One thing I hear a lot is, 'Dude, my mom loves your record,' or 'I got it for my dad for Christmas.' I'm essentially doing dad rock. Which is great, because I love Steely Dan, you know? Nothing wrong with dad rock!
My mom was a professional. My dad and mom met each other in a movie called 'New Faces of 1937.' My mom went under the name Thelma Leeds, and she did a few movies, and she was really a great singer, and when she married my dad and started to have a family, she sang at parties.
I was lucky with my parents, for my mom and my dad particularly, much more than my mom, who was very compassionate and loving to everyone. And then, as I got into my career, I started and other people started to realize that I was good at it.
At 14, I was in my own little classic rock country band. Then, after high school, I started another band called Northern Comfort. That was based out of Chico, Calif.
Originally, what we call rock 'n' roll was nothing more than an attempt of very bad white performers to sound like black rhythm-and-blues performers. They did their best to emulate, they did their best to paraphrase. And that started what later became rock 'n' roll.
None of my family are musicians, but there was a lot of classic rock and country going on. I always wanted to sing. As soon as I expressed an interest my mom was super supportive of me.
Dad and Mom were frustrated artists - Dad wanted to study engineering or architecture and Mom wanted to be an actress - but the world was a different place when they were young so Dad became a public works foreman and Mom became a stay-at-home mom. When I said I wanted to be a writer, they were thrilled. They did everything in their power to support me.
'I Want To Hold Your Hand' is a great classic by Paul McCartney and John Lennon, I sure love that song. I did like the classic version, a rock-oriented song, then someone heard me do it with the Grant Green approach - Grant Green and Larry Young did it, with a bossa nova beat on the funky side.
My humanitarian work evolved from being with my family. My mom, my dad, they really set a great example for giving back. My mom was a nurse, my dad was a school teacher. But my mom did a lot of things for geriatrics and elderly people. She would do home visits for free.
Well, 'Crunk Rock' doesn't mean rock. Initially when I started the album, I did collaborate with a bunch of rock musicians and producers. But as I started to have time to free my mind and catch different vibes, it started to mean something different.
I was inspired by the classic rock radio of the Seventies. They separated Chuck Berry and the Beatles from the Led Zeppelins and Bostons and Peter Framptons of the time. In many ways, classic rock became bigger than mainstream rock.
I started to play music again because of my dad and my mom. I grew up playing guitar with my dad, and he and my mom encouraged me to start again.
I don't like putting a name on my music. It's not just country and rap; it's got Southern rock, classic rock.
My dad has a very dry sense of humor and my mom has a more fun, silly sense of humor. My mom is the type that, at the dinner table, you'd look over at and she'd have a piece of asparagus hanging down her nose. Classic mom bit.
A lot of our family was undocumented. My mom and dad were both super conservative. My dad had a green card; my mom was an Eisenhower Republican who did not approve of all the 'illegal people.'
I started with rock n' roll and...then you start to take it apart like a child with a toy and you see there's blues and there's country...Then you go back from country into American music...and you end up in Scotland and Ireland eventually.