What's your favourite genre of music?
I like all music. Well, I don't like music that was created to make money. I don't really like bands that don't write their own music.
Beyond that, if a group is expressing themselves and writing their own stuff, I love. It's all magic to me. Country to punk rock, all of it. Chopin to Kurt Cobain. But it always all comes back to punk for me, because that was the last time, punk rock or grunge rock, was the last time that passion ruled the airwaves.
The songs that became famous were the ones that held the most raw passion. And we've gone, again, really far away from that. I feel like every once in a while, the bands take rock and roll back from the hands of the corporate people, and I feel like the corporate guys pretty much have the market right now. So, for me it goes back to grunge and then very clearly punk, which for me, was the last previous time that raw passion was the most important thing.
So, musical influences, obviously Nirvana and still Foo Fighters, I always say Bob Dylan, and curiously enough, Joni Mitchell, I'm hearing more and more of her. Nobody in the band wants to admit that, they just tell me to shut up about that. She's jazz based, and she's fused jazz with folk and I think it's a good thing.