JB: You know what’s great? It’s when your friends become your heroes. Like they’re already like—they kept growing and they kept like taking on more and more of the—they just challenged themselves and took on more and more terrain. I think that they you know grew musically as well as lyrically and you know they went—I was, just for the record, I was always sort of against them stopping writing with everybody else and sort of just doing their own songs. I mean I just sort of said, “You guys sing other people’s songs so well; why would you not avail yourself of these great songs? I mean, you did that great version of ‘Ol’ 55’ by Tom Waits.” And they just said, “No, we just want to write—
EA: Which Tom Waits hated—
JB: “We only want to write our own songs, and we just want to do our songs.” But it, you know, it was also—it was kind of an ambition. They knew that’s how you make money, as well. And if they were going to succeed, they were going to succeed with their own material. They demanded it of themselves, and the songs got really good. I thought the songs got—I mean, they’re so memorable and so—and they did continue to write with J. D. I think the time I sat down with them in their writing style, where everybody sits down and they’re like—it looks a lot like a poker game but it’s really, they’re sitting—I couldn’t keep up. I was just slow. I’m slow. I’m a slow writer. And I’d be thinking about the line, and I’d go, “Okay, I got it.” And I’d come up out of my meditative little pause, and they’d have moved on. They’d say, “Oh no, no, no. We got that. Now we’re over on this part of the song.” And I’m thinking, “This kind of writing’s not for me.” But a lot of the songs that are collaborations aren’t really that kind of collaboration—