Do you have any advice right now for aspiring musicians?
Well, I mean the best advice to any aspiring musician is to just get out there and play, and so many people say, "You know if I just lived in LA or something, I would be discovered," or something, but it's not true. It's really just getting out there. And the problem is that now with things like American Idol, people think that it's, you know, a contest rather than just getting out there and doing what you love to do. And the more you do it, whether it's a wedding or a smokey bar or whatever, you get better and better at it every day that you do it and you get better in front of people. You get more experience and it's really a matter of just getting out there. It's not who you know, it's just... working hard and showing people what you can do in any situation you can find.
When did you write your first song?
I started writing as a teenager. Most of it was imitation. It would be my melodies, but the words would be stolen or grabbed from somewhere else to try and formulate my idea at the time of what I thought a song was. I think that most people would tell you that to be a really good songwriter, you have to have grown a little bit more beyond your teenage years. If you're a songwriter, and you're a teenager, it tends to be more manufactured because it's not about anything. It's not from a place of reality or of experience; it's from a place of being a really good imitator. What I got really good at was I could imitate anything that I heard. I could play an Elton John song or a Carly Simon song, or a Beatles song. So when you start to compose -- first of all, it's not a choice, it's not a decision -- what happens is you sit there and play other people's stuff and you start going, 'I wonder what would happen if I played this instead of that or this chord. I wonder why they didn't go to that note.' It's inherent. It's the same as writing. It's very similar to what you do. You learn from reading, and you learn from imitating, and you learn stylistically how to form certain structures of the way things should be. And all of a sudden your voice takes shape.
Well, I mean the best advice to any aspiring musician is to just get out there and play, and so many people say, "You know if I just lived in LA or something, I would be discovered," or something, but it's not true. It's really just getting out there. And the problem is that now with things like American Idol, people think that it's, you know, a contest rather than just getting out there and doing what you love to do. And the more you do it, whether it's a wedding or a smokey bar or whatever, you get better and better at it every day that you do it and you get better in front of people. You get more experience and it's really a matter of just getting out there. It's not who you know, it's just... working hard and showing people what you can do in any situation you can find.
When did you write your first song?
I started writing as a teenager. Most of it was imitation. It would be my melodies, but the words would be stolen or grabbed from somewhere else to try and formulate my idea at the time of what I thought a song was. I think that most people would tell you that to be a really good songwriter, you have to have grown a little bit more beyond your teenage years. If you're a songwriter, and you're a teenager, it tends to be more manufactured because it's not about anything. It's not from a place of reality or of experience; it's from a place of being a really good imitator. What I got really good at was I could imitate anything that I heard. I could play an Elton John song or a Carly Simon song, or a Beatles song. So when you start to compose -- first of all, it's not a choice, it's not a decision -- what happens is you sit there and play other people's stuff and you start going, 'I wonder what would happen if I played this instead of that or this chord. I wonder why they didn't go to that note.' It's inherent. It's the same as writing. It's very similar to what you do. You learn from reading, and you learn from imitating, and you learn stylistically how to form certain structures of the way things should be. And all of a sudden your voice takes shape.
When you perform, it looks like you're really lost in the music, even going into an altered state. What would be your ultimate "performance high"?
JB: There are many moments onstage when I forget that I'm there and get lost in the music. You have to let yourself do that to make the music real. I'm beginning to perform with orchestras, and the other night I played with the Pittsburgh Symphony. It was a performance high because it dawned on me that some of the best musicians on earth are playing my music and bringing it to life, translating it heart and soul. It was surreal. It was high. It was spiritual. It was all of those things.
JB: There are many moments onstage when I forget that I'm there and get lost in the music. You have to let yourself do that to make the music real. I'm beginning to perform with orchestras, and the other night I played with the Pittsburgh Symphony. It was a performance high because it dawned on me that some of the best musicians on earth are playing my music and bringing it to life, translating it heart and soul. It was surreal. It was high. It was spiritual. It was all of those things.
