A Quote by Bruce Springsteen
What excites me about a lot of the artists I love - and I realize, well, they created their own personal world that I could enter into through their music and through their songwriting. There's people that can do it instrumentally, like Jimi Hendrix or Edge of U2 or Pete Townshend. I didn't have as unique - a purely musical signature. I was a creature of a lot of different influences.
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When I grew up, I had influences as diverse as Keith Richards, Pete Townshend, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix.
He was Jimi Hendrix! He didn't sound like anybody else but himself. He was like Charlie Parker in his way of playing, he played well, he was a person that made waves. When you heard Jimi Hendrix you knew it was Jimi Hendrix, he introduced himself in his instrument... You know, many radio stations play records and a lot of the times they don't call out the names who you just listened to, but when they play Jimi Hendrix, you don't have to tell me, [you know] it's Jimi Hendrix.
I'm pretty sure I was about the only kid in school who knew who Jimi Hendrix even was. Through my older siblings, I was getting turned on to all the great music that was happening at the time, and I really loved Hendrix.
People always say that music is a universal language. It was very, very true. We could show up anywhere with any people speaking different languages and we could just be like, "You want to play that song? Yeah, okay." We would usually want to play Latin American songs, and they would usually want to play Santana or Jimi Hendrix and stuff like that. So we would trade off. So yeah, we were able to make a lot of friends that way and meet a lot of local musicians. It was a great experience.
For me, I don't really feel like I have any particular main influences or artists that I pull from; it's more of an underlying effect of such a big range of music that I love and I identify with - and all of that plays into what I do in minimal ways. I just really try to make music that reflects my identify, which is hard to pin down and is a lot of different things. I strive to make music that is hard to describe and meshes a lot of different genres, with the vocals being the thing that ties it all together.
Regular people don't even realize how much artists mean to them. Artists represent a lot to the average person. People listen to music all day on their iPods, so as artists, we become a real fixture in people's lives. As an artist, you can't take it personal. It's like your big brother teasing you.
Songwriting really kicked in with the guitar. I was going through a lot as a kid. There had been a lot of transitions in my family. So it just became a total therapy, like most artists.
Here's something weird, though: I loved Jimi's music so much that I would never perform it for people. Throughout my teens and playing in various bands, I refused to play Hendrix songs. I know that sounds strange, but Jimi's music was so special to me that it was like works of art that shouldn't be touched or altered.
For just being a black artist in rock n' roll and be able to step outside and create, and make great music. And just be different. Just a different breed. And that's what I love about Jimi Hendrix's music - the way he plays the guitar is so different. He's just an icon all around.
The through line of the way I like to work, what makes me different, and what I like to do for every project - although they are completely different from each other - is I like to do a lot of research and create a unique landscape and unique soundscape for each movie.
Everything musically, for me, there's two kinds of music. There's Prince and Jimi Hendrix and then Miles Davis and everything filters through that.
Music really influenced me when I was growing up. I did go through a Jimi Hendrix phase. My hair was naturally quite afro, and I wore low-slung jeans with very high heels. Siouxsie and the Banshees had a lot to answer for. I was in a top hat with peacock feathers and thigh-high black boots. I was 17 -- old enough to know better.
I would only listen to certain things, like a lot of teenagers do. But the Tragically Hip is a ribbon that's been with me pretty much my entire musical life. Every mix tape I ever made had at least one Hip song on it. Right from the outset I feel like Gord Downie built so much room into his songs. There was so much space in them that he created. He made me think of songwriting as full of boundless possibilities in a way that - well, that a lot of songwriters do, but that was the first time I thought a song could really contain multitudes.
I would say a lot of it came from a lot of different drills that Coach Fleck put me through. That's my man. He taught me a lot, a lot, a lot about receiver play. And he taught me a lot about catching the ball and just hand placement.
As you get older, your songwriting starts to become less and less about you, and especially when you have kids and a family. You start to see the world through other people's eyes a lot more to the point where it's hard to go back and relate to that "me against the world" perspective that I think a lot of my earlier songs were about. It's not so much about "me against the world," it's, how do you make the best possible future for your kids to grow up in?
My big influences are Joni Mitchell, and a lot of classical and Indian music, as well as Nina Simone and the personal blues and jazz of Billie Holiday. Other influences for me include Bjork, Nick Drake, and Sufjan Stevens.
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