This interview finds our hero in the middle of the Tangerine tour in a jazz bar at a beautiful hotel in Vienna, VA.

Let's start off with the new label, Tallulah. How did that get started?

Well, it came about out of necessity and luck because we finished Tangerine in May of 2005. We kind of decided on six labels that we wanted to take it to - and out of those, about two made an offer and they sucked so I just didn't want to do it. You know, after the Nettwerk thing happened, it was like - under what circumstances am I possibly going to sign away ownership of the masters of another record? I just wasn't sure what to do. About that time, we got a call from a guy named Bob Nichols in Jacksonville, Florida who had found me on iTunes. He had been out to a couple of shows and he wanted to organize a show in Jacksonville. In doing that, he asked if I ever needed some investment in my career - which I did. I really had no idea if this guy just wanted to get me five grand to do something with... I had no idea. What I needed was a structure and a budget basically to promote the record, and that is not cheap to do properly - it's not astronomically expensive but you have to have somebody around who has a little bit of capital. So we put together a budget and presented it to him and he said "yeah, absolutely, that was what I was expecting" - which we couldn't believe. That was the why and the how. From there, it's just been a process of developing different relationships in terms of the general day to day mechanics of what you do to promote a record, hiring people and fortunately not firing anyone yet.

Aside from "Fighting For Your Life" which I know dates back to when I first saw you play it live in November of 2001, are all of the songs relatively recent?

It probably would have been written between Indiana and when we started recording this. I'm trying to think through that because I know I've screwed this up in interviews before... I know "Sugar On The Knees" was written when the record was almost done.

"Fighting For Your Life" hung around for a long time, why record it now? Did you rediscover it after all these years or did it kind of hang around?

I think it got kicked out before because there was an aspect of it that seemed a little too broadway, and this was the first record I've had where I was able to say "fuck it, who cares it it's broadway?" - do it if it sounds good. I also got hung up on that original chorus, I didn't like that but I just kept messing around with it and got it to a place where I liked it. I honestly can't remember if it hung around all that time.

How did the arrangements on Tangerine differ from your original vision? How much did Brad Jones' production have to do with the final product?

The arrangements on Tangerine were partially me - I think I had a lot of ideas that I normally don't go after. It was also in response to Indiana being such a restrained record. Also, I met the perfect guy to work it out with - Brad Jones can play every Beatles song there's ever been on three different instruments or he can play Rachmaninov on the piano. Not only that - he thinks orchestrally and he understands a ton of different instruments and what kind of tambre they have and where they would fit in well. He wasn't afraid to try anything. I couldn't really break it down on percentages but the timing worked out really really good in terms of me just wanting to try something and him being the right guy to try it with. And so on and so forth.

Can you give me an example of a song that strayed really far from your original vision and perhaps one that maybe didn't stray at all?

I think "Fighting For Your Life" went closest to plan, definitely. "Hallelujah, I Was Wrong" was very different. It had an intro that still exists, a verse, a pre-chorus, a chorus. It repeated that again and then it had a bridge and a chorus - which is very similar to how a million of my songs have been. We started with the chorus, which was my favorite part of the song. Straight into the pre-chorus - the verse is now what the pre-chorus was; then the chorus straight to the bridge - then back to the chorus again. It wasn't that funky in the beginning, it was more like The Strokes or something.

Any unreleased tracks from the sessions?

No! We recorded twelve songs for the record, it was very scripted out - it kind of had to be for the kind of record that it was and the kind of budget we had... which was no budget at the time. My dad lent me five grand to get it going and to show some sort of good faith payment. And in the end, to Alex the Great Studios and Brad - I mean those guys didn't get paid for eight or nine months, so they were incredibly patient.

Tell me about the ukelele.

I had just done this record before the Wherever You Are tour, and I got so into the ukelele on the record that I wanted to have one out. I'm always looking for a way to keep the solo shows interesting for me and the audience. It wasn't appropriate to that record at all... (laughs) It was the last thing that made sense to tour that record with - a ukelele...

Would you be willing to give us any track by track anecdotes?

Yeah, sure!.

"Tangerine" - when did the idea to create an overture come in, was that there from the beginning?

That was actually about three quarters of the way through.

"Hard To Remember" seems like it could be written about a fan.

It's pretty autobiographical actually... that's interesting. That's a good point. I have always curiously wondered about that - if one of my setbacks might actually be my name, the fact that my name isn't like Albert Hammond Jr. or Julian Casablancas. I always talk about those guys because The Strokes have the greatest rock names of any band to come down the pipe in the last twenty years. Maybe someone in an African country would think that David Mead was an exotic name - but to me, it's just so straight up Northern European descent, like it could be anybody's name. It's really more addressed to a lover but it's also kind of addressed to an audience too.

"The Trouble With Henry".

