You always know when a real inspiration is behind the melody arrangements even lyrics. And I know that's really vague but it's true.
As much as I try to grow as a lyricist I tend to laugh at even calling myself that because I think that my actual talents lie more in arrangements than they do words.
I'm sure that's every adolescent's complaint about their home town. When a city is unstimulating you get pretty isolated.
I'm swept along by larger forces out of my control.
After so many years of whispery DIY vocals there's this new generation of voices that are really starting to burst through the seams.
It's a natural tendency of mine to not even listen to lyrics.
I want a song that raises the hair on the back of my neck when I sing it live and I want to feel it every time.
I feel like I've met most people I look up to musically. I just want to meet Chef.
I tend to hear rhythm and melody chord-progressions long before I hear words.
When a city is unstimulating you get pretty isolated.
I dropped out of high school and I tried to go to community college for a little while. I can't be a student. I always hated that lifestyle.
My thought with harmonies and melodies in general is that if it doesn't come right away then it's never going to come at all.
I think if I had my choice I would spend all my time in the studio writing and creating music.
I just reached the point where I realised I need to stop repeating myself if I'm ever actually going to enjoy the music I'm creating.
Raucous drunken trumpets and instrumentation tend to guide the way you think. They can give you a path to follow lyrically.
I spent my entire life working with the smallest budget I could get. Just working with old junky donated equipment. The only things I bought myself were the trumpet and the $9 ukulele.
In some ways I feel like I've been such a dilettante for so many years just picking up instruments and stretching myself so thin.
I like to think that location travel etc is a launching point for purely imagining.
I love the community and the entertainment too much. I'm used to it - it's what I saw first.
I try to shut my brain down as much as possible. And let the melodies flow if possible.
I could probably spend the next five years reworking an album from ten years ago if given the chance to make it better - make it best so to speak.
In the age of the mp3 you gotta make the package special something that's worth owning.
My dad is obsessed with music so I was raised around this guitar player that really wanted me to be a guitar player.
I can't be a student. I always hated that lifestyle.
When I came back to America I realized that world music is no joke it really has a lot to it.
As a teenager and a young adult I never felt like my own story was interesting enough to tell so I always wrote lyrics from someone else's perspective - told someone else's story.
I think that sonically music speaks volumes more than words do and I have always thought that and will continue to think that for the rest of my life.
Often when I find myself listening to music at least 60 to 70% of it is foreign so I don't understand a word of it. Melody to me will always be a million times more important than words.
I put myself in the studio and I really made sure to say 'Well if I would normally reach for a trumpet why don't I reach for the next nearest instrument instead?'
I think that within the world of music that we work in which is so not perfect I think that you really do have to learn to accept your own mistakes as part of the beauty of music itself.
The more I know the more I realise I don't know. And the more I realise I'll never truly understand.
It was funny to just take a backseat and be like 'Wow I might be in this crazy place but maybe I don't need to understand everything maybe I don't need to be someone else.'