I like people that can strap on a guitar and don't sweat the fact that you have to come up with a song in an hour. I want to work with someone who won't feel like they have to play along with Jason Molina. I want them to just have the confidence.
I want to make people feel things when they hear my music I want to give a song to someone who is going through a break up, I want to give a song to someone who loves someone and can't tell them. A song for someone who has just fallen in love and a song for just people who are living their lives.
When I picked up guitar, it wasn't like, 'OK, I'm going to be Kenny Chesney.' It was like, 'I want to play a chord,' and then it was like, 'I want to play another one, then play a song, then sing while playing the song.'
Working with people like Jennifer Aniston and Jason Sudeikis is such a blessing because I've watched them a great deal. I grew up with 'Friends' and always aspired to work with someone from that cast. Jason is just such an amazing comedian.
I think a "song" is, like, just play it on the guitar and sing it. You look out and see thousands of covers of "Animal" for example, so you think, "That was probably a pretty good song, because people feel like it's satisfying to just play it with one instrument accompanying it."
I get total creative control when I'm in the studio now to do what I want to do. If I feel like doing a song I'll do a song. The buzz has been great, in fact a lot of people hit me up now, they're seein me on hiphopgame.com with the journal and I'm just telling people my ideas. All I want to do is make good music at the end of the day.
I think women sometimes stop flirting with their husbands, and you can't. Men want to want feel good - they want to feel like their women love them. When they come home from work, don't start nagging them with questions. Go up to them and give them a big kiss and ask them how their day was.
It means a lot that fans feel connected to us and care about us, and that means the world, because that's what we want. We don't want them to feel like we're unattainable because we're just like them. We're all normal kids but somehow we got lucky when we picked up a guitar.
If I want to see someone, I want to see them, and if I don't, then I don't. My friends are always telling me I have to play hard to get because I'll pretty much say to a guy, 'I like you - let's go hang out.' But my friends are like, 'You can't do that! You have to string this guy along.' And I'm just like, 'No! I won't! I just want to go on the date!' It's a nightmare - I definitely haven't figured it out yet.
I hate the thought that someone had picked up one of my song records and was really excited about it, and walks [out of] a record shop with On Land and is disappointed because it isn't what they wanted. So, I try to make signs, graphically and visually, to say to people "Okay, this is this department of my work and this is this other department of my work." And of course I'm very pleased if people like all of them, but I don't want them to feel deceived at any point.
If people want to watch that five hours [of stream show] on their own terms in their own schedule. It needs to work if somebody wants to stop after an hour and a half or stop after half an hour. People talk about it like food. Like, "I just want to let you know I'm saving it." They talk about it like pasta. "I'm saving it. I'm only going to have one a week." And I love the fact that everybody can have their own experience and I want to make sure that what we put out there works in as many ways as possible.
If my performance touches someone or helps someone understand themselves a little better or gives them a laugh, I feel like I gave them something. I want to touch people's lives and bring them along with me.
He's bent over the strings tuning his guitar with such passionate attention I almost feel I should look away but I can't. In fact I'm full on gawking wondering what it would be like to be cool and casual and fearless and passionate and so freaking alive just like he is- and for a split second I want to play with him. I want to disturb the birds. Later as he plays and plays as all the fog burns away I think he's right. That's exactly it- I am crazy sad and somewhere deep inside all I want is to fly.
One thing about other people, when they come to the gym, they might waste time wrapping hands, doing stretching and things. I don't like that. If I come to the gym, if one hour - all work. If two hours - all. I don't want to do this stuff so I can stay like two hours in the gym training only one hour. I want to do my own - quick, quick.
When I have an exhibition, I usually arrange it so that if people want to, they can spend two hours there. That way, people who like it don't feel cheated when they go. I want them to walk into the exhibition space and look low and at other levels and angles. The same with emotions. I want them to be emotionally manipulated, to come out feeling something. I want them to laugh, smile, feel sad. Even if they feel angry, that's okay.
I'm not too picky about guitars. I love to collect them, mostly oddballs, but I'm not married to any brand or model. Whatever guitar has the best character for the song is the one I want to use, because if you've got a style, you're going to sound like yourself no matter what guitar you play.
I believe in love and lust and sex and romance. I don't want everything to add up to some perfect equation. I want mess and chaos. I want someone to go crazy out of his mind for me. I want to feel passion and heat and sweat and madness. I want valenties and cupids and all of that crap. I want it all.