When we tour, there's always this unique quality to every town you visit... Touring, you get a sense of a collective identity for different cities. That's one of the things I love about my job.

I've always been a writer. I've always done writing or spoken-word, hip-hop stuff with my friends.

The first album was literally the first 12 songs I've ever written.

It's a job, and it's challenging. But I love music and creating. That's why I got into music.

Generally, the songs that are the scariest ones are the ones that people connect to.

Minneapolis has always been a very special place for me.

Being from Oregon, it's part of who I am.

'Young Love' is about falling in love and dealing with your past so you can move forward. I wanted it to be a clear record.

I love Michigan.

I've never shaped or crafted my music for any specific group of people. Whoever connects with it is fine with me. I don't care where they come from.

I was always into poetry and writing. So the urgency of spoken word is something that really has always appealed to me.

My goal is to try to avoid a genre.

When I first started writing music, it was to express that. I was trying to find God and trying to find meaning in my life. That's what my music was about. It wasn't to entertain.

I love what I do. I love playing music.

I would sit in my dorm room and write songs. I loved it. I was learning to sing and play guitar. I was becoming a musician. I was the beginner who somehow could write a song.

I didn't know music would end up being my job, but I loved it so much I wanted to do it every day.

New Yorkers are historically tough crowds.

I read about two reviews early on when my first record came out, and it just freaked me out, good and bad, so I've never really kept up with that side of it.

More than any other instrument, the relationship between an acoustic guitar and a microphone is super-important. The kind of mics that you use and your placement of the mics to the guitar can radically alter your sound.

I've never been one to learn scales and do exercises. Maybe I'm lazy, but I just don't take to that kind of thing. Learning other people's songs is enjoyable, and my fingers tend to go to new places because I'm not playing my music, the stuff that comes naturally to me.

I think the way I love talking about my faith is through my story because I think that's all we have to work with sometimes. I think it's the most moving way to share your story, too - is what you know, what you've seen and heard and tasted and felt.

Golf was big in my family.

My dad was a scratch golfer growing up. When I'm on the road, I always bring my clubs with me.

I think I have always made really beat-driven pop-rock records.

Getting married and really digging in with another human being can point out your greatest strengths and your greatest weaknesses.

I am a micromanager, and I love being involved in every detail of my life, but in the big picture, you realize how little control you have. 'Air I Breathe' is about those moments of surrender where you get to something that is bigger than you, and you don't have answers for it.

I started writing music in a season of my life where people were telling me I wasn't defined by mistakes, and God really loved me and was fighting for me, and there was a journey to be had with that. And I don't know of a more important message.

Money definitely does not equal success in recording.

The first year I moved to Nashville, I started playing these songwriter nights with people like Nickel Creek, Duncan Sheik, and even Ryan Adams... That was the first place I really started playing music, and I had to really step up my game. Really quick. Or get kicked off the stage.

When I was in college, I wanted to study film. My first passion was to be a cinematographer. So maybe there's something innate in my music where it partners well with images.

There are people I love in Nashville and would not want to go a day without talking to, but I want to see the world.

As an artist, you tend to gravitate to the opposite. I know, when I finish a song or an album, I'm interested in doing something completely new. It doesn't always happen, but that's the idea. My poor fans - I don't know if they love that or hate that.

'City Of Black And White' was me trying to do something more mature, more adult contemporary.

Somehow, my music really suits doctors making out in the syringe room.

The first record blew up and sold really well. 'City of Black & White' didn't sell as well, and that's when you wonder, 'Did I peak already?'

When 'Young Love' came out, I was really excited, and it has been really special.

I played soccer. I was really known as an athlete. It was a shock to people that I was doing music. They thought it was really odd.

My first album was hip-hop influenced, and my second was more of a singer-songwriter album.

I started as a writer. I didn't play music until late in life.

I think you can hear all my hip hop influences in 'Just Kids.'

I think my faith is a huge part of my music. But for me, it didn't make sense to be in any specific market. I write songs for a lot of different kinds of people.

Ultimately, when you write from a vantage point of faith, humility, and openness to the world around you, people have to respond because those same truths are instilled in them.

'Nothing Left to Lose' was an album that I wrote in my bedroom, and you don't know who is listening or who cares.