Success happened little by little for me. I tasted the flavor of fame in small doses: I started at 10 years old when I won a music contest; I was performing at birthday parties, company meetings.
One of the best things about Kickstarter and crowdfunding and the collapse of the music business is a lot of artists like me have been forced to face our own weird mess about ourselves and what we thought it meant to become musicians.
My mom and dad played this music all the time when I was growing up, so to me songs by Jerry Lee and Fats Domino are the classics, they're the best songs ever.
Rap is hardcore street music but there are women out there who can hang with the best male rappers. What holds us back is that girls tend to rap in these high, squeaky voices. It's irritating. You've gotta rap from the diaphragm.
I think my biggest musical hero growing up was probably Ian MacKaye. He set a great example for all of us local musicians. Still, to this day, I see him as the best example of a right-on musician.
The best music happens when you have a personal connection to it. That same philosophy can extend to the instrument you hold in your hands: if a guitar means something special, you're bound to do great things with it.
If it's a good song and it fits me, that's what I'm going to do, I'm not out there trying to change the world. I'm just out there trying to sing country music the best way I can.
At the same time, I was listening to black music, and I began to think that the best musicians were receiving the worst treatment. The people who were doing the greatest work were despised as lower class, with no dignity accorded to what they did.
I think you can have the greatest lyrics in the world and if it doesn't have the best tune in the world it will suck. I mean if the music wasn't important it would just be a poem.
Obviously I try to make the best music that I can, but after about two years of making an album, you start to worry: 'Is it going to come out all right? Is it all going to sound churned out?'
I've got the best parents you could ever ask for. My parents are from New Jersey, and they met in Vermont in college. My Dad grew up listening to heavy, psychedelic music. He's my biggest fan.
Some of us must wait for the best human gifts until we come to heavenly places. Our natural desire for musical utterance is perhaps a prophecy that in a perfect world we shall all know how to sing.
People don't appreciate music any more. They don't adore it. They don't buy vinyl and just love it. They love their laptops like their best friend, but they don't love a record for its sound quality and its artwork.
The best part of making music, for me, is collaborating and working with new people and fresh sounds and all those things that gets people excited to continue in this business that we all love so much.
I think that the best part of music is when it comes from a real place and has an ability to kind of connect on a much larger scale. It no longer is a personal thing, it becomes everyone else's thing as well.
My mother and father are very involved with music. It's completely part of their soul. They have an incredible record collection, all vinyl, of some of the best artists, in my eyes, that you can come across.
I think what every skater dreams of is not only skating the best program they can possibly skate, but, y'know, having the crowd roar at the end, and it was just so loud I couldn't even hear my music.
Describing the person I am would best be through music. When I'm up on stage and I'm singing my heart out, I am always reminded of life's best things.
So basically, I think music at its best can be everything. It can be totally stupid and very intellectual and emotional at the same time. I don't think all those things shut each other out.
I also knew that music was pretty much the only thing in life that he felt was worth the hassle.
I wanted to play my violin and have my musical expression through the instrument. But then I was really young when I had my first opportunity to conduct.
