When I became more involved in music, I had to give up some of my writing in the literary sense. However, on occasion, I would write something for my own pleasure or I would write notes and introductory remarks in the songbooks I put together.
I don't take breaks, man. In the past, I used to spend my free time getting in trouble, and now I spend it working on my music. If I'm not playing drums with my cover band, Chevy Metal, I'm working on songs for myself.
Because, when I'm making music, I don't think about anything, you know? All I think about is what I want to hear. So that for me is what I want - I want my head to be constantly being rearranged.
I miss the physicality of drumming. There's immediateness about it that I'm always striving for in my acting. Maybe I'm in the wrong profession. I certainly wish I could spend more time pursuing music. It feels like a part of me I'm neglecting.
I think that I am seeing the Internet and seeing technology take and seeing how the work I do through music directly affects people's lives better than any politician I've ever met.
I think that pop music in general sometimes like to keep things a bit more hidden, and, you know, you censor and you polish to make it fit more people or to not be too vulgar or make sure of, 'Can this really play on the radio?' And I like not doing ...
I'm not just influenced by the '60s - it's who I am. I grew up with Allen Ginsberg and Che Guevara. I flirted with various forms of communism when it was way out of style. It was this really strange and creative time in music and culture, and it was ...
I want to run for the Senate from Tennessee. Not now, but when I'm 50, when music dies down a little bit. I know lots of artists and actors have those delusions of grandeur, but ever since I was a kid, it's been of interest to me.
You don't try to get influenced by everything that's going on with all the other music around you. You don't listen to the radio - I mean, I don't. When I get ready to do an album, I don't listen to anybody else; I don't wanna be influenced.
Black people dance well because we start early - there's music being played everywhere. White people? They don't start dancing until they get to college, and by then, it's too late; the bottom don't move with the top no matter how hard they try.
When I got out of high school, I was in a blues band. It was the kind of music I was interested in, and listening to, mostly because it was becoming a vehicle for a generation of guitarists - like Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton. Mike Bloomfield. And that...
It's no longer necessary to slave over the vocals. I don't sing the lyrics until I write them, and singing is the very last thing I do. I record the entire track, and then I worry about lyrics and vocals. The music will suggest where the words are go...
People want to listen to a lot of music and do whatever they want with it. They don't want DRM, they don't want subscriptions. They don't want a player that only can do this but can't do that and you only have one copy. They don't want that. You know...
If you listen to my tapes, you'd hear 14 different ways to arrange the rhythm guitar behind the harmony vocal, and then 14 different ways with a different vocal. You'd have to really be a music lover to sit through that and find it entertaining. I en...
The pressure is all self-imposed, and it's to live up to the expectations of people who are going to shell out their hard-earned cash to listen to the music. It's actually more than that, though. I wouldn't want to make a record that didn't live up t...
There's a lot of music at my fingertips that I can be influenced by. And just because I play a horn, I don't need to sound, or try to capture, what was happening before me. I can just respect it and learn from it.
After I moved with my mother to St. Louis, my older sister and I went to see Ike Turner, who was the hottest then. His music charged me. I was never attracted to him, but I wanted to sing with his band.
Music changes every three months. There's always new artists coming out. There's always new sounds. There is always a new hit coming out. You gotta stay relevant as much as you can and feed your fans as much as you can.
With The Key, it was, I had gone through a divorce and losing my father, and just kinda really reminiscing about how much I loved the traditional side of country music, so I made a record that was really traditional from start to finish.
I don't think my vocals demand effects. I like reverb to a certain extent, but I don't want to hide my voice. I like stripped-down vocals, but I also like crazy, powerful, doubled vocals like in dance or electronic music.
That music and the lyrical aspects of Razorblade Romance is so personal to me that, now with me being grown up a bit and meeting new people and doing new things, it makes me look at the same things I was writing about back in the day through a differ...
