I can do four shows in a row singing no problem. Four shows in a row stand up, my voice is destroyed. I'm a storyteller so I act out a lot of characters and I act out a lot of situations and I'm distorting my voice and imitating characters I run into. I'm actually more exhausted doing that than I am with the rock shows, believe it or not.
I think the thing that made this stand out the most was just the fact that there's a lot more character to these characters. We see their back stories and we see their present situations, and that was a lot more interesting than just the regular procedural with four heads standing around a body, spelling it out for you. It's a lot more of a roller coaster ride.
Right now I'm doing four shows at a time, trying to read four outlines every week, four scripts every week, and watching four rough cuts; it's a lot of good work. It's fun to do it, but it does wear you out.
The first ones I played were in New York at Joe's Pub; I played four shows, but I did something like 30 interviews and a couple radio shows in the mornings and completely blew out my voice. It kind of sucked.
I lost my voice for the first time. I was so bummed out, but it happens to every singer at some point in their career. I don't think most people understand, but I sing every night and sometimes we do five shows in a row, which is really bad for your voice.
It's really surreal when I play shows, I'll have three or four people who are in the front row who are singing every word to my songs. The first time I experienced that I was like,"Are they mocking me? Is this a joke?" But it's not a joke. They actually identify with my music and that is something that I'm getting used to.
I chose 'The Voice' because I knew they had a lot more respect for each artist, as opposed to the other shows. They don't get it. I don't think those shows ever got it. I was turned off by some of the other shows and how they did things.
I enjoy a third act, and I like stories with ending. A lot of my frustration with serialized storytelling is a lot of shows don't have a third act. They have an endless second act, and then they find out it's their last year and often have to hustle to invent a third act, but they were never necessarily organically meaning to begin with.
My kids, they're always embarrassed when my voice shows up in something. I took them to Inside Out, and my voice comes in, and they were like, "Ugh, Dad, what are you doing? Get out of there."
I've done shows with one leg; I've done three shows in a row, blown-out back.
There's something about TV shows and the format that becomes a bit more personal. People watch two, three in a row before they get out of bed on their laptop or when they get home from going out and before they go to sleep. People make shows part of their daily routine, and that makes them take ownership of it. If you're so arrogant as to call yourself an artist, you can't ask for anything more than that.
When I watch medical shows or other shows where characters die, it kind of bums me out.
We are blessed to not have violence at our shows. People come to our shows and act a clown. When you do music, you have no control who comes to your shows. I'm sure they have fights at Miley Cyrus shows.
I haven't worked on a lot of different shows, but from just watching different shows I've noticed that there isn't necessarily on every show that love of crafting an episode that has the three part act structure that comes around and actually tells a complete story.
The anxiety is, "Are they going to come?" and when you get there and it's full you say, "I'm good. I can stop freaking out." But when it's four days out and they're scrambling to find more radio shows and Good Morning Phoenix and all these weird shows, then that gets very tiring.
Singing shows are fun. Every viewer has their own opinion. We all know whether we think a voice sounds good or not. There's a play-along element. All these shows can be supported.
The stuff that I find really intriguing is always how do ordinary people behave in extraordinary circumstances. And that's why we have a lot of cop shows and lawyer shows and medical shows is that you're looking for situations that just always heighten the stakes.