What are the songs about on the Dear Jack EP?
There’s a song called “There, There, Katie,” which was half written during Transit, and the other half after I found out my sister would be my stem-cell donor. It’s a song about and for my sister. Diane from “Diane the Skyscraper,” was my nurse in the first week that I was in New York, getting diagnosed. It was really the only song that I wrote while I was in the hospital, probably on the second night that I was there, and did a demo of it a year or two later. I love the song.

With all of your experiences, what is your opinion on the healthcare debate?
I think it’s horrible. We’re sitting in a horrible place. I have health insurance and I went into the doctor’s office the other day and got sent a bill for $1100 after they went to my insurance company. I think there’s this crazy effort to stall, or accommodate the people who are robbing our entire society blind for the sake of profiting in the most grotesque way humanly possible over people’s diseases and illnesses. I was lucky. I had health insurance and a business manager. But it certainly was a topic of much conversation among myself, my friends and my family, that what if I had not been in such an advantageous place? I’m scared that they’re going to go “reform” the industry but make such a point to make concessions to these pigs who are robbing us blind that we might not actually get reform.

Read the full article here.