Amazingly, I've been sort of an anomaly in the music industry. I feel like I've been able to exist as kind of a throwback artist.
Louis Armstrong is quite simply the most important person in American music. He is to 20th century music (I did not say jazz) what Einstein is to physics.
When I perform Strauss, it is as if the music fits me like a glove. My voice seems to lie in a happy area in this music, which is lyrical and passionate at the same time.
I'm treating country music like it's a sport. I'm looking at where my competition is and realized I needed to work on my songwriting.
I spent most of the year in the studio for electronic music at a radio station in Cologne or in other studios where I produced new works with all kinds of electronic apparatus.
I think people in electronic music are trying to get these big features: 'Oh my gosh, I'm gonna get the biggest pop star to feature on my track.'
I dropped the 'Bundy' with my country music because I wanted it to be two separate things: There's me as a songwriter and a country singer, and there's me as a Broadway performer.
I'm excited to be part of a movement that's progressing country music. There's always gonna be people saying, 'It ain't country anymore,' but I don't get into that whole deal.
And to me, I had come out of Texas, and during that time was when I realized that a lot of people in Nashville, their idea of what country music was was not the same as mine.
I believe that music is another form of news. Music is another form of journalism to me so I have to cover all the areas with my album.
I even have nephews who make music, my daughter makes music. I don't know what advice to give them these days. It's really a tough industry to break into.
I never feel like I have to hang on to the music. I don't expect that the music will go away. Ideas are the only thing I can point to that are permanent and fixed.
I carry music in my head, so I don't need more. It drives me nuts that, in hotels or on boats, people seem to think you need music 24 hours a day.
I start with the subject matter I want to write about. Then I make a musical base for that and create an atmosphere with the music. Once I've done that, the lyrics come last.
Woodstock was the antithesis of what the music industry turned into. And if anyone tries to tie another Woodstock festival to an obnoxious sponsor, I'll be out protesting again.
I'm confident in my intentions and why I'm making music. I'm not making music because I want to be on your TV screen or the cover of your magazine.
I don't want children cursing. I'm very strict on my nieces and my little brother. They have to listen to clean versions of music. Even my music.
And once the music is out there, when you're selling a record and selling music and people are going to do whatever they want with it, it's kind of hard to resist certain opportunities, especially in the record market now.
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.
Playing music is a lifetime's work. And if you want to carry on with it, you have to try to better yourself. You have to see where the music can take you.
All old music was modern once, and much more of the music of yesterday already sounds more old-fashioned than works which were written three centuries ago.
