I think there's a huge gap between no longer qualifying for benefits and being able to afford a life without benefits. When I went off government assistance - six months before I got the book deal - there were some months that were lean, I mean literally lean, like I lost a lot of weight. I could barely afford food.
Way before we got a record deal, we were playing clubs seven nights a week, three one-hour sets a night. Then we got the record deal, and we took off on the road and stayed out.
My son now is 22 months old, he's been playing since he was 12 months old and he gets standing ovations on the drums. He's been with us since he was 10 weeks old, he's been on the drums. He's got blisters on his fingers before he can even talk.
Through the years I've found that I prefer live playing to recording. I still do lots of recording - but I treasure the live shows.
We were playing shows still when we wrote 'Phoebe' and 'Rock All Night.' We got to test those songs in a live setting, so it was nice recording them and knowing which ones really resonated with the crowd.
When I'm representing my music live I think of it very much in a rock band sense. When I first started doing festivals in the 90s there really weren't other DJs playing the stages I was playing. So I felt I was being afforded an opportunity to kind of make a statement about what DJ music can be live. In the 90s, if you were a DJ you were in the dance tent, and you were playing house music and techno music. There was no such thing as a DJ - a solo DJ - on a stage, after a rock band and before another rock band: that just didn't happen.
I think it was, my parents got me a karaoke machine when I was about 9 years old. Even before that, they got me a tape recorder that I used to walk around my life with. And there was something about recording and then hearing myself back.
When we first started recording, it was before rock, so people thought we were hillbilly hicks. That was something we had to deal with; the girls didn't think we were cool, although they did a few years later. We had ducktails and wore peg-leg pants. We looked like rock n' rollers.
I got the job [in Moana project] about six months before we started rehearsals. No, seven and a half months before we started at the Public, and so, it's been my ocean of calm throughout the Hamilton phenomenon.
I want a hit. I don't think anybody spends 12 months writing and recording an album, making something cool, and says, 'Great, I hope this doesn't sell.' I don't understand that mind-set. I want hits: a big bunch of them.
The night before a game, I'd think about who I was playing, and then how I'd bowled against those guys, if I had got them out previously. While I was playing, I could recall nearly all my wickets and how I got the batsman out.
Cause I enjoy both, I enjoy recording and playing live, but yeah, the rush of playing live is really something.
I was a guy who came to work every day. I was there. When my manager got to the field at 12, I felt like there was no reason for him to ever wonder if I was playing. For me, that's a big deal. I teach that to my kids.
I shared guitars before I actually got one of my own and played a guy's Silver tone and played another guys Danelectro 12 string and it was at about age 17 that I actually started playing.
I did grow up with Michael Landau, my brother since we were 12 years old. That was competition but in the best way. He is such a monster, always was, and we had a blast growing up playing in bands and early recording and are still the best of pals.
Before that, an 8-bit recording was pixelated; it was really bad. It didn't serve what I was doing, which was recording live sound and delaying it and feeding it back. This is essentially what the EIS system is: a bunch of delays.