Folklife runs at the Seattle Center from Friday, May 25 to Monday, May 28. For more information, visit nwfolklifefestival.org.

Roderick: Don't take any more showers than usual, which I'm guessing is generally one a day for Shelby and slightly fewer for Faustine. If you normally take three showers a day, go ahead and do that. The point is: Act normally. Folklife attendees will be able to sense if you have altered your grooming habits, and you may spook them into a stampede.

While drumming at Folklife, should Faustine wear her bikini top or her tie-dyed shirt--or should she just tie-dye her bikini top?--Earl

John Roderick is the singer and songwriter responsible for the Long Winters. His column runs in SW's Reverb Monthly (look for the May issue tomorrow). He Tweets @johnroderick.

Roderick: Do you mean when you asked me to produce your next record for $15,000 and I said I'd think about it? Well, I've given it a lot of thought, and I've decided I'll do it. I'm confirming here in the newspaper, which is the same as a notarized contract. PayPal me the money and we'll get started.

Can I borrow your beard and your ukulele for Folklife?
-- Shelby Earl, singer/songwriter

John Roderick is the singer and songwriter responsible for Seattle's the Long Winters. Send your questions to jroderick@seattleweekly.com.

Iwakuma: What is your favorite moment in Mariners history?

Roderick: Have you noticed that Ichiro is like a character out of Kafka? Every time he goes to bat he puts down his invisible briefcase, takes off his invisible black suit jacket, singles to center, steals second base, and then the Mariners lose! He's caught in an endless Groundhog Day where it doesn't matter whether he learns the piano or kidnaps the groundhog and drives into a gravel pit, the Mariners lose! Seattleites love resignation in the face of futility, it's one of our defining characteristics.

Baseball is considered by many people to be the most intellectual sport, but isn't it sad that most other "intellectual" things are considered snobby? Like, artistic dancing is also very athletic, both modern and classical, and the dancers I've known haven't been any smarter than baseball players, but going to a dance recital seems like a very elitist thing to do.

Why is that? Is it because no one wins at dancing? Look at figure skating, it's like dancing except one person wins and the losers go home in tears. You'd think that figure skating would be a big hit, but nobody cares about it except for Russians and some really brassy moms.

John Roderick is the singer and songwriter responsible for Seattle's the Long Winters. Send your questions to jroderick@seattleweekly.com.

Iwakuma: What's your favorite seating location in Safeco Field to watch the Mariners?

Roderick: Welcome to Seattle, Hisashi! I'm guessing from your first question that you had a little coaching from the Mariners organization in preparing things to ask. That's understandable. I'm sure you do a lot of press and get asked a lot of these same questions yourself. I know what that's like, since I am a famous rock star.

Anyway, since this is probably the only time we'll get a chance to chat, I'm going to read between the lines of your questions a little bit so we can really get the most out of our conversation.

John Roderick is the singer and songwriter responsible for Seattle's the Long Winters. Send your questions to jroderick@seattleweekly.com.

Dear John: Do Seattle's higher-learning schools do much to truly support the arts and/or music in Seattle and/or the world?
-- Anonymous

Roderick: My exposure to the music programs at local universities is fairly limited. I mean, I met dozens of Cornish "jazzbos" at after-hours hip-hop clubs back when you couldn't go into a party in this town without someone rapping about "integrity" over a stand-up-bass solo, but that scene never made the daylight. I tried to take some music classes at UW, but they were all reserved for music majors, so my music education there came from listening to people practice vocal scales while I played stoned Frisbee on the quad.

John Roderick is the singer and songwriter responsible for Seattle's the Long Winters. Send your questions to jroderick@seattleweekly.com

Hey, John: Why the so serious of tone in much of Seattle's music? And, then on the other side, why when it's not serious, it's just ironic? -- Anonymous

Seattle is a songwriter's town, rather than a musician's town, which means the focus is on individual "geniuses" rather than chops or jams. This alone doesn't mean it has to be so deadly serious--there are some great songwriters who write happy, or at least merry music--but Seattle was profoundly influenced by two factors: the Scandinavian conviction that celebration is unseemly, and the Punk Rock belief that raw emotion is the source of unvarnished truth.

John Roderick is the singer and songwriter responsible for Seattle's the Long Winters. Send your questions to jroderick@seattleweekly.com.

Roderick: I'm loyal to the city because I keep thinking how much better it would be for Seattle if everybody cool didn't move out to Grays Harbor County and become chairman of their local Grange Hall. I'm not divorced, so there's no reason to move to Oregon, and I can't move to Los Angeles because my teeth aren't weird enough. The only other reasonable option would be New York, where I could enjoy the sound of people screaming at each other through my apartment walls while the smell of frying cat entrails comes in through my air conditioner, but I'm not wealthy enough.

Read Roderick's entire Q&A column -- featuring queries from Aimee Man, Duff McKagan, Luke Burbank, and Cupcake Royale's Jody Hall -- in the new issue of SW's Reverb Monthly.

John Roderick is the singer and songwriter responsible for Seattle's the Long Winters. Send your questions to jroderick@seattleweekly.com.

Roderick: I consider my garden to be a sovereign nation, and it's written in our Constitution that the whole great state of Roderickania is clothing-optional. Also, my street is a migratory pathway for certain rare breeds of South-end gangbangers, so whenever I see a Caprice Classic on 22s roll by real slow with the bass thumping, I go out to the garden naked and practice sword fighting, (our national sport is not "fencing", it's sword-fighting). It reminds everyone who the REAL gangster is.

John Roderick is the singer and songwriter responsible for Seattle's the Long Winters. Send your questions to jroderick@seattleweekly.com.

Bubble-placement is key, although it helps if you ask for a room with a deep tub. When Spencer Moody interviewed me in the bath at the Sorrento Hotel the tub was very shallow and I spent most of the interview heaping bubbles up around my middle-area to avoid exposing myself to curious onlookers. I don't mean that Spencer was in the bath with me, by the way. It was one of those "art-happenings" that make Seattle such a fun and vibrant cultural culture-place.

John Roderick is the singer and songwriter responsible for Seattle's the Long Winters. Send your questions to jroderick@seattleweekly.com.

Dear John: Why is it that there are never any shows in January?
--Seven

Roderick: If you'd ever tried to catch three hours of sleep--four guys in a Ford van--with your breath freezing in the air, parked in front of a Canadian television station in a minus-20 degree ice storm because you were playing two songs on Good Morning Winnipeg at 7 a.m. between the woman who made little animals out of deviled eggs and the couple who played "singing bowls" and slept under a copper pyramid, you would know the answer to this question.