So I learnt a few country western songs, I bought a chord book, and right away I started writing my own stuff, which nobody else did that, I don't know why.
I found when I started getting serious about writing music, that my writing was country songs. It was basically country subject matter, country melodies and simple chord changes.
When I graduated high school, I bought a guitar and, at first, didn't really think I'd get into the songwriting thing as much as I did. But after learning a few songs of other people's to play on the guitar, I got bored with that and just started writing songs on my own, and that's kinda how it came about.
I love researching, whether it's old Western documentaries or old Western country singers or John Ford Westerns, which are heavily influenced by family values, which so many of these country songs are related to. I'm having a good time doing that, and writing some treatments and hoping to bring a new style of music video to the country genre, that is starting to become very poppy.
When I was small, my parents came back from Tijuana, and my dad bought me a very small acoustic guitar. I loved it. I started making up my own songs right away.
If I'm writing songs for a country-Western picture, I have to know about country music.
I started writing songs at eight. Heartbreak songs - don't ask me why. It was the stuff I used to hear, so I imitated it. I used to write songs about guys cheating. Could you imagine!
I am not sure I knew what I was doing, writing an "apocalypse" novel, when I started this book. Now that the book is done, I can own that I have in fact written an apocalypse novel, one that speculates on a dark, dark future. Why I did it, I really don't know - every time people read my work they comment on its darkness, its sadness.
I started listening to The-Dream a lot. That's when I really got into writing songs. I like the way he put lyrics and makes his songs. So I was like, 'All right,' and I just started writing. That's when I started wanting to be a songwriter.
I started writing when I was around 6. I say 'writing,' but it was really just making up stuff! I started writing and doing my own thing. I didn't really know what a demo was or anything like that, so I started getting interested in studio gear and started learning about one instrument at a time. My first instrument was an accordion.
I have been writing songs and poems since I was a little girl. I started writing short scripts, which evolved into the idea for a book.
One of the few things I know about writing is this: Spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book, give it, give it all, give it now.
I always loved writing songs - writing for myself and demo-ing songs, really with no intention of ever letting anyone else hear them. Finally the Foo Fighters stuff happened when I just went to the studio down the street from my house and recorded some stuff in about five or six days, and all these people wanted to release it as an album. I wanted to release it on my own, with no photos and no names on it.
I love researching, whether it's old Western documentaries or old Western country singers or John Ford Westerns, which are heavily influenced by family values, which so many of these country songs are related to.
I've been training fighters about 10 years. And I know I get the kids that nobody else is gonna want. I get kids who violated probation five, six, seven times. Their parents don't want 'em, the police don't want 'em - nobody wants 'em. And so I say, okay, I was like that. Nobody wanted me. Once I found out that a nobody could do what I did, I took a whole bunch of nobodies. When you take a nobody, they're open to anything, so that's what I started working with. I started working with the worst kids that nobody else wants to deal with.
When I was 16 or 17, I started listening to Death Cab, and I started writing my own songs. I was writing alternative rock, and I had a seven-piece band. The shift was just iterations of experimentation and finding what sounded right. When I stumbled on the sound and vibe that I currently have, it was kind of by chance.
Eventually, my dad bought me a guitar for Christmas, and then I just went from there, man. I bought a drum kit a few years later and bought a bass, started producing, started singing.