I'm a big fan of music. I need to be listening to music most of the time during the day.

Now is now, and I live everything one day at a time. The fact that I'm still on the planet and able to still make music is such a miracle.

When I was younger, studying classical music, I really had to put in the time. Three hours a day is not even nice - you have to put in six.

I don't go around, the way many musicians do, with earbuds in my ear listening to my iPod all day and just sticking my head in the music all the time.

When I grew up, my dad listened to all that stuff - Neil Young. Floyd. The Doors. The Beatles. Stones. So even now, to this day, it's the music I listen to a lot of the time.

I feel like I can do anything. There's nothing that I can't do. I couldn't make music once upon a time, you know what I mean? But I got in the studio every day, and I tried to get better.

I'm not a Christian. My participation in music is so full blast, 24 hours a day. And that's my religion. I think I'm as spiritual as the pope, because I spend as much time in my spirituality as he does.

When I was 15, 16, 17 years old, I spent five hours a day juggling, and I probably spent six hours a day seriously listening to music. And if I were 16 now, I would put that time into playing video games.

I always thought that one day I would be somebody. I would be successful in music, and I would have fans that cared about my music. At the same time, I really feel like an ordinary guy; I have been an ordinary guy forever.

I'm trying to learn classical piano, Mozart and Beethoven and stuff. I took lessons when I was younger and now I sort of sight read the music and play it by ear. It's fun. It takes up a lot of time. I practice a couple of hours a day, but I find it soothing.

Since the music industry cracked and fell apart, gasping for the cash flow it had come to expect, much re-thinking has been the order of the day. It is a fine time to be a musician. Like walking through Sodom and Gomorrah while it is still smoking, on your way to the next gig.

For a while, I thought I would maybe be a writer. But with music, I was such a nerd; I was really obsessive about it. The problem was I couldn't really sing. I think one day I sang from a different part of my body, from my gut for the first time, and I was like, 'Oh! That's how you're supposed to do it.'

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