When I was 6 years old, I was in a rock band that was horrible called 'Dead End.' The name kind of described us. People liked us; we would go and perform at coffee houses and stuff.
I was singing in a mall, and I picked a girl to come up onstage with me. As I was grabbing her hand, I fell off the stage. It felt like I was in the air forever, flying like Superman.
From the very beginning, we just sort of made things up together. That's one of the great things about having a twin brother; you have a sort of feedback loop, where you can bounce things off of each other.
There have definitely been phases of the National, many years ago, where we did party, and various people, in their own way, fell off the wagon.
But I'd say recording and playing on stage are two completely different things. Being up there in front of all those people is like jumping off a cliff into icy water. The recording process is a totally different energy.
It's not that hard to be good, you can be good off raw talent. But I feel like it's that extra step, doing work and putting a body of work in and doing things when nobody else is watching. When nobody else is telling you to do it, you're pushing yourself to do it.
I've got leverage on a guy that's 6-6, and I'm strong enough to push 600-plus pounds off on a double-team.
It's an offensive league.
Any time you can get the ball back to the offense and they put points on the board, you can win games.
I feel I can rush the passer well. I feel like I can play the run even better than what I did starting off to when I got in my senior year as far as making plays in the backfield and just being able to break down film a lot better.
