I ended up doing these other diverse things, but King Tuff is the thing I always wanted to come back to - just good, straightforward rock n' roll. That music is the most me, you know?
This sounds geeky, but when I run, I like to listen to musicals like 'Les Miserables.' The soundtracks are 75 minutes or longer, and I keep going until the story ends, so it feels like a good workout.
I want my music to jump off the stage and out of the speakers. When we do 'Rain Is A Good Thing' paired back to back with 'Country Girl,' it just feels like the roof is fixin' to come off the place.
I try to be a good representative for country music. But as a country artist, it's important to move the needle and make a difference beyond your core audience. But you can't ever strategically try to accomplish that; then things get weird.
I just try to do as good job with the material as I can and play some jazz as well, some improvised music, and do that every night. Just see where it goes.
Music is where my love is. I don't think the acting thing is going to start outweighing that, but I think it's going to start being a good chunk of something I want to do.
A fantastic actor in a scene that's just closed off will be good. But when working with a director who knows little tricks - correct music, slowly pushing in - that stunning performance will somehow become even better. I've always seen it as a symbio...
There is no kind of music I don't listen to. Everything good is interesting. I am as happy with a Bach fugue as I am with a record by Thelonious Monk.
Ideals are not something I can control. It's not logic that convinces me of something, it's what my heart says. My heart has a way of involving me in things, which can only be good for the music.
We love a good, hyped sound, but when it starts to sound insincere, that's when I lose interest. I hope that our music, even if it sounds polished, doesn't sound insincere.
You know, I'm the 1st black solo MC from Detroit. I didn't do the 50 Cent sales but hey... I got a long career, I'm still young and I'm trying to bring really good music.
So I'm writing more highly personalized and intellectual music, and I think that's good. It might take longer to find me, but I think that niche is perhaps underserved, so I'm going to serve that.
I think I always had a musicality, and I think I could tell a good song from a bad song. And I would appreciate hearing something that was new to me.
One of the things I wonder is whether it's good that the whole free model makes a lot of people listen to more of your music. I'm wondering if it devalues it, it becomes disposable, because you can get it so easily.
If people stop being interested, it's because you haven't written a good enough album. Music will always be the most powerful thing. It doesn't matter what record labels or journalists say. It's the song.
Although I don't come from a musical background, I was given piano lessons along with my sisters, but I wasn't what you would call a good student. I tended to write songs rather than do scales.
A composition is always more than the sum of its parts. In other words, a really good piece of music is more than itself. It's sort of like a prism, which you can see from each facet a single totality.
My musical director, Mark Cherry, is the most wonderful person who ever lived on God's good green Earth. He's my director, he does the arrangements. Really, he does everything - including certain janitorial chores!
If one should desire to know whether a kingdom is well governed, if its morals are good or bad, the quality of its music will furnish the answer.
I want them to come away with discovering the music inside them. And not thinking about themselves as jazz musicians, but thinking about themselves as good human beings, striving to be a great person and maybe they'll become a great musician.
I am interested in the study of music and the discipline of music and the experience of music and music as a esoteric mechanism to continue my real intentions.