It's kind of an empathy with someone who was a friend of mine who had a drug problem that just wouldn't quit. I mean, the lengths he would go to to provide for that and how much he turned his back on everything else in his life was remarkable. I can't really pass judgement on the guy because there's a part of me that if certain key things hadn't happened at certain times in my life, I would be in the jazz bar every night, so to speak. I have no solutions for someone's problems like that, it just sucks. I certainly don't have a thorough understanding of addiction. It's about that struggle - on one hand, how could you possibly let yourself go to this point - but at the same time I have moments where I will sacrifice, on a smaller level, things to get my game on too.

"Chatterbox".

As I've said during shows, it's about Natalie but it's also about other women I've been with. It's about women in a lot of ways actually - it's like that great Chris Rock piece where he says "let me tell you about relationships - men, ya'll gotta learn to listen; women, ya'll gotta learn to shut the fuck up", you know what I mean? That's such a massive difference between men and women. It's obviously talking about this girl that talks all the time, but the plea in the chorus is "don't stop, I actually love it when you talk all the time." It's not a particularly deep number.

Why is the title of the next track "Reminded #1"? Is there a number two?

I wrote another song called "Reminded" that I was trying to get Gretchen Wilson to do. It was written around the same period but it's a completely different song. That's all there is behind that. (laughs)

"Hunting Season".

Going back to the marital theme of the record, all of the songs have a certain tie to a marriage, not necessarily mine. That song is the true story of some friends - I'm friends with the former wife anyway. To me, it's all about the lines "he had enough of being loved / the crooked rain and rolling thunder / says it's nice in Spain this summer". You know, it's not particularly easy to be loved, and it's not easy to love someone either, and that really comes to the forefront when you're married. More for me now than when I was just in relationships with people and that's what I really wanted to illustrate. I like the whole thing about guns and hunting season because that brings out some intense shit in people. Having known these people as a couple, I don't really know what that woman could have done differently, she did all she could - and the guy just couldn't stick. If I were in that situation - and maybe I have been before... I don't know, I don't want to push the violence metaphor too far. It's tongue in cheek in a way - like "if somebody can't deal with that, take 'em out!" (laughs) I don't know, that's really up to the imagination.

"Fighting For Your Life" - and can you also touch on how the lyrics changed from the original version?

I don't know if I can, because I don't remember all of those lyrics.

I thought there was a different slant, drug related.

There was a line about drugs in there, but I thought it was fairly similar. I think it just might be a slightly more adult version of the song. The object is not as particularly shallow as the last person was. Other than that, it was just changing the direction - it seemed more honest to be directed at a person as opposed to a story I was telling you about somebody else. It seemed a little martyrish the other way.

"Sugar On The Knees".

That's another situation that I observed. I think everybody's life has reoccuring themes and a lot of those themes are not particularly healthy. In spite of being not healthy and painful, I think as human beings we're conditioned to kind of go back to them and repeat them because it's what we know from our childhood and we're comfortable with it, right? So the song addresses incest, actually. It's just two different portraits and it's pretty simple in its structure. It throws out a scene early on of a child and then it takes her to her wedding day - and there's a common theme between this person who abused her when she was young and her husband that just pops out all of a sudden. "I see it coming 'round again." It's probably the extreme of what I'm talking about. It's probably my least favorite one to divulge that information about because it's my favorite lyric on the whole record... I sound like I'm patting myself on the back, I guess I am - I feel like I got it right on that one, and between the music, melody and lyrics there's a lot of space there for people to make their own assumptions. I have people close to me who think it's something about babies and that's fine in a way.

"Hallelujah, I Was Wrong".

Um... broke, workin' it out, trying to find the beauty in the details instead of worrying about the big picture, basically.

"Suddenly, A Summer Night".

It's about falling back into it with an ex, how the possibility of a quick thrill linked to nostalgia can get your motor going in spite of the reality of a past situation.

"Making It Up Again".

Broke, workin' it out, trying to find the beauty in the details... ha! The first refrain is about touring, and the "freedom" line is about how people think it's freedom but the rest of the song is about being broke, basically. It's a poor shot at irony... this is actually a job, it's not really sexy. But this is pretty sexy, sitting in a jazz bar at a nice hotel, drinking and getting interviewed - this is how I always hoped it would work out.

"Choosing Teams".

That's a reoccuring dream of mine - I still have those high school dreams. It's probably more about elementary school than high school. It's that sense of... I wonder if it ever goes away - I'm surprised that I'm 32 years old and that idea of "am I included in this group or not?" For me, that's several things. Do I fit into a certain eschelon of artists that I would like to be a part of? As a couple, do Natalie and I fit into a version of how it's supposed to be going when you're married? At the end of the day, all you can really do is make your own way and make your version of both of those situations because that's what makes them good. It's not that gratifying to follow someone else's model essentially.