I was never a sit-in-the-audience-type person. Even as a little kid, when I saw a band performing at a restaurant, I would ask them if I could sing a song.
An audience will let you know if a song communicates. If you see them kind of falling asleep during the song, or if they clap at the end of a song, then they're telling you something about the song. But you can have a good song that doesn't communicate. Perhaps that isn't a song that you can sing to people; perhaps that's a song that you sing to yourself. And some songs are maybe for a small audience, and some songs are for a wide audience. But the audience will let you know pretty quickly.
It's a farmers market. You can get whatever - peaches, a sandwich. There might be a little band there. I'd sit in with the band. Yeah, that's what I would do. Sit in with the band at the farmers market. Sing a couple of songs, eat a peach, and hug people.
Ever since I was 2 or 3, I loved to perform for people. I would walk up to another table in a restaurant and crack a joke, sing a song, do a dance, or something entertaining, and the 'audience' would almost always smile and laugh.
The prejudice was so bad in the United States at that time that a dark person with a white person would not be served in a restaurant. My father, mother, and I would try it occasionally. We would sit there, and the food would never come.
There's this terrific kid in Maine who saw all the waste generated by straws handed out in restaurants. So he made up these little pop-up cards and asked restaurant owners put them on the tables to explain why straws wouldn't be handed out unless requested. Of course, the restaurant owners couldn't resist a 9-year-old kid, and so it worked.
I'm the type of person who doesn't want to sit alone in a restaurant or bar.
No, I never sing in the bath. In fact, I've never even practised singing. I would only ever sing indoors if I had to learn a song with my pianist.
I would sometimes sit in a crowded restaurant, and say, 'You know, I'm the only person in this restaurant who can't draw.'
I would never know how that person felt when they first heard my song. They coulda been at rock bottom and my song could have literally been the thing that saved them, but I would never know that.
I fell in love with the classical crossover genre when I was on AGT. I found out that I could use the microphone to establish a deeper intimacy with the audience. I did not portray an opera character; I was my true self. I would sing a four-to-five minute piece for the audience and then I could talk to them and say "Hi" to them! I would not need to act out scenes where my character was dying from tuberculosis or killing somebody else on stage, I could have a nice conversation with them.
You put a song on the record or on tape and you stop singing it. You just don't sit around and sing it anymore unless you're performing. That's kind of sad.
I have never been a physically engaged person. Like, I was not an athletic kid. I was the kid who came up with a thousand excuses not to take a gym class. Even now, if I could, I would do all my work from bed.
I just wanted a song to sing, and there came a point where I couldn't sing anything...nobo dy else was writing what I wanted to sing. I couldn't find it anywhere. If I could I probably would never have started writing.
I've literally never seen a crowd react to a band the way they react to the Polysics. Signing them to MySpace Records was an obvious choice. I wanted to be the person to bring this seasoned band to a new culture and audience. I'm really proud of them.
My first favorite band that made music important to me was the Beatles. I was a little kid. I didn't know who was singing what song or who wrote what song.
Every single young person is reachable. Ask them what dating is like in their country. Ask them if they have a girlfriend. Ask them what their type is. There's nobody who's too conservative to talk about that.