My first performance was in AP Calculus when they forced me up into the front of the classroom and made me sing a song, which was really scary, but it was fun.
If you look at my last songs and first short stories, there is a real connection between them.
I always choose songs that I have an emotional connection to, and I often feel myself getting very emotional when I sing.
It's weird, because the ideas in my songs aren't controversial to me. I feel like I should be able to sing about anything.
Just seeing people appreciate what you do, come out and support it, and sing the songs back, there's not a better feeling in the world.
I don't write songs thinking about formats, where is it going to get played, who am I gonna please, what's the outlet for it.
It is important that the audience should understand every syllable of every word, for only then can they grasp the meaning of the song.
'Dirt Road Diaries,' in my mind, is a perfect country guy song. It speaks to the hard-working guy, and I'm excited for the fans to hear that one.
I made my first song when I was 9 years old. Just beating on garbage cans, having people beat box.
Most of our stuff was trial and error. You live with a tape recorder, you turn it on, you play the song and you listen to it.
Why only one song, one speech, one text at a time?" - "When Our Lips Speak Together
Dweezil and I are going on tour with the band probably starting in the middle of February for a month probably playing a few songs from my new record and then I'll continue on after that tour.
I've been lucky to be able to make the records I've wanted to make. The record company has never pressured me to cut certain songs.
If you forget the words to your own song, you can always claim artistic license. Forget the words to the national anthem, and you're screwed.
I always sing Adele in the shower. But everyone should know you never sing an Adele song in public because no one's better than Adele.
It must have been when I was 14 or 15 that I started tentatively writing songs and was able to convey an emotion and a lyric with what I wanted to say.
The songs are about things that we were thinking and we wrote 'em down, and when you listen to 'em, whatever you think it's about... THAT'S what it's about!
In the modern operas that 'Miss Saigon' and 'Les Miz' are, nobody breaks out into song from conventional book dialogue. Everything is sung from beginning to end, including the recitative.
I kept looking to do songs that were written years ago and would live or outlive all of us, and the one thing they had in common was Sinatra.
A true friend is someone who is always there during the ups and downs, I actually have a song called 'True Friend'.
For Ripley I learned to play some songs on the piano, and I never really played them again.
