I've started working on a new album, I'm writing a new book... there are a lot of good things on the horizon.
Between the record companies being the way they are and the fact that people can just download one song instead of buying a whole album, it's hard to make a good living nowadays.
My favorite bands are Radiohead and Led Zeppelin, and all-time favorite album is 'Amnesiac' by Radiohead.
On first listening, Joni Mitchell's 'Court And Spark,' the first truly great pop album of 1974, sounds surprisingly light; by the third or fourth listening, it reveals its underlying tensions.
If you're only making an album every 10 years, it better be good.
It's weird talking about the album as a living being with its own thoughts and direction, especially if you're the one creating it.
In the studio, if things go wrong, you stop things and fix them. I have never been in a recording studio, really, where the people in the booth were not interested in making a very good album. It's often a light-hearted atmosphere but serious at the same time.
I can work my butt off and create an album that's wonderful, but if it's never played and never given the outlet, it won't succeed.
I have to say, I'm sort of always obsessed with Norah Jones. I just love her voice, but I don't really have an album - I have a playlist.
I was trying to learn how to deal with the freedom that I had away from home for the first time. 'Long Black Train,' the song and the album, are very special to me. It was just one of those things that I felt like God gave to me for a purpose, and I've been out here promoting that purpose.
We titled it, 'You Should Be Here,' for one, because just how special that song is, and I think it kind of sets the tone for this album. I've established that I like to have fun, but this is a little more than that - this album has got some fun stuff, but it's also got topics that I haven't gotten a chance to touch, and I'm so excited about it.
Having recorded his first album, 'Tapestry,' in 1969, in Berkeley, California, during the student riots, McLean, a native New Yorker, became a kind of weather vane for what he called the 'generation lost in space.'
I had an invitation to contribute a track to a Robert Johnson tribute album, and it was the first time I'd done anything like that in my life. I was not brought up with the blues or anything like that, and I really, really enjoyed it.
I have to respect her family, and until they come and say, 'We're ready to do an Aaliyah album,' then I don't really want to come and try to get into that because that's very sensitive.
The whole point of 'Acid Rap' was just to ask people a question: does the music business side of this dictate what type of project this is? If it's all original music and it's got this much emotion around it and it connects this way with this many people, is it a mixtape? What's an 'album' these days, anyways?
I don't want to have that thing where I make an album and then I'm super-constantly present in everyone's life for three years, and then gone for the next three.
Whenever you fly into Louisville, you see a sign that says, 'It's Possible Here.' I remember my first time seeing it - I think I was coming home from the studio in L.A. - I was working on my debut album, and I just thought, 'Wow, it is possible here.'
Bob Dylan is my idol. Everybody has that person growing up that made them see things a little differently than they did before, Dylan is that guy for me. My dad gave me the 'Blonde on Blonde' album on cassette tape when I was seven or eight. It took me a while to get into Dylan's vibe, but once I did, I never looked back.
I realized if I'm not really making an album, I don't have to be concerned about things like stylistic consistency, pacing, a coherent mood. All that stuff goes out the window.
People have responded to my stories so well. They come up after a show and say things like, 'Your album really helped me,' or 'I have stage four cancer. I'm terminally ill.' Somebody told me it gave them the courage to die.
People are scrambling to figure out how they can prolong the life of an album. But as long as the shelf space continues to shrink at retail, there's just no room for them anymore... which is fine with me! I would love to be the next person in country to just release digital singles, but I think we're probably a little ways from that.
For our first album, we were our own dressers. We didn't have no stylists. We came up with all of the ideas when it came to dressing. At that time, Cross Colours and Jabos were really popular, so we were able to get stuff from them, but we always added accessories.
James Morrison just had a new album come out and I think he's incredible. I'd love to work with him, his voice is insane.
People criticize you for trying new things. I think, 'I'm new! I'm 22!' I don't know exactly what my sound is or what I want my album to sound like, so I'm not releasing it yet. While I'm experimenting, I'll let you in on the journey, and you can hear it for free.
We're trying to change the whole way our merch is viewed, in terms of just not a bunch of skulls interlaced; you know, every album can look the same, so they're going to be stylized and different.
