I just do my thing onstage - it's just what happens. No one, even if they're into the band, can know it's as natural and real as anything can be. I don't think about it.
One day I had an instinct to put on a kaftan and go out and sing. People liked it out of the blue. An artist should be instinctive.
I'm not thinking about what needs to be on the radio. I'm not thinking about anything other than - I'm just going to let this music come out of me and not have any sort of preconceived notion of what I should do. I'm just going to do it.
I'm convinced to do improv. All you have to do is listen to what people are saying to you, and then just add more information to what they've just said. That's all there is to improv, but it's the hardest thing to do.
90 percent of the records I make are spontaneous.
I've never been good at improvising.
With solos, I don't like to be too prepared going in - I like to surprise myself.
I just go where the guitar takes me.
I was onstage singing with Luke Bryan, and he started singing a song that we hadn't rehearsed. Both Luke and myself just winged it.
My crutch was, in improvs, when in doubt, play insane, because you didn't have to excuse anything that came out of your mouth. It didn't have to make sense.
Improvisation is not a presentational form, except in small doses, or as a game. It's a tool.
I don't separate Robert DeNiro's comedy from the serious stuff. The one thing I realize working with him in all of his work, is that he doesn't do anything unless something happens to him in scenes - unless something happens to make him react. He never came in with a set idea of how he was going to do it, he never came in with guns blazing. He would just show up and wait to see what happened.
I'm that dude who will burst into song spontaneously.
So I figured in keeping with the record, I'd do something off the wall which is show up for free and wing it... I don't know, I'm just going to play some songs. I think it'll be fun.
A lot of times, the spectacular play the fans see is not always what I tried to do. It just happens.
Of course, the wind sort of swept up and the music was flying around in mid air and they were trying to play off it. You had to be there. It was quite funny.
Every new routine I have ever written and performed probably occurred extemporaneously. Then after you have fleshed it out and tried it out in front of a number of audiences and it works, you put it down on paper.
The way I work on music is that I go into my studio, and I start playing music, and I see what happens, and... I never think about it.
I play like I always used to, with no agenda. And, every once in a while, I will play something I really hadn't thought about or even intended to play. And I'll go, 'Whoa! What was that?'
In the performance sense, I find that interpretation is improvisatory in nature. You can go anywhere with an interpretation on any given day.
'Curb' is 100 percent improvised, which is wild. I'd never done anything like that.
When I get into the studio, it's not about trying to get a good song, it's about whatever comes naturally.
I try not to do scenes a certain way, because then I become conscious of it, and it dosen't come off as realistic. I try to make it so that I'm not really aware of what I'm doing.
I never took lessons. And I never aspired to be a singer until I was one in a band.
Freestyling helps me portray the emotion that I'm feeling right there instead of writing it at home and having to add to it.
