Every song that I ever started is about something. I know what it’s about and what I’m trying to say, and I know at the end of the song whether I’ve said it. I’ve always been a hyper-rational person and also songwriter, and Kenneth [Pattengale] is exactly the opposite. He comes from this really intuitive, nonrational, more emotional side. When you write the way that he writes, also in my opinion the way Joe Henry writes, it has the effect of giving the listener a more direct experience of the thing that inspired you to write the song. Rather than telling the listener what it was, you actually give them the experience.—Joey Ryan
From an interview with the Milk Carton Kids in Acoustic Guitar magazine, July 2015.
