Listen, man: I am not the industrial godfather, king, whatever. I don't relish that title. I don't like it. I think it's limiting. I do country, I do blues. I don't just go straight.
I want to go back to the format that radio started with rock n' roll, with country artists and rhythm and blues with that oldies type feeling. I want to put it all together and create a Top 40 of rhythm and blues and country and straight blues with Wolfman at the reins.
When you think blues, you think BB King. Even a young kid can look at a picture of BB King and say, 'the blues.' The man is more than a musician. He's a monument.
Thus play I in one person many people, And none contented: sometimes am I king; Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar, And so I am: then crushing penury Persuades me I was better when a king; Then am I king'd again: and by and by Think that I am unking'd by Bolingbroke, And straight am nothing: but whate'er I be, Nor I nor any man that but man is With nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased With being nothing.
I'm into hip-hop, rap, country, blues, gospel, old school, new school... whatever... pop. If it's really good, I like it. I don't have to be told what to listen to. If I like it and it's good, I'll listen to it.
I'm done with industrial. Seriously, my iPod collection at home has no industrial music on it; it's strictly jazz, blues and country.
I listen to, like, funky Chicago blues. I love blues, but I love the funky, happy blues. There's a song about pretty much everything, including kidney stones, believe it or not. So there's something there for whatever you happen to be suffering, you know?
Nowadays blues in particular has a wide, wide, wide, wide net of everything that's called blues. I think if somebody's coming to it in the last ten years or whatever, or even fifteen years, what their experience is what is called blues is different from mine. I have to expand my range of what's been called the blues. I think somebody who's new to it would have to go back and to see what is called blues now, where it came from. If that makes sense.
'King of the Cruiserweights' is not just something I say. Let me be straight. I am the king. You can see that. It's undeniable.
I used to listen to country and western and blues, John Lee Hooker, spirituals, the Bluegrass Boys, and Eddie Arnold. There was a radio station that come on everyday with country, spirituals, and the blues.
Comedy is a funny thing, and it's really not like any other art form in that it's very specialized and varied in it's content, but generic in it's title. You would never go to a club just to see "Live music," you would go to a jazz club to see jazz, a blues club to see blues, etc. But when you go to see "standup comedy," if you don't know the performers material, you really don't have any idea what you're gonna get.
I just love music, and I'm not as genre specific as most songwriters. A lot of my buddies just listen to country, or just Americana, or whatever their style is, and I just listen to everything.
The music that I play is much more accepted in America. Do you know what I mean? Americans recognize and not necessarily country music. I go to a lot of places in Canada and they go "I don't like country music" and they think I'm a country musician. When I am a country musician but not a country musician like they think of.
Whenever I'm in need of inspiration and mantras, I go straight to simple affirmations. 'I am strong', 'I am brave', 'I can do this' and 'I'm awesome'. Whatever you put after 'I am', you will become. 'I am' are the two most powerful words, so make sure what you say after 'I am' is what you want to experience. It's like a magic trick.
A lot of people think the blues is depressing but that's not the blues I'm singing. When I'm singing blues, I singing life. People can't stand to listen to the blues, they've got to be phonies.
When you think of blues, all you think about is crying guitar like B.B. King's guitar. You think about someone crying that their woman's gone. And how bad life is and all that. Why can't it be something happy with the blues? Why can't it have a hip-hop beat to which you can do the dances of today?
Politics is its own world. It is a court and if the king's eye lights on you, you are a powerful figure. If the king's eye wanders elsewhere, you are out, whatever your title.