I'm not normally a jewelry person. I'm supposed to be a working class champion and all, and I don't like to rub my success in people's faces.
The way you can be careful of the catastrophe that success can bring is by paying attention to something else that comes along with success - responsibility.
I'm all about telling stories. I like people to picture the music video in their head when they're just listening to the song.
I used to be fast and loose with the term 'country' because I didn't know what else to call my music. I still don't.
Beethoven's music tends to move from chaos to order, as if order were an imperative of human existence.
At the end of the day I want to be the guy who experienced music in all type of ways, with hip-hop being the roots of it.
Unfortunately or fortunately, in order to become acquainted with the idiom of country or rock music, it is necessary to occasionally play in a bar. Bars are a rehearsal place.
I would never have become music director of the Chicago Symphony, which would have been an extremely sad loss.
I was lucky enough to have parents who started me on music very early, but most kids don't get that kind of exposure.
I do believe that when I'm writing music, I get addicted to the music of the concept of what the outcome of the song is, or the passion behind the lyrics.
It wasn't like I picked a camera up in 1989 and stopped making music. I picked a camera up and found another form of expression.
But since I am in the music industry, I don't want anyone to download music, not on September 9th.
I grew in the inner city, listening to Stevie Wonder, Donny Hathaway, James Brown, The Commodores - lots of soul music.
Plus, we spend most of our time writing music. Most of the time is spent in the studio in my house.
I surfed Dana Point, San Clemente, and of course Huntington Beach. Every morning, you could find me at the hot water pipe.
I blend my green drink every morning. I also fix my son a full-on American breakfast with bacon and toast.
I'm singing these songs to inspire you, to keep you going, to lift you up and give you a reason to get up in the morning.
There's an imbalance when if a woman goes out for a walk at 3 in the morning and something happens to her it was somehow her fault, and with a man that's not true.
Remember my first tenet in getting dressed is how you feel in the morning. So if you're not being true blue to that, it usually shows.
The guys I grew up with, my cinematic heroes, have always been men of few words, but of action. Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach.
I'm a country boy, and we're the product of our upbringing. As a boy, I was told that men don't cry.
