I would love to sit down and do only the ukulele with a very small crowd. I would also like to sing the super poppy songs and all the background stuff. I think both would be an interesting path.
We'd be recording and I'd go down to Greenpoint where Rostam was living and track stuff... It was a busy time. I felt like in general, I was just super psyched with the prospect of getting to be a musician, that it became a thing that I would think about more than I would think about my studies and stuff like that. I still did fine, but it was an interesting time in my life.
I knew I wanted to sing when I was a very small boy. When I was probably 4 years old. My mother played a guitar and I would sit with her and she would sing and I learned to sing along with her.
Gerard's spirit animal is a gazelle - that's how he's always answered - Frankie would definitely be a wolverine, I would be a shark because of my inability to sit still, and Ray? Ray would be... I'm thinking super intelligent, super articulate, I would think owl.
I remember hanging out at Starbucks. There were these older guys who would sit around and play Crosby, Stills & Nash songs. I was just so in love with music. I would just go hang out with them, and I would try to sing and harmonize with them. I didn't even know the songs.
The world that I would want to get into would be acting. In the beginning, I would do stuff as myself if I had the opportunity to host events - host, like, a talk show. Something like that, I think, would be super amazing.
I decided to make a CD that I would enjoy listening to. So I would finish a song and sit there, and I would say, 'What song, of all the songs I know, would I like to work on now? What song would make me happy?' And that's how I picked the songs.
I think it would be cool to maybe do something with Ed Sheeran. That would be awesome and interesting. He writes amazing songs, and I could easily hear Backstreet Boys sing 'Shape Of You.'
I don't think you would find any player in the Bundesliga who would say that they would not at all be interested. Chelsea would have been very interesting for me. You don't get a chance like that very often in your life.
Actually, if I could deliberately sit down and write a pop hit, all my songs would be pop hits! Let's put it this way. I play what I like to hear. And sometimes I like to hear something poppy, and sometimes I don't.
I would like to sing someone to sleep, to sit beside someone and be there. I would like to rock you and sing softly and go with you to and from sleep. I would like to be the one in the house who knew: The night was cold. And I would like to listen in and listen out into you, into the world, into the woods. The clocks shout to one another striking, and one sees to the bottom of time. And down below one last, strange man walks by and rouses a strange dog. And after that comes silence. I have laid my eyes upon you wide; and they hold you gently and let you go when something stirs in the dark.
They both sang. My grandmother had a very haunted mountain voice and would sing hymns. My grandpa would sing but in a very, very subdued way.
I would love to go into musicals. I got a chance to sing in 'Big Momma's House,' and that's something I would love to do more. But only in Broadway or in the movies. I don't think I would ever seek a career as a singer.
If I wasn't acting, I think I would like to do interior design. Yeah, because you know, with the Balinese background, and being there and buying furniture, stuff like that. I love to do-up our home, so I would be an interior decorator, for sure.
If there wasn't struggle you would never grow. You would never become who you're meant to be. And let's be honest. It would also be... super boring both in movies and in life.
My advice for someone just learning the ukulele would be to have fun with it and not take anything too seriously. Some songs that I think are great for beginners would be, 'House of Gold,' 'Riptide,' and 'I Don't Know My Name.'
I would like to sit down with Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, PJ Harvey, and Bjork. That would be a good dinner in my mind. Strong women. I think I would enjoy that.