I wasn't letting people in with the music writing process, and for a long time, I thought I was hard to work with.
Like a musician expresses himself through music and a writer's expression is in his writings, cooking is my mode of expression.
Being yourself is what will make you survive through anything. If you make music to please someone, it's the first step in the wrong direction. Always do what you believe in, no matter what people say. Only way to go!
I had a lot of self-doubt when I started. And I still do. But I had a lot of the wrong kind of self-doubt when I first started making music and first started to tour. I think I was a little bit deferential.
Fame is a thing that happens when you do something you love - nobody wants to be famous for the wrong reasons. It's not my goal, but if being more famous means I can get more music out, that's cool.
There were moments in 'Malala,' I felt very moved by the storytelling, and 'pleased' would be the wrong word, but the music could be part of what moved me: that I was trying to contribute to something that was meaningful outside the realm of creative work but just more in terms of the world.
But ya know what, I am a part of something that happened. I'm a part of the music that happened. My voice is one more instrument, is what it is. So that's the way I feel about people who play on sessions.
I was a staff songwriter for Combine Music Publishing in Nashville for seven years. I'd sit around with a groups of friends with a Yamaha piano and a tape recorder and crank out songs.
Some people love some music, and they hear it a year later and they think, 'What was I thinking?'
The last thing a young artist should do in poetry or any other field is think about what's in style, what's current, what are the trends. Think instead of what you like to read, what do you admire, what you like to listen to in music. What do you like to look at in architecture? Try to make a poem that has some of those qualities.
I didn't think at all as a young child that music would be my profession. It was just something that one did along with going to Brownies or going to church or going to school or anything else that one did in sort of one's very young life.
The most difficult thing about music videos is that a lot of young filmmakers come into the medium, and they have so many different ideas, but they need to understand what the musician wants.
Music education was always big for me. Ever since I was a young kid, I always said it was the reason I went to school sometimes and knowing if I didn't do well in class that my mom wasn't gonna let me sing in school or sing at that concert.
Young kids should be doing music that has shock value. They'll grow out of it.
I wanted to have a label to not only release my own stuff but to also give young talent a chance to release their music without signing away their life. I had a great time with Spinnin', and the people I worked with were amazing, but the contract wasn't really for me. It wasn't what I wanted.
We have to let the younger generations take our music - and approach it the way they want - but just teach them where it all comes from.
My music translates again and again to younger generations of players because I broke all the rules, and they can break all the rules now, too.
We've influenced other artists, and when younger generations become fans of those artists and hear about us, they discover our music too.
There is a bit of a movement as far as younger people in country music. That is cool because people are saying things like, 'I didn't listen to country music until so-and-so came along.' And I'm like, 'Yeah! Now you know why I love it.'
As a youngster, I never dreamed there could be a career actually earning a living writing music.