That's the great paradox of living on this earth, that in the midst of great pain you can have great joy as well. If we didn't have those things we'd just be numb.
You have to listen to what resonates within your own gut. You find your direction there. Your voice comes out.
I don't live in as much fear as I used to. I'm not afraid of the music business. Life is too damn short. I know what's important, and the tasks are very clear.
I've come to understand my role. On some level, I provide the context for them to shine. I also know my role is the steward of the songs, and the center point, the artist that the stuff all revolves around. But I really try to honor that.
Or if I have my head in the results, I can't work with what I have, because I'm trying to force something to happen. And with singing, any time you force it, you tighten up. If you tighten up, you're screwed, nothing will work.
So all of these things are going on that make you wake up and realize you are a mortal person. You can choose to cruise through your life, but if you do, you're going to open your eyes at some point, and it's gone.
I jump into the process, and the record begins to gel at some point. Then I begin to get a picture of where I'm going. But it's not always something I know on the front-end.
So I really did stop and change what I saw I was about, and really try to put that principle into play as the center of everything - my friendships, my marriage, my career, my family, my way of being in the world. And that changed everything for me.
Chocolate's okay, but I prefer a really intense fruit taste. You know when a peach is absolutely perfect... it's sublime. I'd like to capture that and then use it in a dessert.
You find yourself in this place where you really get to find out what you're made of, and what I found was that when I was at my time of greatest need, there were people who appeared in my life, and helped me through it.
Anyway, our family went into complete crisis mode. I have two older brothers, and we rallied as a family.
A gourmet meal without a glass of wine just seems tragic to me somehow.
If you say that you're all about a certain something, and look back and see that the choices that you've made don't reflect that, then there's something for you to look at.
There's nothing more fun than sitting in a circle playing with people who are really into it.
Whenever someone leaves, the next person that gets pulled in is somebody with similar values.
When you keep the caliber of musicians very high in the band, people are going to come and go. Some of them will be people who have to try various things, it's natural.
I would step into a place of being lined up with a sense of purpose and my inner compass, and everything was going in the same direction. Then I'd get lazy and get off the track. And then things would start to fall apart, and I'd back up and get it together again.
I guess the biggest thing is that I committed to a spiritual center before I do anything else. And I put some daily things in my life into practice and I maintain that, to make sure that I don't drop the ball.
You know, your speaking voice comes back, but your singing voice you use in a different way.
So I had to just kind of go back to the hotel, take a shower, sit quiet, dig down deep, warm up, and allow myself to move into some kind of zone. And then I remembered that a lot of my favorite musical moments are not about perfection.
