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" I don't spend afternoons practicing my guitar to get better. I do read, though, to get inspiration for my lyrics. "

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

" It's silly to throw things out or label things. You know, is U2 a Christian band, or was Johnny Cash a Christian country singer? I don't know, but they're pretty open about their faith. "

" Hopefully, reading and being around great literature inspires me to write songs, but I'm not sure about that. "

" Growing up in Eugene, Oregon, there was everything from The Notorious B.I.G. to Weezer playing in my car. "

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

" I love Michigan. "

" 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. "

" When I barely got into college, the one thing I could do was write, so I became an English major. "

" I thought my second record was good, but it didn't have that smash hit we did on the first one that somehow found its way onto tons of formats of radio stations. "

" All of my acoustic playing came from my songwriting. All of the chords I've learned and all of the voicings I play them in are a direct result of composing. "

" I've had moments in my career when I've made more money and had more success than at other times, but I've realized being happy has very little to do with any of that. "

" I'm actually named Matthew William Kearney: my middle name is named after my grandfather. "

" There's this song called 'Brad Chester,' which is like the depths of my family. It comes from a very personal place. "

" With 'City of Black & White,' I wanted a record that would make you feel good, that would sort of take you up in its hand and sweep you along. "

" 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. "

" There are a lot of great recording artists, like Jack White and Jack Johnson, who stay confined inside a very small box, but I'm more like Bon Iver, who recorded an album with programmed drums, and the next record was totally organic. I get that. "

" 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 think, in a lot of ways, hip-hop is interesting to me because it's like the modern-day folk music. "

" Minneapolis has always been a very special place for me. "

" New Yorkers are historically tough crowds. "

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

" 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. "

" I love to play the songs that got me to where I am. I like to take a little bit from all of my records and mix it up. "

" I'm painfully a realist but ruthlessly an optimist. I think maybe it's because of my faith - I've always got the hope that there is something out there to make it all worthwhile. "

" Songs like 'Learn To Love Again' and 'Rochester' and some of the more gut-wrenching ones deal with the pain of the younger times of your life... trying to make sense of some the stuff we probably all went through. "

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

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

" I was an English major, and I always wrote poems. "

" Even on tour, where I perform songs from 'City Of Black And White,' I still do songs from 'Nothing Left To Lose.' I never turned my back on that material. On some albums, you change - that's all. The trick is to follow your heart and do what feels right. "

Black And White