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Q. Are you making fun of poor people with your song Poor People On TV?

A. No, I’m making fun of the people who are making fun of poor people. It’s very post post modern. You know, I’m making fun of all of those shows, like Jerry Springer, and Cops, and Rikki Lake, and Maury, when they get these disorganized, loud poor people on and their lives are in chaos and we all watch and boo and yell at them to get their shit together. It’s like “Poor People As Sport,” you know, that sort of thing.

Q. Why don’t you have any kids? Are you really scared to have kids like in your song?

A. I can’t afford them. And they annoy me. Although they don’t annoy me as much as their parents do. Jeez, what happened to parents these days? The kids are definitely calling the shots. My next album is going to be called “Jump Daddy, Jump; How High How High?” Parents are always negotiating with their kids, and giving them a million choices. It’s absurd and just freaks the kids out. There was a woman I saw the other day and she kept asking her son if he wanted his hat on or off, or did he want to go to the store, or would he like a Popsicle? It was overwhelming. The child was really stressing about all the choices. And she was getting upset with him because he couldn’t make a decision, so then she’d just give him even more choices, and then she started screaming, “Well maybe WE SHOULD JUST GO TO THE PARK THEN, TYLER!!!! MAYBE WE SHOULD JUST GO TO THE PARK!!!!" It was this vicious cycle. And he was only two years old.

Q. Are you a curmudgeon?

A. I fear I am becoming one. This is the downside of not having kids. You become W. C Fields. So in order to combat this crabbiness I’m signing up for yoga, and perhaps tap dancing. You can’t be crabby if you’re stretching and dancing around.

Q. How old are you?

A. None of your business.

Q. Why are all of your friends alcoholics?

A. I’m attracted to eccentrics and real characters. Unfortunately as they become middle aged they are no longer full of that reckless undeniable promise. That, “they would be so amazing if only they’d get it together” thing. Instead they didn’t get it together and, well they are amazing, but perhaps not in the way that they wanted, and they become drunks.

Q. How does this affect you?

A. They call me up late at night and babble on giving monologues about their tedious lives. And then they get angry with me. It’s starting to really make me mad. I babble on about my tedious life too, but at least I’m not drunk when I do it. I hate drunk people.

Q. Do you try to help them? Do you stage interventions?

A. No, I just complain about them behind their backs.

Q. Are your songs confessional?

A. No, not at all. I'll take maybe a teeny tiny thing that happened to me, or someone I know, but then I'll exaggerate it, and really blow it out of proportion so that it'll be a good dramatic moment, you know? No, I don't write about myself, even though a lot of writers, myself included, use first person narrative probably way too much. Hopefully the songs are about everybody.

Q. Who are your influences?

A. At the moment I'm really listening a lot to Ray Davies and Richard Thompson. I just love British songwriters, they are my very favorites. They're so good with melody, I never get tired of them. But I love Victoria Williams, Kim Richie, Lucinda Williams, Libby Johnson there are a ton of great women songwriters out there that are really inspiring. And I listen to a lot of classical music. Stravinsky, Mozart, Bach. I was originally trained as a classical musician, that's what I studied in school. I played the French Horn for years.

Q. Why did you quit classical music?

A. I'm too ridiculous to play classical music. It's a very serious perfectionist culture. The people who play it really sacrifice a lot. I'm too silly. And I'm not a perfectionist. But I'm a big fan and I'll sit in the audience.

Q. You've been playing in New York a long time now, has the scene changed much since you started in 1991?

A. Well, there seems to be a lot more easy listening music here in New York, so that's kind of new. New York's become a mecca for all the top easy listening acts. They all come here. To New York! It's wild.

Q. Why did you go to culinary school?

A. I wanted to be middle class.

Q. So you went into food service?

A. That’s right.

Q. How did it go?