[Ballard: Location]

I think it's less important to be in LA or New York or London now, or Nashville, than perhaps in years past. But having said that, I still think it's a much better environment to be – I would say LA. I may be biased as it's here on the West Coast, but this has always been a great music town. It still has the greatest recording studios and has more of them than any other city in the world. And I think it has the best musicians as well, because the people who play here understand that they really have to be good. So there's always somebody to replace you so that the level of musicianship is enormously high in a place like LA and you have also a great creative community to sort of cross-pollinate what you're doing.

Same thing in Nashville; if you wanna be just a pure songwriter and you can write country music, if you go to Nashville and write with a handful of the good writers down there, you will learn something every time because there is a community there and there is a sense of – it's not as competitive as it is kind of – it foments something really good.

And I feel like creating in isolation, whether you live in Des Moines, Iowa and you're in your bedroom making records every day, I'm sure you can do a great job doing that but I think the potential for growth comes from being around people who are better than you are. And in this town, every time I hire a musician I'm pretty much in awe because they're so good and I learn something from that, and I think that as a result, I raise the bar as high as I can every time.

So while not essential to move to one of the music centers, I think it gives you more opportunities, certainly in LA. There's television, movies, there are video games, in addition to records. There is a lot of music being created here.