Well, with old age and arthritis in my hands, I am now a DREADFUL guitar player, and it takes 3 Aleve 30 minutes before a show to play keyboards, so without these tools I couldn't do much in the way of writing.

I tend to work exactly the opposite where your free style practice session jams inspire songs. I need to be inspired by something I see or do, or a real life event or something like that. And I work from lyric to music, not from music to lyric. Ironically some of the best lyrics come to me as I lay in bed, and if I don't pick up the phone and record them into a sound byte after I sleep they are gone.

Here's an example of Real Band at work. Without Real Band this song couldn't not have been born.

Here Goes Nuttin'

Almost everything I have ever written references women that have dumped me, and there have been plenty of them. The absence of relationship over the last 6 years corresponds directly to my lack of output. Hmmm....