I grew up near New York, and there were a lot of summer stock theaters in the area. I started an apprenticing with some of the theaters. Not really acting in them - I did everything else: everything but act.
I write all the time, and I write a lot of songs, but before I started putting out records those songs always just ended up on stuff that I did with The Babies.
I write all the time, and I write a lot of songs, but before I started putting out records, those songs always just ended up on stuff that I did with The Babies.
I did what I think a lot of entrepreneurs do. I started putting up a lot of ads on Craigslist for interns.
The Internet unfortunately means that, although a lot of truth and good stuff can spread as a result of the Internet, I think bad stuff and negativity spreads even more quickly.
There are a lot of stuff on the record that I am thinking is generic but actually it is just as good as everybody else who is putting stuff out at the time.
When I was in fourth grade, I started writing a lot of poetry, and eventually, someone in the church was like, 'You should switch this over to rapping.' I went home and did that - started putting my poems over rap.
A lot changed when I started working with Polly Bennett and we did a lot of character and movement stuff together.
I started working in New York City as an actor and did many plays. I did regional theater, smaller theaters, children's theater.
I started using the Internet in 1999. That was pretty late. But as soon as I did I just stopped watching TV. The idea of sitting down and waiting for a TV show at a certain time, I couldn't do this anymore. The Internet is a better form of entertainment to me.
We never did these kinds of loans that really started this mess, the subprime loans. We just never got into that business. We were enticed a lot of times to do so by a lot of Wall Street-type players, but I, frankly, never understood some of this stuff.
I follow the baseball team on the Internet more than I do the football team. Generally you can get a Nebraska game anywhere. Before I started doing big arenas and stuff and had a tour bus when I was just working comedy clubs way back when I would always listen to the games in my hotel room on the Internet.
I never went to acting school; when someone expounds on motivation and all that stuff, I don't understand it. I was just lucky to be able to do what I did. When I started, people said I was very natural, which I guess is difficult for a lot of people to be.
I went through some stuff. And I got very depressed at times. It was like a marriage breaking up suddenly, violently, quickly. And I was just trying to figure out what happened. When we started putting this tour together, I started to feel better almost immediately. And then this there is this, there is almost no better antidote to what I"ve just been through than to do this every night.
When we were first started we were doing a lot of Motown stuff, but actually playing it more in a rock way. Everybody in the band sang and we did a lot of harmonies.
When I got out of school, I just started doing plays of the off-off-Broadway route, and for many years, that's what I did, slowly doing work in tiny theaters, building relationships with people in the business. It's not a showy story.