I get the feeling that my songs aren't that dark. There is a cynicism but humour also - it's not depression upon depression upon depression. It's a blend.
Funny songs aren't usually that good. Like Weird Al and maybe a couple of Beatles songs, but it's kind of hard to bring humor into rock music in an interesting way.
'Honky Tonk Badonkadonk' wasn't some serious song, but it was huge! It was funny.
One of the most quotable guys ever in country music was Grandpa Jones.
Carlos Sosa, the saxophone player for Zac Brown Band, and I worked up two songs for 'When You're Feeling Sick.' They were a blast to work on. The songs are real upbeat and silly.
I think that there's always room for humour in music. It's something that always takes itself so seriously, which I think is a bit of a shame.
Seriously, though, I realise I set the bar really high with Tenacious D - one of the great, great bands of our time.
I'm probably the most excited about 'Turtleneck & Chain.'
Some very silly songs can have an almost melancholy feeling when you put it in a different perspective.
We thought Queen were quite tongue in cheek.
More of my songs are intended to be funny than almost anyone else. Sometimes maybe it cheers me up a bit. I've got a distance from it. Sometimes what I'm writing is more important to me than the rest of my life. It's more important to me that I'm writing well than anything else.
There's a lot of different ways that a song would be a challenge to parody. There are a lot of songs that would ostensibly be a good candidate for parody, yet I can't think of a clever enough idea. Some songs are too repetitive for me to be able to fashion a humorous set of lyrics around. Some songs flat-out just don't work creatively for me.
What I took back, because of my exposure to the Jewish music of the 30s and the 40s in my upbringing with my father, was that kind of theatrical songwriting. It was always a part of my character. This desire to make people laugh.
My favourite chant is 'you're just a fat Eddie Murphy.' When I heard that I could not stop laughing. I would prefer a 'muscular Eddie Murphy.'
It's hard to really articulate what the parameters are that make one song parody-able and another song not, but if I can come up with a good enough idea for it, I go for it, and if not, then I have to move on.
I always laugh when I listen to my old stuff. I was just trying way too much back then. Doing too many harmonies and too many runs and all the crazy stuff. Rapping all funny and animated.
There are a lot of songs that would ostensibly be a good candidate for parody, yet I can't think of a clever enough idea.
It would be really nice to make a record that would be super-fun to play live - a record that would be funny, with a little bit of heart.
My first band was called Nubert Circus, a very embarrassing, dumb name. It means nothing. We were kind of grunge. I would say we were more funny punk, a lot of songs about food and stuff like that.
There's a long tradition - certainly with country, but in all kinds of genres of music - to have humorous lyrics. Certainly with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention and, if you look at country, Roger Miller and Jim Stafford.
