The music I love listening to is more of the Jack Johnson, Ben Harper, Dido, Jewel, Nora Jones, Joss Stone, a bit more of that organic live-instrumentation feel.
I don't think I'd ever make an album of just covers because I love writing my own music.
There aren't that many songs that pay homage to the DJ. They are the ones getting artists' music out there. They are the ones getting the club popping. But no one's giving them any love.
Even today, skiffle is a defining part of my music. If I get the opportunity to just have a jam, skiffle is what I love to play.
I love working and writing new songs. But sometimes you need to wait, to have something in your mind, and then you can let yourself play music.
I appreciate an audience that reacts to the music, even if they jump on stage and try to beat us up, I think that's a fantastic reaction. I think that they're really hearing something then.
I use music as therapy. Whenever I'm feeling angry or needing some 'me' time, which is quite regularly, I'll go and bang a piano or flesh out something on a guitar.
Soul lyrics, soul music came at about the same time as the civil rights movement, and it's very possible that one influenced the other.
I don't think that you can write music if you don't know how to play an instrument. You have to know the basics, then you can go forward.
To me, the real thrill is in making the music, and then I just trust it to find its own audience, and at times it's big and at times it's small, but that's beyond my control.
My eyes went blank, and I stared off, and the music started. It was raining, and the sun was shining at the same time, and there were these big bay windows, and there was the blue in the sky, and the sun on the trees, and it was drizzling.
Everyone reaches their point in time where either they die or they get sick of doing drugs. It started getting debilitating. I enjoy my music a lot better than my drugs.
My music comes from many, many, many places. My emotions, my feelings, my thoughts, and conversations I have with people I know who influence me.
I graduated from high school early so I could move to New York to do 'A Little Night Music' out of the New York City Opera.
I had teachers in high school to point me in the direction of the University of Indiana School of Music, and after IU, I went on to study at the Academy of Arts in Philadelphia. I graduated in 2006.
I could compare my music to white light which contains all colours. Only a prism can divide the colours and make them appear; this prism could be the spirit of the listener.
Whether you like another band's music or not you never know who is going to take you out on tour or who you are going to be friends with and that is just something that is important to us.
In rap music, even though the element of poetry is very strong, so is the element of the drum, the implication of the dance. Without the beat, its commercial value would certainly be more tenuous.
Growing up, I never listened to English music. I was more into Motown, as well as early rock n' roll like Chuck Berry and Little Richard.
Music is a lot more like solving an intricate puzzle with moments of pure, random creative bliss... whereas painting is much more purely random creative bliss with moments of problem solving.
Here's the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don't find it anywhere else.
