KEVIN MORBY

When I first moved to New York in 2006, I spent most of my time hanging out at and going to shows at a punk house in Crown Heights called The Fort where, amongst many roommates, my friend Johnny lived. Johnny loves The Germs, the legendary L.A. punk band fronted by the late, great Darby Crash.

My dad grew up in western Nebraska. I'd visit all the time as a kid, and it's very much like the Wild West. It felt to me like a cowboy movie. Stuff like that made me become this dreamer at a young age.

I grew up in the Midwest and never really felt at home there, and when I got to New York, I was really fearless. I feel like I really fell in love with the the place. But then, it's a place where your world is really big at first and then becomes really small. I found myself hardly leaving my neighborhood, like I made it into a small town.

I had a very easy middle class upbringing and never had to worry about anything. But my parents came from nothing and from broken homes, and their stories were always very interesting.

One of my first observations about New York that I was so fascinated with was that you'd be at a stoplight, and you're with everybody; there's a homeless dude and some weird celebrity and a cop and someone who looks exactly like you.

I do not know what kind of relationship Jim Carroll and The Ramones had, though I imagine they all knew each other, as they ran in the same scene.

I'm very impressionable: I get very taken away by stories and certain feelings. With writing, sometimes I want to feel like a character.

As far as dream venues, I've played all the venues I'd love to play.

When I'm out having the experiences, that's exactly what I'm doing: having the experiences. Then I can later reflect and write.

I feel like 'Harlem River' was me putting one foot out the door of New York, and 'Still Life' is between Point A and Point B. It's the grey area.

I had a lot of jobs in New York. I worked in a cafe, and I did bike delivery, and I was a mover. And I babysat, which was really cool in some cases and really insane in others.

One of my favorite movie characters is Mother Sister from Spike Lee's 'Do The Right Thing.' It is such a beautiful name, and she is such a beautiful character, Mother Sister, the all-seeing eye over the block.

I just love the idea of never seeing a city before and seeing the glow in the distance, and it just looking frightening, like you're driving into a fire.

I love Baltimore. It is a city with a giant heart and has remained one of my favorite places to keep returning to on tour. It is unique and beautiful, and you can't mistake it for anywhere else in the world - Baltimore is one hundred percent Baltimore.

'Harlem River' is about the Harlem River in uptown Manhattan. I don't know much to say about it. I came upon that river a couple of years ago. I was doing a walk the length of Manhattan, from the top to the bottom, and I had never seen that river before.

'Reign' is probably the oldest one on the record. I wrote that when I was 19. 'The Dead They Don't Come Back,' which is the last song on the album, I wrote when I was 20, and 'Harlem River' I just wrote last year. It spans from 2007 to 2012.

To be alive at all is so crazy, to experience the wide spectrum of feelings and emotions is so wild, but we have nothing else to compare it to, so it becomes normal.

My hair - it's baby thin and feathery and drives me crazy no matter what I do with it. It's weird because you see people with thicker hair that just kind of stays put, but if I'm in any sort of weather, I look like Bill Murray in 'Kingpin' when it starts to all come unleashed.

'Reign' - and this might sound cheesy, but it's a dream I had. I dreamt everything that happened in that song, woke up, and wrote the song.

I always considered myself a songwriter, but I didn't move to New York with plans of doing that; it just sort of happened. Everyone thinks that I moved to New York strictly to play music, but I totally just happened to fall into playing with Woods, and it all got started from there. I just went to New York to hang out.

My favorite songwriters are all solo artists.

I'm a really big Fiona Apple fan, and more times than not, when I put her on in the car, people are surprised. I think they associate her less as a songwriter and more as a '90s MTV generation artist.

I wanted to write a song called '#1234' that would act as a homage to The Ramones.

You're at LaGuardia, and you get in a cab, and it's taking you into Brooklyn, and you're on the BQE, and you can see the skyline, the whole skyline, and it's so beautiful.

'Rock Bottom Riser' by Smog - I was just in Europe, and my jet lag never really went away. I wasn't sleeping very much. Then one night, my girlfriend saw a Bill Callahan show in L.A. and took a video of that song and sent it to me. I was just listening to it over and over - it was comforting.