I could experience vulnerability if I just constantly gave myself away without ever taking time out once a day or a couple times a day or whatever it is I need to restore, whether it's more sleep, or whether it's going to see a movie or writing something new.
You're letting go of having the best possible experience you can have regardless of who you are and where you are. I think that can be applied to all things, but it's easier said than done.
Some people they simply just want to hear you. And others actually have things they want to share and talk with you about. So it's important for me to be as strong as I can when I leave home so I can hold space for all of it.
I ride a bicycle everywhere I go, the physical strength is obvious, but my mental strength and my capacity to love myself and to love others has definitely expanded. And that's the one thing I need the most in taking on a life of touring and a life of basically being with hundreds of people every day and not exhaust one's energy.
With everything you're letting go, I'm sure it's going to have a different value to you. And every time you let go you're going to be a different age or there's going to be different circumstances. So I think the best way to do it is to simply wish the best for that thing.
I'm most grateful for my health. It's taken me a long time to get where I am, to feel as strong as I do in my mind and in my body. It's through that that I'm able to be present in all my relationships and not get overwhelmed by what could seem like a big task, going all around the world constantly.
You come out of a store and they give you seventy-five cents change or something, rather than drop it I would always place it in the community. Sometimes I'd flip it into the hat of a busker or give it to a homeless person. But what I most enjoyed was putting it on a windowsill or on a bench seat or somewhere where I knew that the community would get it.
It's through my health that I'm able to maintain that every single day and keep light in people until I'm actually of service to others.
For the first thirty years of my life I exercised very little, and I smoked cigarettes for ten or twelve years, and I ate junk food. And I began to see some elders in my community's health decline, and I didn't want that to happen to me.
When I play with the full band, you get to be larger than life, you feel larger than life, and that particular moment in the song where there's passion, you've got nine guys behind you, all driving that sound and that feeling with you. That's like surfing a huge wave, because once you start you really can't stop it, you got it going down a huge mountain.
I really want to be able to keep going and I realize that in some aspects I've got to treat myself like an athlete.
We have the ability to manifest our thoughts: to actually say something and express what our feelings are. That, then, transforms the world and puts something into action.
I'm a self-taught musician so how I read music is kind of very weak and I kind of read my own version of tablature, I write my own crappy reminders on what I'm playing.
When I have a breakthrough in music and I hear the melody in my hands: that's when I get compelled - something in my gut just has to rise up and sing and put something to that.
I try not to write songs. I would rather emote them, and I found myself going back to my room every night while on my trip, just pouring out new songs and new stories about what I was seeing, what I was feeling.
Everything in my life really filters down to the music.
I have always wanted to do an acoustic record from the very beginning of my career. I was a coffeeshop artist where everything I did was acoustic.
Creating the record is like digging up the earth, planting your seeds and waiting to see what happens.
Performing live is like harvesting your crops and sharing your food with people.
I get tired of the same albums, the same look and singing the same songs. When I get bored I paint, I plant trees and just do something different. I get far away from singing.
I was curious as to why a million Americans weren't lining the beaches in boats and with buckets to preserve the life sustaining resource that is the Gulf of Mexico. Personally, as a surfer, I was most sorry for my fellow watermen. Seeing beaches closed due to contamination just broke my heart. If that ever happened in San Diego I'm afraid I might be forced to move.
Everything in life influences my music.
When we all sing in unison - sing in harmony - things come to us on levels that are much deeper than can be seen by the naked eye. Much deeper than even our subconscious. Things are happening.
I thought I was the center of the world and that my parents had nothing to do with me, and I regret that. I wish I had been a little kinder to my family and been friends with them and let them into my life and shared with them the things I was doing rather than feel like I needed to do my life in secret.
I had to have a lot of jobs until I was supporting myself through music, but I knew that those jobs were all leading me to something. It was all, again, about taking things one step at a time, one day at a time.
