I was introduced to country music around a campfire on a farm.
I try to give the music more of a campfire feel as opposed to a library atmosphere. I like when you can hear people hanging out in the songs and doing a little shuffling. It creates a feeling of participation.
Everything that comes out of Canada musically, I support. I support Toronto 100% because I'm on the side of the music.
I'm actually the son of Mary Guibert. My mother was born in the Panama Canal zone and came to America when she was five with my grandmother and grandfather, and that was the family I knew. Everybody sang; everybody had songs all the time, and they loved music.
Strangely, I feel that I become increasingly reclusive in my normal life and more open and candid in my music.
Jerry Bruckheimer is the most hands-on producer that I've worked with. Jerry's very involved in the music, and he's such a fan of film. When you watch him playing back the cues to the picture, he's like a kid in a candy store.
Have you listened to the radio lately? Have you heard the canned, frozen and processed product being dished up to the world as American popular music today?
Most of the animated films I watched, the emotions are all prepackaged like canned music, the hand actions, the sighs.
A love song must respect the canons of music beauty, entering the fibers of those who are listening. It must make them dream and pleasantly introduce them to the universe of love.
I think if we keep on doing good music and people like us and they buy the magazine because we are in the magazine then they cant basically hate us hopefully.
I look at my body as an extension of the music. My body is a canvas, and with my tattoos, I want them to be a direct reflection of my thoughts.
By the mid-'60s, recorded music was much more like painting than it was like traditional music. When you went into the studio, you could put a sound down, then you could squeeze it around, spread it all around the canvas.
I have been skeptical, sometimes, about the importance of rap music, which I think is a capitalistic project to make money.
I'm afraid of a cappella. I don't read music, and I have a hard time harmonizing. Basically, I'm a melody singer only.
When you're a musician and you come from a singing background, specifically one that focused a lot on a cappella music as I have, it's just a real joy to be around so many talented people and talented groups who have a passion for what they do.
We sing popular songs and show it can be done a cappella. It's fun music.
And then, I was thinking of doing a record just like starting with voice, because I did this one song that was just kind of a cappella, and I did it for this art piece I did where people could come and play music to go with a voice.
I never thought that I would pursue a cappella music. I went to Yale College and I was going to go into the medical field.
A cappella music has always been around. It's such an old form.
I was a kid who got picked on in school, and now the guys beating up those kids were wearing red caps and using my music to fuel that aggression. But if they listen to the lyrics, the aggression is targeted at them.
