A great song has to stand on its own, just singing and playing, and the rest is frosting. But you have to pay attention to the frosting.
I do not run my band like The Eagles, for sure. I've never had to be heavy handed.
I did a lot singing for one album for Crosby, Stills & Nash, and at the time, they didn't want anyone to know it wasn't Crosby.
I try to live in a state of being grateful as much as possible. I'm not always successful.
Jazz doesn't have much to do with how I write songs, but I am a big fan. My favorites are Oscar Peterson, Ahmad Jamal, and Mose Allison.
I've had a lot of people pass away in my life. I guess it's all a matter of how you deal with your mortality - and recognizing that you are mortal. I'm trying to see what a gift life is and how quickly it can be extinguished, without any warning.
My youngest is 26, and so I hardly remember life not being a father, but my wife and I were hands on-parents.
Being a parent is one of the hardest jobs there is. It's one of the greatest things, too, but it's also probably the hardest thing anybody ever does.
I traveled a lot, but we didn't hire nannies to take care of our kids. We were both very hands-on. My wife did the lion's share because I traveled a lot, but it was important to us to do our best.
Although I was writing songs when I was younger, I didn't feel I had much of a clue as to what I was doing or how I was doing it. There are a few songs from my past where I thought, 'Well, that's pretty decent,' but I didn't have a discipline. I suppose I'm kind of a late bloomer.
Writing a song is work. You have to go deep in order to mine the material and dig it out.
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.
People would call me up because they liked my voice, and they wanted some kind of vocal harmony. Sometimes I was asked to come in and sing all the harmony parts, and sometimes I would sing with other people.
One of the important things when you're making a record or doing a performance is the sequence of the songs. It really matters a lot because you want your project, your show, or your albums to sort of have a life.
I'm a fan of all music, and probably my first - well, not the very first music I listened to, but back in the late fifties, when I first started hearing rock & roll, it was definitely tinged with doo wop and also Elvis and all those great songs.
There is a song called 'I Refuse,' and I get a bit scolding, I suppose, in a way. But it all comes back to elements of hope, and in the case of that song, it's basically, 'Okay, you're trying to suck me into this world of negativity, and I'm not going to go there. I'm going to live my own life.'
When I was in grade school, I remember singing in a chorus where they actually had two parts going. It was very easy for me to pick out the harmonies, and I kind of just went with it.
I probably learned most of my craft from singing to the radio.
