Even to be flown out to New York was mind boggling for me, and signing with Columbia was great because they really understood my vision. Of all the labels that I met, they were the ones that really seemed to understand that I was really about the music, the writing, and the lyrics, so it was really fulfilling to sign with them.
With lyrics for me, it's usually musically-based. It's not really poetry- or writer-based. It's rock-based. It doesn't mean that I'm aping rock lyrics, but I'm writing from a music standpoint. I'm thinking more of music heroes, if they're in my mind. Not William Blake or John Ashbury. Sometimes maybe I thought of him a little bit. Or Wallace Stevens. I don't even really fully understand either of them.
My parents were really, really cool about supporting what I wanted to do at a really young age. I think I was about 10 when I caught the bug. They would drive me down to New York if there were auditions. When I was 12, I did this show on Broadway called 'High Society,' so we moved to New York for the run of that.
Lyrics are really, really hard, I think, or at least they're really hard for me. Some people can channel lyrics faster. I find them very hard to find, so because of it, they take me a long time, and I really think about them.
It was a really interesting time in New York in the late 70s and early 80s, and the music scene was really, really interesting because you didn't have to be a virtuoso to make music, it was more about your desire to express things.
That old adage, that "music is a universal language", is really true. Even if all of the lyrics are understood, they seem to connect with it really well and in some ways, more so.
Information is floating around really fast. I write something, or a piece of my music comes out and I see people writing about it on the Internet as if I'm having a conversation with them. We've never met, but somehow, my music is communicating something to them. Very often, it really makes them feel something.
I was always into music. And none of my friends were really into music the same way I was. So it was just different. It was really not very well understood by most of my friends. They didn't tease me about it - they just didn't really relate.
I'm friends with Dierks Bentley. Aside from that, I don't really know anybody else in the country music field, really. I've met the Lady Antebellum people and I met Marty Stuart briefly once. He's really nice, but I don't know any of them, really.
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were really great. I saw them live in the '90s; they were really, really good. The music is great, and the musicians are amazing.
If I were to be really petulant, I would say New York is the one doing the betraying. Because the New York I fell in love with doesn't really exist anymore.
Even before Pentatonix, I always thought that I would be out here in New York doing Broadway and doing musical theater. That was what gave me the passion for music in the first place, so it's been really, really, cool.
I realized a lot of my friends were going to nightclubs and listening to house music. I was hanging out with them and going to clubs as well but I didn't really understand that kind of music. I was listening to country music and was heavily into Hank Williams, bluegrass, and Bob Dylan. So I just decided I really needed to understand what this music I was hearing in the clubs was all about.
I screwed up at a young age with my parents. They were very religious and they didn't really understand music. They didn't really listen to music. I went through a series of battles with them about why I loved music.
It's strange. No one ever really talked to me about my voice. People started writing about it, and I was like, 'What?' I'm really about my lyrics, but more people were talking about my voice. It's cool, but at first I got upset because I wanted people to focus on the content.
I really like the director [for Weeds]. I don't know if you've spoken to him yet but he's really, really intelligent. He was just really kind when I met him and nice and really told me why I should play the part...and kind of really didn't argue with him. He's just really, really smart and assembled these really great people. I felt like he really knows how to enlist his intelligence to get you - I don't know - he's really hard to argue with I find.
The people of New Orleans have gotten to rock bottom. And the only way out in my mind is for them to really understand it, and then to really choose to get better.