just think. They seem to form like calcium. I can't think of a story right off the bat that was that interesting. I write things on the back of my hand, usually, and sing into a tape recorder.

I always had a great appreciation for jazz, but I'm a very pedestrian musician. I get by. I like to think that my main instrument is vocabulary.

I knelt at the altar of Ray Charles for years. I worked at a restaurant, and that's all there was on the jukebox.

I bark my voice out through a closed throat, pretty much. It's more, perhaps, like a dog in some ways. It does have its limitations, but I'm learning different ways to keep it alive.

In early '57, I bought a Fender Telecaster.