Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
My dad always told me that anyone's voice is just another instrument added to the music.
My dad is huge on music, so he always made tapes from his friends. That's how I got into music.
My dad has always been a big Ray Charles fan, and I've grown up listening to all kinds of music.
So I was always around music and my dad was in his own way a progressive jazzer, a big band jazzer guy.
My dad was a drummer for The Mamas & The Papas, and his mother was in the jazz world, so music has always been very much in my blood.
I grew up listening to a lot of rap music. My dad's a DJ from Brooklyn, and he's a very soulful guy, so he always spun a lot of hip-hop, and that's where I get a lot of my hip-hop influence.
I've always adored my father's music, but ever since I'd started singing, whether it was while I was still a student at the University of Massachusetts or professionally, I avoided Dad's material.
Los Angeles has always been overlooked as far as jazz, and just high-level music in general. But, like, my dad's a musician, so I've grown up around so many brilliant musicians that nobody outside Los Angeles knows about.
My dad is a singer, so it was always either music or acting with me. All the way up through college I was doing both, and even after college I was in a reggae band. Then the acting really started taking off, so the music had to become a hobby.
The music I want to hear in my head sounds somewhere between Jimi Hendrix and Massive Attack. It's not really like my dad, but there will always be similarities because we have the same vocal cords, and I learnt the guitar the way he taught me.
I was in Screaming Trees - I wasn't really interested in playing quiet music in a live setting. But I would get asked quite often to do a show or open for somebody, and I always said no. Finally, I was asked if I would open for Johnny Cash, and Johnny Cash was one of my dad's favorite heroes. So that's why I started doing solo shows.
For me, a wake-up playlist completely depends on what mood I'm in. If I need to get into action pretty quick, it will be between Beyonce and Miles Davis. I'm a massive Beyonce fan, and all of her anthems will do it for me. And Miles Davis, because I grew up hearing his music because my dad played it a lot, so that will always be special to me.