A Quote by Omar Rodriguez-Lopez
I usually don't share the music with the musicians until right before they have to record their parts, because I hate discussing it and just intellectualizing it on any level. I just want to speak from the subconscious, which knows way more about me than my intellectual side will ever know. Once I start doing the arrangements - what I call the architecture of the song - that has a lot of thought put into it.
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I believe that the greatest music is storytelling anyway, in a heightened medium. So I write a lot of music, and I play a lot with my guitar, I still sing a lot, but now I'm more personal about it than public, in a way. I think there will be a time where I'd like to bring the singing back into some of my performances. It all depends if the material's right, if the story's right, if it's my kind of taste in music, as well. It means so much to me. We all know how affective music can be, I just want to make sure when I do it, I'm doing it because I actually feel it and I care about it.
I never want to record something that I'm not proud of just because I think it might be a big hit. There's no positive about that because if you record a song you hate and it's a big hit, then you're singing a song every night that you hate. And if you record a song that you hate and it isn't a hit, then you sold out for no reason.
I love commercial music! I can dissect it and criticize it with any critic in the business. But without any thought, I just enjoy it. It's folk music. That's what I'm doing, folk music. I'm not intellectualizing it . . . and making it into a phoney art form. I'm just doing the music I enjoy.
'Something More' is a song that I wrote not necessarily about country radio, more so about a lot of songs that were being pitched to me. I wrote that after song after song after song was just the same song, just a different melody, so I was just looking for something more to put on the record.
I don't know if I ever feel totally great about a record when I put it out. With every record that I put out, someone has literally got to come pry it from me because when I listen to my own music, I just hear flaws in it.
When somebody brings me a record to mix, usually they feel like they can only get it so far with who they were working with or with themselves, and they just want somebody with fresh ears to take it to the next level. I just try to have a candid, open conversation with them about each song before we start working on it.
For me, music is sort of my passion, more so than being an actor. I just never tried to make a career as a musician. It was just something that I did on my own time, just for me. I had written a lot of songs, but I don't really record a lot of music because, for me, it's the same way as a poet: I write to get things out. It's sort of cathartic.
I used to think that when I got older, the world would make so much more sense. But you know what? The older I get, the more confusing it is to me. The more complicated it is. Harder. You’d think we’d be getting better at it. But there’s just more and more chaos. The pieces—they’re everywhere. And nobody knows what to do about it. I find myself grasping, Nick. You know that feeling? That feeling when you just want the right thing to fall into the right place, not only because it’s right, but because it will mean that such a thing is still possible? I want to believe in that.
I put a lot of work into my mixtapes, and I want everybody to understand I am doing this genuinely. I don't even want to be paid for this; I just want you all to hear my music and appreciate it. I think it brings me closer to my fans because they know I'm doing this for them and not just to get the bucks.
I'm actually in a funny place now where I'm more secure than I've ever been. My career is more stable than it's ever been and that's nice, but it's put this thought in my mind where I'm like, "I have more to lose now." I still have to remind myself that I can't be quiet and back away from the things that have got me here, which is kind of doing it my way and not necessarily caring what the consequences are. A lot of that comes back to music.
If you're in music, you're in music, and if you're in music you just want to keep making records and playing. That's what it's about, isn't it? At least, that's what I always thought it was about, anyway. I don't think I could bear years and years off. Perhaps in me older, older age, maybe I will, for physical reasons. But to me you've always got to keep proving yourself. I never want to just sit on me laurels. You have to keep forging, to prove yourself to yourself. I always think, every time I start a record, this could be the best thing I've ever done.
I don't know why people call me a jazz singer, though I guess people associate me with jazz because I was raised in it, from way back. I'm not putting jazz down, but I'm not a jazz singer...I've recorded all kinds of music, but (to them) I'm either a jazz singer or a blues singer. I can't sing a blues – just a right-out blues – but I can put the blues in whatever I sing. I might sing 'Send In the Clowns' and I might stick a little bluesy part in it, or any song. What I want to do, music-wise, is all kinds of music that I like, and I like all kinds of music.
My family have always supported my rap - and they know I love them when I rap about them - but I'm just Michael Jackson to them. They care more about me. I express my love for them in a much more personal way on this record. It's about our conversations; my fear, and their advice. I know my sisters are gonna hear "Willie Burke Sherwood", which is named for my grandfather, and cry. I used to do music for me, because my ego needed it, but now I'm doing music for my family and friends who helped me become a rapper.
I record all night and sleep all day. It started because you're excited about the music and you want to stay up longer, but over 15 years, it's become a habit. In my circle, I think a lot of musicians operate like this. When the place is quiet, you're more creative. I have plenty of people I can call at 4 A.M. and know they'll be up.
Right away, I knew I didn't want to have that look of other guys with long hair and bell-bottom pants, because everybody else had that look. I kind of adopted my boarding-school look, which made me stand out. Then the next thing you know, the first song on my first record is a song called "School Days." It's about going to the boarding school I went to. So then I just started to write about myself. The very first song I ever wrote was about a guy I met in a boatyard that we were working in. So I've always had this thing about sticking to more or less what I knew.
I'm the one not caring. I'm the one pretending the Earth isn't shattering all around me because I don't want it to be. I don't want to know there was an earthquake in Missouri. I don't want to know the Midwest can die, also, that what's going on isn't just tides and tsunamis. I don't want to have any more to be afraid of. I didn't start this diary for it to be a record of death.
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