Once you discover that you can, then you must. And it's not easy. You have to take direct steps. You really have to count your blessings and you have to make a decided effort to not get seduced by the blues.
Obviously given good health, and a continuing audience and a record company that allows me to do music. So given those things yes, I'm introducing some new music that people haven't really heard me do in quite this fashion.
Let that get you up in the morning and put the light in your eyes. I'm telling you, it makes you a better husband, mother, father, neighbor, citizen, when you have that light in your eye, that you feel so good, and you're a pleasant person to be around. "Good morning, sir. Did you find everything that you need? Oh, that's over in aisle seven. I'll come help you as soon as," that's the stuff. Find something. It could be planting flowers, especially if you can watch it.
Jazz brought this sense of democracy where four guys come together and your name may be on the marquee, but in this moment, when you're the soloist, it's you, and we follow you. We follow you.
To sing the ballad with a knowingness about what you are talking about. If it's somebody else's lyric, and the message is a little unusual for you, it requires that you learn that new message.
I was age six or seven, and singing, "Jesus wants me for her son, beep, to shine for him," and people smiled and pinched my cheeks till the blood vessels broke, and I knew I was doing something right.
It's all background experience and listening and exposure. That's why it's so important for people today and during any time to expose your children to lots of different kinds of things.
I kind of knew something was going on, and my older brothers and sisters were singing be-boppish kinds of stuff in the living room, and I was listening. I started singing, warmer than a summer night, at seven or eight years old.
My eyes went blank, and I stared off, and the music started. It was raining, and the sun was shining at the same time, and there were these big bay windows, and there was the blue in the sky, and the sun on the trees, and it was drizzling.
These songs are old friends I have entertained myself with when I'm washing the dishes, driving to the store and walking down the aisles. The ones that you sing when you're driving in the car and as a singer you always go back to them.