When I finally put my guitar in the case the last time, I want to be remembered just as a singer, not as a country singer or pops singer - just a singer.

Well, yeah. At a certain point, you've got to be really honest with yourself. Like, 'Why am I doing this? What are my motivations?' Like, if you get into it because you want to be famous? Then you've got a long row to hoe. But if you really feel like it's a labour of love and it's something you're actually legitimately good at, then it's not that hard to keep plugging away.

Look, I get it; you come home, you work hard, and you turn on your TV... You kind of want to escape a little bit and be taken away by something. Our show required you to pay attention, and if that's not what you wanted to do, then it wasn't going to be for you, and that's OK.

If you have children, you don't want to have drugs and drinks in the house. It's just not good.

I don't want to limit myself musically. It would be really limiting if we'd neglect something we really want to do, like explore other styles of music.

I'm a father. It isn't just my life any more. I don't want my kid finding bottles in the house or seeing his father completely smashed.

I don't want to live in an ivory tower, being the songwriter who just turns inward.

We're not a political band. We don't want to tell people what to do or what to think. We just want to tell them to think.

So if you're on tour for eight months, a year... or whatever it is you definitely don't want arguments and I'm happy to say that I've always had a really nice bunch of people around me all the time.

I've written what and when I want to. It's been about expressing myself. But with the degree, I had to learn to do everything in a very specific, disciplined way. I am very disciplined, but this demanded a totally different kind of discipline. A real challenge.

When you're on tour you definitely don't want lots of arguments. It's very important that everybody gets on because you're in close proximity a great deal of the time.

One of the reasons why when Elvis dies or the Son of Sam is captured ABC News' ratings go up is because people who don't normally watch news are watching then. The question is, do you want to attract people who don't watch network news or fight over the people who do?

I want everybody in the news business to think of ABC before they go any place else. If it costs us an extra few thousand dollars to do that, what does it mean?

One of the towering people in this industry said, why don't you go and make a five-year contract with somebody, make yourself several million dollars and put it away, then go and do whatever you want, work for public TV if you want.

I want to continue doing as big a variety of things as I can do, and if that means I have the honor of getting to do more feature work, I would love that. I know that if I make any other long-term TV commitments, it's not going to be on a drama.