THC: How do you and the other members of the band write your songs? Do you sit around and have jam sessions or do you sit down and deliberately compose each song?

JA: Well, it's never really jam style. Philosophically we object to "I can improvise all day, and do that Phish thing and we'll all just play together and it will be cool." When someone has an idea, and some guitar riffs, they'll come in and throw them out, usually with a couple of verses and a chorus, or some sort of progression. From there the group will decide if it's cool, or if it needs some work. I would call it a collaborative process; the arrangement of a song is usually hashed out by consensus.

THC: How do the lyrics to the songs get composed? There seems to be a wide degree of variation of the seriousness or significance of the lyrics.

JA: I would say that it is a result of who writes the lyrics. John seems to be the most clever and funny (although we don't try to be funny). There is usually some sort of situation that underlies the words and makes it reasonable. Usually there is also some sort of private joke elaborated upon that fuels the idea of the song. You know, in good songs, everybody understands what is going on and it has a catchy melody. But we don't really think through it that hard. A lot of it is just blah, blah, blah, blah.

THC: What do the members of the band do for fun when they are not playing music?

JA: Well, we like Sylvester Stallone movies, just because he's funny and they're usually good stories. They're just [adopts Stallone voice] "good action flicks." Some of the best times we've had are because of being in a band. Once, we went to Iceland and we got to go to these volcanic hot springs. We've also been to LA. You know, the traveling stuff is where most of the fun is. It's not like we play Jenga or Scrabble.