As an old-time New Yorker, it's not that I miss the '70s and '80s or whatever. I miss the fact that there was a certain kind of energy that exists when people can live for nothing.
You know, if you really want to fiddle the old-time way, you've got to learn the dance. The contra-dances, hoedowns. It's all in the rhythm of the bow. The great North Carolina fiddle player Tommy Jarrell said, 'If a feller can't bow, he'll never make a fiddler. He might make a violin player, but he'll never make no fiddler.'
I often compare putting a hotel together to old-time movie production. You come up with a story line, you hire the writer, the director, the stars, the set designer.
People hear traditional jazz and think it's stale, where there are so many ways it can be opened up. With New Orleans and old-time grooves, there's no limit in what can be done with that. I want to break the stereotype of what traditional jazz is.
I don't like reality shows and have never watched them, but I'm addicted to 'Real Housewives' because it's authentic old-time soap opera reborn!
We have that storytelling history in country and bluegrass and old time and folk music, blues - all those things that combine to make up the genre. It was probably storytelling before it was songwriting, as far as country music is concerned. It's fun to be a part of that and tip the hat to that. You know, and keep that tradition alive.
I intend to keep writing Christmas songs. There's still a lot more about Christmas that can be captured and feel like old-time Christmas. A lot of the traditions haven't been explained in song.
I'm pretty sure in my older years, I'll be doing old-time flavored folk-mountain music.
If they're traveling at the speed of light, their month is perhaps the equivalent of twenty of our years. So they're just buzzing around having a good old time, continuously looking.
What I miss today more than anything else - I don't go to church as much anymore - but that old-time religion, that old singing, that old praying which I love so much. That is the great strength of my being, of my writing.
