I am a very musical person. I love music, and I don't just love Cape Breton fiddling, although it's my favorite.
I guess rock stars are role models for the kids who listen to that music. My role models have all been geologists - you know, the guys who are doing fieldwork until they're 70.
I am such a music fiend. I go after so many different types of music. I'm on iTunes constantly just buying new music!
'Doo-wop' is a very special word for me. Because I grew up listening to my dad who, as a Fifties rock & roll head, loved doo-wop music.
My father was a fighter pilot, so I moved around the world when I was young. Then I ended up in Kansas. I'd just sort of gravitated toward the arts, and I had always loved music and really loved theater even though I didn't want to act.
Music is fun, but I'm an ice skater. I may sing songs and do shows, make movies and other things... that's all well and good and I enjoy it, and I would never trade any of those for anything. But figure skating is who I am.
One of my favorite artists is Tom Waits, whom most people think of as a wonderful singer-songwriter and a great poet. I certainly think of him that way, but I also know him as a terrific actor. You know, that persona that he puts on when he's doing his music comes from being an actor, figuring out a persona.
I suppose I write music for people, not for the filing cabinet or the museum.
Music fills the infinite between two souls.
The only people who have doubts about the sincerity of my music are people who come to it relatively late, off the back of having seen me in a film. Acting is about being other people, and music is about being myself.
When I was a kid, I played basketball religiously. I begged my mom to get me voice lessons because I wanted to learn to sing the right way, but at the same time, I was playing Junior Olympic basketball, and I was playing point guard for my school. But I was wanting to get into entertainment, into music and film and television.
Starting in the mid-1990s, the end-to-end ubiquity of the Internet, combined with its cheapness, spontaneously combusted to give us Napster - a site that revolutionized the music industry overnight. We got P2P file swapping in the film and TV industry as well.
The film business, for me, has been great, but the music business, we've always been on the outside looking in.
Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody's piano playing in my living room has on the book I am reading.
Beautiful film music can be made relevant to any period.
Think about the number of people who do film music, make records and have a Native American heritage - and I may be the only one on the list.
I'm not afraid of being thought of as someone who is associated with film music. Why not? If it's a good song, what does it matter?
Without the knowledge of music, it would be very hard to write film music. There are so many films, and each one has a different historical background and everything.
I like to write film music that stands on its own.
My audiences are generally mixed. Some people like techno, others are into the pop music, and others enjoy my film music.
