ED KOWALCZYK

When you accept the way things are, there's really no other way to operate than the way you've been conditioned to. You live in America: you're free to vote, you go vote, and you continue to see the problems of being a nationalistic society. You don't really know what to do because you're conditioned to feel that's just the way things are.

We've never been satisfied with just making 'me' music. What we're doing is trying to go to a place of some reverence.

With every kid, there has just been a deepening of my humanity, because there's no more of a feet-on-the-ground moment than having a child.

Life takes turns. There are forks in the road.

I was into all of the Pennsylvania teams at some point in my childhood. I would flip back and forth between the Pirates and the Phillies, and I was always a Steelers fan but not much of an Eagles fan. Then I became kind of a band nerd in school, and I went the music route.

I think 'cool' is overrated.

With 'Mental Jewelry,' we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to get something happening. I think we lost some of the personality in the music. 'Throwing Copper''s mission was to begin to get some of that back.

I think the message of the Live/Counting Crows tour is that, aside from what's going on trendwise, if you dig a little, you can always find something to inspire you.

You're living in a fantasy to think that music can actually change something.

The way you perform really depends on the way you live your life. It's not two separate things.

It really has become the singular motivation in my life - to surrender to the art and to the free expression of what I may be experiencing in my life spiritually. It is really hard in the face of people who don't get it, but what do you do?

It's always so rewarding, gratifying to me, as an artist and a writer, to see how this music gets more important for a lot of people as time goes by. And it's not just nostalgia. It's a feeling of it's really relevant to their lives, even though it's 20 or 25 years old or more.

If there is a doctrine, a message behind Live, it's just that wordless intensity that doesn't necessarily have to mean anything.

We really want the whole world to know about Live and to experience us.

All of my favorite artists who inspired me were never afraid to be uncool and never afraid to wear their hearts on their sleeves - no matter how much flak they took for it.

I grew up in an area that was the typical city that was a racially divided and economically segregated place. And it had a big influence on me.

We've been slighted in the press for being heartfelt.

I love Peter Gabriel, and I've come so close to working with him a few times. We were on a movie soundtrack together, but we didn't actually write together.

Individuals have to find a place to experience a profundity of feeling, and art is a means to that.

I believe that rock and roll can really make a huge impact on people's lives.

Until you solve problems like fear individually, resolve why individuals feel the need to believe in whatever, there's really no point in organizations, in things that turn the world into a concept rather than an individual fact.

I consider our music a catalyst, something that might spark a thought or a question.

Critics are critics: their job is to find things wrong with people.

Lots of human-rights tragedies deserve concerts, but there's something extra with Tibet. It's a spiritual culture, a country rooted in humility and compassion. And among artists, there's a lot of Buddhists, people who want an alternative to basic Christianity, which doesn't offer much.

We've never been a band that gets up on stage and says, 'OK, we're going to play our entire new album.' Of course we want to introduce new music, but we also want to play the songs people want to sing along with.