My folks have played everything from rock, disco, pop, funk, and blues. My dad has always brought and played different genres like jazz, classical, and Latin. With all this in my pocket, I feel I have a taste of everything for my influences.
My influences are jazz, blues, European classical music; they are rock music and pop music. So many kinds of music. World music from different countries like India and China. I think that would be a shame not to take advantage and do something... not unique, because I don't have this pretension.
My dad was my first influence. He played classical guitar and my uncle Ron played the blues.
I like songs in all different genres and types. My production and songwriting is everything from pop rock to hip-hop and everything in between.
When I was nine years old, I started playing guitar, and I took classical guitar lessons and studied music theory. And played jazz for a while. And then when I was around fourteen years old, I discovered punk rock. And so I then tried to unlearn everything I had learned in classical music and jazz so I could play in punk rock bands.
It's perhaps easier to say what prog rock isn't than what it is: it's not three-minute pop songs, it's not straightforward rock, metal, blues or jazz, but can have elements of all them and more. It's a form that is on the boundaries of many different forms, that is open to all sorts of influences.
I played in Velvet Revolver, which is a raw, bombastic blues band with a punk rock edge to it. It's like everything is based around the blues, no matter what the groove is.
I started buying records in the 80s. I listened to everything new wave, disco, funk synth-pop, rock, but in my house we were listening to bossa nova, tango, and folk.
I grew up in the funk, rock and roll, blues and r&b tradition, and I came to this thing we call jazz later. And I came to improvise music from the standpoint of jazz; I was improvising, but within these other genres of music.
You basically have to play everything (in New Orleans), because you're getting calls to play gigs of all different styles, from classical to R&B to funk; modern jazz to traditional jazz.
I've done all different kinds of genres - doo-wop, pop, funk, gospel, country, jazz, you name it.
I became a professional musician and played all kinds of music. I played bluegrass, I played classical music, and for many years, I played jazz.
I think we as a band, as individuals, understand that all popular music stems from blues and jazz and even pop, but rock 'n' roll especially comes from blues. What we're trying to do is play rock 'n' roll, but other people call it different things.
Everything comes from one thing, everything comes from the Spirit. Jazz would not exist had it not been for gospel music, the blues would not exist had it not been for spiritual blues, which goes back to slave songs our fore fathers were singing while they were out in the field. So it's all one continuous growth from one group of people. Of course jazz now is played by various cultures and colors around the world. But the stimulus is One Voice.
Funk could very easily be called jazz, but you call it funk. Does that really matter? People dig that they associate themselves with certain genres, but the genres to me are made up things, like an imaginary world.
I had 12 years of classical music as a child, playing piano competitions as a teenager, playing in blues bands and rock 'n' roll bands, country and jazz bands. I played in about any situation.
We tried to make music that had a very diverse collection of genres - jazz, pop, Latin, even the blues. We tried to have a gumbo soup of expressions. We wanted to create music that would have people dive into a pool of artistic beauty and feel good. And I think we have been really blessed.