I don't really think of myself as a folk singer.
Back in the Eighties, I used to write ballads on my acoustic guitar, so it seems very natural to me to go back to a little singing.
The Border Ballads, for instance, and the Robin Hood Ballads, clearly suppose a state of society which is nothing but a very circumscribed and not very important heroic age.
I never saw myself as a folk singer.
In my player, I have a Luis Miguel CD as well as a Brian McKnight CD. I'm known for my very romantic ballads as well as the fun, up-tempo pop songs.
Yes, I wrote songs. I was becoming kind of an Enrique Iglesias kind of a singer, with those ballads and cheesy romantic things.
I think Americana music is music that is generally more singer/songwriter oriented. It has more to do with the songwriting. The music, it's more like stories set to music.
If you go back to early folk, it's all storytelling; that's exactly what it is: some guy telling a story in a pub to 50 people with a guitar, you know.
When I first started writing, I wrote really sad, emotional songs which were all slow.
My style of singing is very much Latin jazz meets Latin and a little bit of rhythm and blues. When I do ballads, my fans love it. They want to listen to my classics. They want to party.
I am a troubadour, a wandering minstrel.
I've always thought about myself as somewhat of a folk musician. I just write words.