It just becomes more of a juggling act. For me, it's worth it, because there are aspects of my Phish career and my solo career that are mutually exclusive. I need both. Phish has the chemistry of so many years together to make some really incredible music. And I'm into longevity, so I like the idea of continuing in that relationship, but there's a lot that I can only do outside of Phish. I really need both. That's why I do this juggling act. We can do everything if we schedule it.

MG: We've gone as far as talking about -- not following through with at this point -- having Jared come on the road and maybe setting up a recording studio on the tour bus. Not that there's that much extra time in the course of the day, but for days off, for a hotel situation... Because sometimes when I'm touring, I'm not thinking so much and the musical ideas are sort of flowing and they might inspire a song idea.

JS: To be honest with you there really doesn't seem to be a whole lot of difference. I gotta give Mike and incredible amount of credit. He follows the muse on a daily basis. One of the lines I really like is from Chuck Close, who says "Inspiration is for amateurs." Mike really sort of embodies that. He hits the creative heavy bag every day whether he's here or on the road. So, honestly the delineation's not quite as sharp as you might think. It's pretty much going the entire time.

MG: I think that Jared said it pretty well. I feel like I'm just now getting used to wearing the singer/songwriter hat after coming from the bass-jamming, rhythmically weird, experimental hat. But as I'm learning it, I think what singer/songwriters, and I suppose what composers do as well, is stockpile ideas. And I think when you have an inspiration, or even when you have a study period, even if you're practicing something everyday, it might not work its way into your playing for months.

I think it's the same way with songwriting. You stockpile inspirations and ideas, and they have to compost through your system before they come out. That manifests itself when it comes out in many ways. Even Bob Dylan keeps notebooks of old ideas that he'll then take out and work with. I do that, and that's more of a conscious way, but then there's something subconscious happening, too.

I'll give you an example of that. My songwriting in the past might have been more contrived. Where I'm specifically going to try to mentalize a specific concept. By writing more, and having more experience, I've been sort of gravitating towards the subconscious, letting spontaneity take the driver's seat.

One thing I realized when I was starting was that year of songwriting in '07, was that I had these [spontaneous] experiences. One that I had a lot was sitting backstage at a Phish concert in a dark room to practice to get my fingers ready for the show. The reason the room was dark was because sometimes I would want to free associate -- and I would just go through scales to get my fingers ready. I was sort of freeing my mind. This thing happens in that setting where I'll find these bass lines that I never knew I knew. They just sort of find themselves.

I always wanted to write that way, so when I started [writing in] '07, I thought, "Let's make it just like it is backstage at the Phish concert where I'm alone…" Ironically, the most peaceful place in the world is where thousands of people are outside. Many crew members and band members are milling right outside the doorway, and maybe it's extra peaceful because of the commotion. But that's what I did in my studio. I sat and I played the bass to a rhythm without thinking for a while. That was my first experiment of '07, and I picked out my favorite little pieces and wove them into what became the song "Got Away."

It's weird how there's this time lag. I've always experienced it. Phish will make an album, or I'll make an album, and you're all excited about it and I'm all excited about it, and it's years later that it gets put out. Recorded, gone through the process of the record company -- doing its thing. And a record company needs months if not a year or something to process. By the time the world hears it, it's old. In a certain sense.

It would be nice if it could be quicker. Even when we're recording it, some of the ideas are not just months, but years old... They're not really old, that's the wrong word. It's that they've evolved, in my consciousness and if I'm working with Jared, [they've] definitely evolved in his consciousness. We'll revisit a song that we worked on a few years ago, and that song will have stemmed from a jam session from a few years before that, so there's this time lag.

There's a Leonard Cohen quote where he says, "They say 'What's your advice for upcoming young songwriters?'" And he says, "The one thing I will say is if you stick with a song for a while, it will yield." And then he said, "And I don't mean weeks, I mean years." So, again, this is the album where we really try to take the time and say, "You know it's okay if it takes a long time." This needs to evolve and this needs to shed its skin and reveal its raw essence. And we really try to do that. And that happens naturally. It's like an eternal composting of musical concepts.

JS: I think one of the challenges of it being a longer process is it takes extra discipline not to just fill up the songs with whatever ideas you might have. I mean, there's a certain amount of addition and subtraction as it goes along, but, especially with this album, I think it took extra discipline to really let a few elements speak for themselves and not just fill it up.