Every day I lugged my backpack through the halls, waiting for the final bell. Then I'd race home and hole up in my room, playing the drums and the piano, composing music.
Social topics may hit too close to home for people, but then again, if you pull a heartstring, then that's what country music is. It's not just songs about getting drunk and leaving your girl.
Every small town has its dramatic group, its barber-shop quartet, every home has music in one form or another.
I awake, I meditate, get the kids off to school, go to the gym, go to the Favored Nations office, and usually at around 1 pm I'm home and do music the rest of the day.
I love playing video games. I love listening to music. Just surfing the web. Facebook, Twitter, keeping in touch with people from home.
A 'Magik' session is a journey through different stages of emotions and the 'Search for Sunrise' is more chilling music for when you come home after a party or when you are just about to go to one.
I doubt I'll be singing forever, because at some point people aren't going to want to hear my music, and I hope that I'll still get the opportunity to write songs.
I mean, I did a film, a musical of 'Scrooge', in '70, and the tricks were done by flat clothes and mirrors. I hope that the day will come when we don't have to turn up at all.
I use rock and jazz and blues rhythms because I love that music. I hope my poetry has a relationship with good-time rock'n roll.
I was in a marriage, and we didn't make it. So my hope is, through my music, I can help heal some relationships that may be headed in that direction.
I hope my music sets up the platform for me to be able to do lots of things - to have a cowboy-boot line, maybe, or do a perfume or makeup deal.
We hope that eventually there would be an occasion which I can personally prove that game music can in fact impress many different people and move them.
I wore goofy hats to school and did musical theater. Most people thought I was a dork. But if you have a sense of humor about it, no one can bring you down.
I think the idea is now for blacks to write about the history of our music. It's time for that, because whites have been doing it all the time. It's time for us to do it ourselves and tell it like it is.
There's an institution here called the National Sound Archive, and there's a character who works there, Paul Wilson. He takes a very special interest in the history of the music and advised Martin Davidson of the existence of these tapes.
You know Manchester is always a bit of a hard place for people coming from London, just with all the history. Manchester has this immensely huge and healthy history musically.
My YouTube videos have literally millions of views... Yet I'm still airbrushed out of the BBC Stalinist revision of history; the chart shows have been instructed not to play my music!
I'm not giving up my history and what I've done in my music because I love it and I'm very proud of it. I just want to open it up for more people.
Hip-hop's always reached out to kids. If you look at the last 10 big albums it might seem ironic. But when I look at the history of this music it's always had a lot of positivity.
The reason I moved to Nashville was because I was reading biographies of a lot of my country music heroes, and I thought it would be better to actually go where the history was, as opposed to just reading about it.
Violence is a part of America. I don't want to single out rap music. Let's be honest. America's the most violent country in the history of the world, that's just the way it is. We're all affected by it.
