I went to Morocco, joined a band called Pegasus, ran out of money, went to Gibraltar and worked on the docks, writing songs about the sun and the morning and the birds.
When I go to a concert, I can't believe that people pay lots of money to see a band that they obviously like and then they dance the whole time.
We don't want to put a band-aid on our problems that we keep talking about in society; we want to get down to the nitty gritty and do some surgery.
What I really like about 'Red Band Society' is how real it is, and the experiences that they are going through are experiences that everyone is bound to go through at one point or another in their lives.
I don't think I'm an instantaneous act the whole world will love in one second - but that's how I've felt about bands I love.
The creative part for me is making songs, and that's what I really love the most, and that's what I've always done for every band I've ever had.
To be appreciated by a whole 'nother generation of fans, all of a sudden discovering you, it's kind of what I did with the classic bands I love - the ones that influenced me.
I love being in a band. I love that collaborative spirit, although some would suggest that I don't get involved in the collaborative spirit, but it's not true.
Whether you like another band's music or not you never know who is going to take you out on tour or who you are going to be friends with and that is just something that is important to us.
My first favorite band that made music important to me was the Beatles. I was a little kid. I didn't know who was singing what song or who wrote what song.
I think Andy Kaufman is to comedy what the Velvet Underground was to music - it's like, 80 thousand records sold, but everybody who bought one started a band.
Being 16 years old and getting an electric guitar is never going to get old. There's always going to be kids making music. There's always going to be kids in bands.
There are kids out there that are into Iron Maiden and others who are strictly into industrial music, but they come for the same reason; they all like us and they different things out of the band's music.
Mainly I was able to perform with music - I played the French horn, I would sing, and I was a drummer in the pipe band. So I think it was a way to show off.
I grew up with Al Jarreau. We had a band together and worked these places for three years when neither one of us knew we could make a living doing music.
My favorite bands were Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Jethro Tull, Uriah Heep, Grand Funk Railroad. If you listen to some of my early music, you can hear it.
And for REO - they get to play for some Styx fans and then we get to play in front of some REO fans. It helps spread the new music to the following of other bands.
When I was growing up listening to music, it was 2004, when The Starting Line and Finch and The Used were kind of my favorite bands.
As a kid, I was into music, played guitar in a band. Then I started acting in plays in junior high school and just got lost in the puzzle of acting, the magic of it. I think it was an escape for me.
We didn't go for music that sounded like blues, or jazz, or rock, or Led Zeppelin, or Rolling Stones. We didn't want to be like any of the other bands.
In a way, it's my way of dealing with, finding closure with Grateful Dead music, and giving thanks in a way to Jerry and Bob and all the guys in the band for making up this wonderful music.
