The stage is the best experience in the world. It's a great compliment to be able to share the music, because people can hear my album but they don't get to make the connection in the same way as when it's one-to-one.
When I tried to play characters that strayed from who I am it ended in disaster. People didn't expect me in comedies or musicals.
None of it means anything unless people see who you really are and your music had to be who you really are it's gotta show how you feel or it doesn't mean anything.
You kind of attribute this magic to music and as you meet the people you realize that they don’t contain the magic. They just channel it a little bit sometimes, but they never possess it. They never own it.
If I made a musical in the beginning of my career, it would have been crane shots and tracking shots and people coming out of cakes and whatever, but these techniques are something that I've left behind me.
Often the inspiration to write music comes from the voices in your head. You’re not crazy. Just be thankful they are not making you rescue people in 20-degree weather at 2:30 in the morning in the forest.
All my songs are different, but from the overall experience, I want people to sense that they can overcome and move through difficult times and find strength in my music. Maybe it's a song that makes them cry and move through something else.
Where I came from, just nodding and smiling when someone expressed views was the ultimate insult. If people weren't yelling about politics in our house then they were arguing about music, or movies, or food.
Maybe we've been brainwashed by 130 years of Yankee history, but Southern identity now has more to do with food, accents, manners, music than the Confederate past. It's something that's open to both races, a variety of ethnic groups and people who mo...
This business is about working. It's really not about glamour. For me, the most glamorous thing about it is to b able to get on stage and perform my music for people. That's the privilege. And that's what all the work leads up to, and that's why it's...
The music we made then was so amateurish, compared to the rest of mainstream pop or rock and roll. But what differentiated us from what everybody else was doing in the business was the fact that you could tell that these people came from different re...
After coming from a major label, I realized the entire business has been decimated, and you can't look to labels to try to figure it out because they don't even use the technology, and they're oblivious to how people consume music these days.
With Sumthin Else Music Works, I wanted to spread the love and give newcomers a chance to make it because something that really helped me were all the people who had given me an opportunity when I was putting my career together.
Australia is so cool that it's hard to even know where to start describing it. The beaches are beautiful; so is the weather. Not too crowded. Great food, great music, really nice people. It must be a lot like Los Angeles was many years ago.
It never mattered to me that people in school didn't think that country music was cool, and they made fun of me for it - though it did matter to me that I was not wearing the clothes that everybody was wearing at that moment. But at some point, I was...
As long as it's making you happy and you're enjoying it, then you should never stop writing music. Whether it's going to take you somewhere, viewed by other people, or it's literally you in a bedroom at home, it should be something that you do for yo...
People ask you all the time, 'Why do you do this? Why don't you quit, man, take your money and go home?' I just do it because I love making music.
You know, people always ask me how I describe my music. First of all I tell them that's their job and then that also one day I hope to have things referred to as Martha Wainwright -esque.
People's lives change dramatically over such a long time period, and I think that if you're still vital, and you're still interested in writing and things like that, of course your music evolves and reflects where you are in your life.
Being famous is having the power to really implement positive change in the world, and it gives you the power to do what you want. I'm really grateful for it because I can play music and people will listen.
I remember once, we got an interview, and he said, 'Dad, these people are writing about me like I'm an adult. Don't they know I'm a kid?' I have never tried to encourage him to get a music image like other musicians have.
