Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
All my life, I had loved music and been in choir, and I have a degree in music, but I never planned on doing it as a job. I had a realistic perspective on that. I thought maybe work at a church or be a teacher if you wanted to work in music.
For me, a good show is not a perfect show; it's just one where you connected. It's a show where the fans got to know you, and they realize that you're human, but they also think you're a star and that you're talented and all that good stuff.
My dad was listening to me noodle around on the guitar in the house and sing, and he was like, 'Man, you're funny, and you sound good when you do that. You should do that at a bar.' I had stage fright, so I was like, 'No, Dad. Leave me alone.'
Kenny Chesney's music cuts. He gets into those massive ballads like 'There Goes My Life' and 'The Good Stuff' and things like that that just crush you, and delivers them so well. Some of that you can't really put your finger on; it's just magic.
I play a little bit of everything. I beat on the walls. I whistle. I scream. I go outside and scream because it sounds cool when it's recorded. I play drums on a chair. I snap, clap... just anything to build the track and make it feel like I want it to.
Sometimes when you belt, it kinda makes the song more dramatic than it really needs to be. There are certain songs that you hear, and you're like, 'Wow, he's singing about his girlfriend, but he sounds kinda mad the way he's yelling, 'You're so pretty!''
I may not be doing it right, but I love to get on an elliptical and put the kids on FaceTime in front of me and just get after it. They don't even have to talk to me. They just put the phone on and put it in the living room and one will walk by and be like, 'Hey!'
I actually had publishers that would encourage me at times to keep it simpler, not pack in so much information, but I'm a fan of songs and movies and books that the second time you read them, you find more stuff that you missed, so I like to pay attention to that detail.
When I lost my first record deal, my wife and kids and I lost - I wouldn't say friends, but - we lost a lot people around us. They just vanished! They were nowhere to be found. I couldn't get a break, and I couldn't get people to even respond to my emails about songs, no matter how good something was.
I didn't want a pickup with mud tires. I wanted an old blazer with as many speakers in the back as I could afford. I would even steal them out of my brother's car and pack them in there. I remember sitting in a parking lot and turning my radio up and walking down the street to see how far you could feel it.