Like my little sister and brother, I always play them my music because I want people like them to be able to relate to my music. They always know what's going on; they're up on what's new. For me, when they hear my music and they like it, I'm on the right track.
Acting really started for me because I was in a house full of adults. They never shielded their lives from me. They were adults going through this world doing what they had to do. I used to like to watch them and imitate them. They all have their own distinct personalities; even though they're family, we couldn't be more different people.
One of the reasons I always looked up to [George] Carlin is he looked like your grandfather but, acted like your best friend. Most of the adults in my world were adults and acted like adults and had job-type jobs and bills and pressures and stopped playing a long time ago. And George Carlin was a guy that the more he aged the younger he seemed. It was odd because he was still sagely and wise. But he was such a role model for me.
Music has always been a part of my life and because it always seemed so natural to me, it took someone else saying, "I think you should consider doing this for a job," for me to actually look at it that way. To me, it wasn't super goal-oriented in that way. It was like, "Oh, I like to play shows and I like to record," but I didn't think of it any more than that.
The StarTalks - while kids can watch them, they're actually targeted at adults. Because adults outnumber kids five to one, and adults vote, and adults wield resources, and adults are heads of agencies. So if we're going to affect policy, or affect attitudes, for me, the adults have always been the target population.
I like soul, I like rock, I like new wave, I like punk music, I like blues, I like jazz, and I was brought up on all of them from a young boy all the way to my teenage years, when I was wild and crazy, in college.
It's funny: I always, as a high school teacher and particularly as a high school yearbook teacher, because yearbook staffs are 90 percent female, I got to sit in and overhear teenage girl talk for many years. I like teenage girls; I like their drama, their foibles. And I think, 'I'll be good with a teenage daughter!'
I'm always gonna have the darker edgy music; it is always in my pocket because it comes so naturally to me.
I think there are certain genres of music where people are allowed to go on, but there is something about rock and roll, I guess because it originally started out to be a teenage rebellion.
I've done a lot of movies that don't have any music in them, and I've always sort of had a kind of wary attitude about music because it can be so manipulative, and also because with pop music, I feel like everybody kind of has their own relationship to songs.
The movies I used to watch, I remember always being so angry because I felt like I, as a teenage girl, was never truly represented in a film. There were always bits of me that were represented - I'd watch 'Juno' and be like, 'Oh, well part of me is like that, but it's still not the whole thing.'
I was a weird teenager. My mother was actually worried because I didn't have any interest in dating in my teenage years. I had all this desire to pursue my passions like ballet, then sailing, then music, so I didn't have any emptiness to fill.
Children should always feel like the adults are living in this world to nurture them, to take care of them, to protect them from any bad thing that might come.
I don't really have time or interest in doing a lot of the crazy things that some of my teenage peers do, mostly because I have such a hectic life that I don't need to add to that chaos by creating my own teenage drama like a lot of teenagers do.
I'm Straight Edge for me, so what everyone else is doing, it doesn't matter. I've never been pressured to drink or smoke or anything by any of the boys, and if anything, a lot of them like me because I'm always the designated driver. I'm the one who makes sure everyone gets home alright and I'm happy doing that.
When I am doing music, I sometimes become over compulsive to 'always make some new music'. I think I am like this because I sense what others are perceiving me as. If I work extraordinarily hard because of these expectations, I will, but I just cannot produce the good music that I want.