Something I’ve gotta ask you — and I read this on the Internet, so if it’s not true, tell me — did you used to be a missionary?
I first moved to Denver to work with a group called YWAM, “Youth With a Mission.” I was a kid — I was 18 — and did some work with homeless people. Really, trying to convert people is sort of an awful position to find yourself in, so I quickly, on my own, grew out of religious ideas.
It’s hard to escape that your songs are kind of about the reprobate life: drinking, sin, consequences.
Right — not in a bad way, though. Sinning and drinking, if you can do it at the same time, it’s a hell of a day.
