A Quote by Tobias Jesso, Jr.
I don't think I ever heard music playing when I was younger, other than the radio. My parents got me a Walkman and stuff like that, but I was always way more into listening to music than they were.
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I guess I wanted to emulate the artists that my parents were listening to when I was growing up. I've always had this affinity for folk music, and music in general, for as long as I can remember. So as soon as I could start playing shows, I did. And my parents were really supportive of me the entire time.
Even though I grew up playing folk music - and surf music, originally - I was listening to Motown and Stax on the radio as well. That music always resonated with me.
I write a lot of more instrumental music than I do vocal music. It's because I come out of a background of playing piano and then playing sax for a number of years. I kind of got into rock backwards. A lot of guys go into rock and then get sick of it and then go into something else. I came the other way, so I've always just had a lot more stuff lying around.
I always like junkyards. All this metal piled up - they're filled with pathos, those places. Much more pathos than most of the music I've heard. You look at it, and there's more feeling, even though it's depressing, than there is in a lot of music I hear these days. A junkyard is what it is, whereas listening to a record by, say, Styx, is something else.
To me, dance music is a lot of space - to listen to other things than melodies. I think club music and dance music really require a different way of listening.
It disturbed me that the music industry had gone down the drain, even though people were listening to more music than ever and from a greater diversity of artists.
It took me a while to get an electric guitar and a bass and amps and stuff. Playing the acoustic guitar was much easier and more affordable. But I was always listening to the radio and was interested in all the rock and pop music.
I don't know where genre really comes from. I grew up with parents who were artists, and I was always interested in what music they were listening to and open to all kinds of genres. So it's nice to see that whole families come to my concerts. I like having an element in my music that is inclusive rather than exclusive, without being pop for the sake of it. It's not important to me how many people listen to it - it's more wonderful that it brings people who wouldn't usually meet into the same room.
Since I started, I've always been giving my music away for free. I've always kind of done it for the people. I don't want to lose my fans completely because they support me in a way that's more than just listening to my music. They support me like we're friends. They support me like they have emotions invested in it.
When I was young, we were quite strongly discouraged from listening to pop music. It was an uncomfortable thing, pop music; I think my parents felt threatened by it. They were always happy when they were listening to Mozart, so if your parents are happy, then you're happy.
When I came home my parents were listening to Pakistani Qawwali music, like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, they're listening to music from Mali, like Ali Farka Toure, they're listening to Brazilian songwriters, like Gilberto Gil, to opera, to Neil Young even, things you don't hear as a kid in Caracas. I love all the music they turned me onto.
I enjoy music that is commercial. I think that in order for music to be heard in a lot of different situations, you have to always consider that. Commercial music, for the most part, is popular music, and you always have to keep that in mind. It's not so much financial as making sure it gets the shot and is heard on the radio.
If you only ever heard "Valley Girl," or "Don't Eat The Yellow Snow," or a song that has a comedic narrative, you would get some impression that that was novelty music, but that's the only stuff that ever got on the radio. You can make the argument that that's what has confused generations as to what his music's about.
The music I'm playing now is the music I always imagined myself playing when I was a kid. It's been nice to use my instrument a bit more - play the guitar in a more fun way with riffs and stuff like that - rather than just propping up a whole song with a guitar and my vocals. There's so much more energy in the crowd as well; they've been bouncing around and having fun, and it's nice to feel like you're a part of something in a room rather than just performing for a crowd.
There is something about performing my own music, and other people's music, that gives me pleasure. I think I learn more by doing that than I ever did studying music.
I was interested in a whole range of music that I used to play, popular music -- particularly American music -- that I heard a lot of when I was a teenager," "I think at a certain point it dawned on me that myself playing this music wasn't very convincing. It was more convincing when we played music that came from our own stock of tradition. ... I certainly feel a lot more comfortable playing so-called Celtic music.
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