My co-founder Dylan Smith and I left our junior year of college to move to the Bay Area. To the horror of our friends' parents, we actually had two other friends drop out of college to work on the product. The four of us were just working non-stop growing Box.
I learned Neil Young songs, Bob Dylan songs and older songs. It wasn't until I moved to Philly that I had aspirations to maybe forming a band.
I was a huge Beatles fan. The Stones, Dylan. Later on, I got into Stevie Wonder, and Bill Withers - he's one of my heroes. Al Green, too.
I came along with that crowd of singer-songwriters who were able to make their own statements in such a personal way that it changed the industry: Laura Nyro, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Sly and the Family Stone.
I knew Bobby Dylan back in the days when he lived in the village. He used to come and see me and sing songs for me, saying they ought to go into my next collected book on American folk music.
As a kid, I loved classical music. Composers like Beethoven were like rock stars to me. Then there were the real rock stars: The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, and Bob Dylan.
If they made a movie about Bob Dylan, I would love to play a young Bob Dylan; I mean, I've got the wild hair.
To distract myself from writing, I was singing Bob Dylan's 'My Back Pages.' You know, 'I was so much older then; I'm younger than that now.' I thought, 'I should write a character like that.'
We say, 'Wow, look at Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones. Their clothes were always so cool.' Maybe not Mick Jagger when he wore Spandex in the '80s.
My favorite Bob Dylan record is the very first one where he sings one Bob Dylan song and the rest of them are his interpretations of the Dust Bowl-era folk songs, or even going back as far as the mass influx of people coming into the U.S. during the gold rush. His interpretations of those songs are incredible.
