'Apocalyptic Love,' that is pretty from the hip in the sense that, one day, Slash and I were talking - I think it was Slash and I - about the end of the world and the Mayan calendar and all that crazy stuff.
There's a song called 'Slip To The Void,' which is fairly long and has more of an epic approach. And I guess for lack of a better term some people might throw the progressive tag on it. I don't know if it necessarily falls into that - a few people have brought that up who have heard it.
I don't even know what progressive is anymore, to be honest!
I'm a really big fan of Andy McKee - I think he's an amazing acoustic guitar player, and he's taken the torch from where Michael Hedges left off.
I think that's my goal as time goes on, is to just try and pay it forward.
The journey to the completion of 'Year Of The Tiger' was very interesting and full of a lot of trial and error.
Everything I ever learned about rock, I learned from Led Zeppelin.
I'm basically a happy person. I'm content with my life and my wife and my family. But you do reach a point where you start to question the absolutes that are supposedly out there, and you realize that there simply are no absolutes.
I think I've gradually learned to become more of a frontman than I was initially. I mean, when I first started, especially playing with Alter Bridge, you know, I really considered myself more a guitar player who sang.
What I did with Slash and the Conspirators was a very different kind of music. Genre-wise, it is a step in a different direction.
Because Slash is such a well-known performer all over the world, it definitely helped with the awareness of Alter Bridge. People come up to me and say that they saw me playing with Slash, and it turned them on to the other things I do.
I really enjoy the moments with Alter Bridge where I can step out and play lead and have fun.
I don't feel like I really hit puberty until I was almost 17. I'd go to dinner with my family, and I'm 15 or 16 years old, and the waiter was still giving me the children's menu.
People have been saying rock is dead for years, but the reality is that it just falls out of favor with pop culture from time to time.
Though rock is not the force that it once was in America, it still has a loyal fan base that always seems to continue regardless of what popular culture deems as the 'cool thing.'
I think what I've learned to do is not look inward as much.
I'm certainly no Bruce Springsteen in terms of being a storyteller, but I'm trying to get a better handle on it and not always go after it from an autobiographical standpoint.
Vocally, I don't think analogue makes that much difference, but with guitars, it definitely makes some difference. With drums and bass, absolutely.
A lot of times when I'm performing a song, it tends to take me back to where I was psychologically as the lyric was being written.
From the artist's standpoint, are you getting more from streaming than you used to, prior to the days of the Internet? No - and I don't know if those days are ever going to come back - but at least, technically speaking, it's the legal way to do it.
