Heartbreak can definitely give you a deeper sensibility for writing songs. I drew on a lot of heartbreak when I was writing my first album, I didn't mean to but I just did.
Daniel Levitin takes the most sophisticated ideas that exist about the brain and mind, applies them to the most emotionally direct art we have, our songs, and makes beautiful music of the two together.
A message came from my youth of vanished days, saying, 'I wait for you among the quivering of unborn May, where smiles ripen for tears and hours ache with songs unsung.' It says, 'Come to me across the worn-out track of age, through the gates of death. For dreams fade, hopes fail, the fathered fruits of the year decay, but I am the eternal truth, and you shall meet me again and again in your voyage of life from shore to shore.
Of all the girls I ever knew
some loved and some denied me
And all the words I ever said
have been no use to hide me
And all the songs I ever sung
each one of them untied me
And all the girls I ever loved
have left themselves inside me.
When the songs of your heart start singing, you should listen...for its harmony will bring you happiness and the melody is the voice of your true spirit.
Hawai'i is not truly the idyllic paradise of popular songs--islands of love and tranquility, where nothing bad ever happens. It was and is a place where people work and struggle, live and die, as they do the world over.
In fact, after Donald Trump won, some of the relief of finishing record was to turn off all the politics for a while. There were some songs that had more of the political stuff that we just decided to wait on and put aside. A few weeks after the election, I stopped watching cable news and just unplugged. My way of dealing with the new situation we're in was to just work on something that I care about.
We just do what we do, we're grateful every night when there's people in front of the stage and singing our songs back at us. We're all fortunate to be able to be doing this for a living, so we're just grateful to be here and we just do what we do and we let the people decide.
The [book of the bible] Song Of Songs is an amazing erotic love poem that the church has tried very hard not to notice. It is really beautiful, and musical in its poetry.
Writing a song doesn't heal things. Even if the song comes up with a solution, it's still only a theory. Going out and living my lyrics is a whole other deal. That takes courage.
I was a grill cook at McDonalds for a little bit. I did landscape for a little bit. I played a lot in the bar scene, I played countless sets of acoustic songs in that arena.