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EDITOR'S NOTE: With apologies to Esquire magazine, we continue a semi-regular feature: "What I've Learned," a chance for some familiar faces to share with readers their wisdom and insight on music, art, life and whatever else they may choose. Inspired by the monthly feature in Esquire magazine, we thought it would be an ideal opportunity to give artists we've interviewed in the recent past, or whose stories we've told repeatedly, the chance to speak to our readers directly.

Todd Steed

A veteran of the Knoxville music scene since the early 1980s, Steed has built a reputation for the unusual and entertaining. Starting with Smokin' Dave and the Premo Dopes, he's done more for the Knoxville rock scene than just about anyone else still playing locally these days. Through such bands as Apelife and the Suns of Phere -- his most recent collection of motley musicians -- he's penned songs from the quirky to the serious to the bittersweet, and his most recent album, "Eskimo Hair," may be his finest to date. He celebrates the release of that album at noon today on the WDVX-FM "Blue Plate Special," and on Oct. 3 at Barley's Taproom in Knoxville's Old City.

That that old saying is true, at least in my case: You can carry your parents on your shoulders for the rest of their life and never repay them for what they have done for you.

Travel helps to reduce prejudice, but it won't kill it. Living away from the United States for extended periods taught me more about this country and home than anything else I have done. It's important, if you can, to get away from everything you hold dear to see it in a new and brighter light. Then come back to embrace and further improve it.

If you watch an entire "Curb Your Enthusiasm" season all in one day you will start to turn into Larry David. The same goes for "The Sopranos" -- you will start to talk like Tony Soprano. So, be careful.

Music is therapy. Nothing can quite turn around a bad time like playing or listening to music that resonates. Fats Waller can cure just about anything.

Walking is spiritual. You actually have to notice and be a part of your world when you travel that way. Unless it's raining and cold; then you just feel like an idiot.

You need to examine and reexamine your beliefs on a regular basis not matter what they are. At some point logic and free will are both illusions, I guess, but just in case they are not, use them both as much as humanly possible. The real stuff will survive. The crap will blow away.

When my dogs outsmart me I realize how much I have yet to learn.

Things I held in ridicule in my youth are now some of my greatest passions: jazz, green tea, reading and watching the news, the technical aspects of sound recording, sitting around looking at trees, a clean living room, and marriage.

You can appreciate music and art more if you don't measure the value of such things by sales charts. Never measure human worth by a person's wealth and power or lack thereof.

Garlic is fabulous and worth what ever social penalties come with eating it.

If you want more friends buy a pickup truck. If you want less friends ask to borrow their pickup truck to haul mulch.

The moment you try to be cool, you aren't. Cool just is. I thought buying a cool guitar would make me look cool. I was wrong. People would say, "That sure is a cool guitar that geek is playing."

Very few things are more important or harder to achieve than the classic axioms: Practice what you preach ... To they own self be true ... Judge not, less you be judged.

I can forgive almost anything except people talking on their cell phones in an elevator. We both know there is nobody on the other line, anyway.