When I grew up music was something I did on the side - I played sports, I went to school - and so music was always there, and I was really fortunate to have that, but so were so many other things.
For me, when I grew up playing music, I played music in church and people were shouting and having a big time, and church wasn't something where it was subdued. If you played something, you brought it to church with you.
My parents had a love for music. There were so many records, so much music constantly being played. My mother played piano, my father sang, and we were always surrounded in music.
I always loved the way music made me feel. I did sports at school and all, but when I got home, it was just music. Everybody in my neighborhood loved music. I could jump the back fence and be in the park where there were ghetto blasters everywhere.
I've always loved music. I grew up with older brothers and sisters who were into music, played The Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Aretha Franklin.
I mean, I wasn't the best student in school. It would be different if I were to pursue music while I was already in school and doing things for my parents to be proud of and music was a side thing. Being that I dropped everything to do music, they was not with it.
I was a ballplayer, but only for a limited time. I grew up playing in Wisconsin. It's a very sports-centric part of the country that I grew up in and I played a lot of sports, but baseball first and foremost. I played through high school. I was a middle-infielder.
One of the things that was a blessing for me is my parents were music lovers. Neither of my parents played an instrument, but they were avid record buyers. And I grew up at every age listening to all kinds of music.
I grew up always around music through my father - I would play in music studios with him as I was growing up - and my high school, Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and Performing Arts.
I wasn't the athletic kid in my family. Both of my brothers were on athletic scholarships and my dad played semi-pro hockey. My younger brother played pro hockey. I was the music kid. But I always loved sports. I grew up around it.
I grew up in New York. We were all diversified, as far as music was concerned. I grew up liking just about everything. So I tried to incorporate that into my playing, although the original school where I came from was Afro-Cuban music. But I liked all kinds of music -- I tried to bring that into everything.
Music was always a huge part of me, but I always did it on the side. I didn't even take any music classes in high school... it was more of an extracurricular thing.
I grew up playing sports, and my dad was always really into that, very passionate about that, as was I, but even my passion for music far outweighs what it was for sports. That's hard for me to believe. And it's hard for me to believe that my parents' passion for music far outweighs their passion for sports, but it does.
I studied music at school and played the recorder. Later in life music was a great way of supplementing my income because I was paid really badly as a young chef. Luckily an old friend - we did music at school together - and I formed a duo, The Calypso Beat, which later became the Calypso Twins.
Music was literally in the air at the time, the Vienna of 1780. Everybody played music, classical music. There were in fact so many musicians that in apartment buildings people had to come up with a schedule - you practice at 5 p.m., I'll practice at 6 p.m. That way the music didn't collide with one another.
My dad is a huge folk music fan, so growing up, there were always records playing in my house. Carole King, James Taylor, Simon and Garfunkel, the Beatles - I grew up with this music, and I was aware of how special this music was to a lot of people.
I grew up in a house that was always happy, and my family was always music, music. I started playing percussion very young, because I had some uncles who were musicians and all my aunts were singers.