Not everybody gets to record with an orchestra, and not everybody that gets to record with an orchestra gets to write all their own stuff.
My dad and mom believed that you do what you have to do in private and don't make a big deal out of it. Just try to help people as much as you can.
I'd like to move back to New Orleans.
I like to jump some rope and swing kettle bells to get my blood pumping. It makes my voice sound better, and it clears my head.
I have worked with Habitat for Humanity for awhile.
I guess play piano, you know, because that's the thing I started doing when I was a little kid.
I get terrible reviews everywhere I go.
I'm a natural piano player. So all the practicing I do at this point is in my head. If I don't play for a year, my chops aren't going to get any worse. I've spent my time playing scales, and I don't necessarily want to play any faster than I play. So everything I do at this point is more philosophical.
I was raised in the environment where it really wasn't about sittin' around dreaming all the time, it was about practicing and workin' really hard and if a dream ever came to you, you'd be prepared for that opportunity.
If your record doesn't sell that well, man, who cares? All the satisfaction I need... comes when I step out onstage and see the people. That's awesome. I love that.
There are more than 300,000 families in the Gulf region that lost their homes and are waiting for peace of mind. The hurricane exposed the sad reality of poverty in America. We saw, in all its horrific detail, the vulnerabilities of living in inadequate housing and the heartbreak of losing one's home.
I have a big ego, and I'm a confident person, but when it comes down to being a jerk, that doesn't work for me, I tried it... for about ten years.
There's some things I can't write about, just terrible personal tragedies.
My mom and I were super tight. I think she really wanted me to be an artist, you know? She used to like to tell people she wanted to be Beethoven's mother. That was her thing. She wanted to be the mother of this person.
I just liked the feeling of being on stage.
The whole 'American Idol' way of looking at things is the antithesis of what I grew up with. There are a whole lot of kids wanting to be famous now, whereas if I'd even mentioned that word to one of my teachers, I would have got into a whole load of trouble.
You won't talk to anybody who breaks lyrics down more thoroughly. It's just a complete deconstruction, and when you start to rebuild, nobody has the capacity to do it like me. Which is not to say I'm better, it's just that there's a unique quality to everyone.
We have been working with Habitat for Humanity and we have built eighty homes, 80% of which are being lived in by New Orleans' musicians. It is called the Musicians' Village and at the center is the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music.
I'm sure that there are reasonable people that had some reasonable projections about the future of New Orleans, but none of those could include not trying to rebuild the city and make it better than it was before.
You have to read scripts and audition and develop relationships. It takes a long time to develop a body of work but over the last 25 years I guess I've done that many movies. In hindsight it may seem effortless, but there's a lot of work that goes into it.
I had an old man moment the other day. I went into Abercrombie & Fitch to get some jeans and the music was so loud I couldn't stay.
When I'm acting, I'm in a different place, singing is the last thing on my mind, and when I'm on stage, there's no acting at all involved, not even presentation, it's just who I am.
I'm gay, it's all a big scam. My kids don't even know who their mother is.
You basically have to play everything (in New Orleans), because you're getting calls to play gigs of all different styles, from classical to R&B to funk; modern jazz to traditional jazz.
A lot of the music that you listen to now is because of the things that the Meters did, the Neville Brothers did, and they're there, the guys who invented those beats that the guys sample today. Such an enormous opportunity.
