This is going to sound ridiculous, but I read in an interview with Lil Wayne that he recorded a mixtape of something like 50 straight minutes of him rapping all of his material because he felt like he could never move on to the next phase of his musical exploration if he didn't get it down on tape.

In terms of exploring an identity in the country music world, what I realized very quickly was that there are people who have been performing country music since they were kids. It's very much a part of who they are; very much that jazz and blues are a part of who I am, because I grew up listening to and playing that kind of music.

Success has a lot of different plateaus. But I first felt really proud of myself when I was doing an off-Broadway production in New York City.

Being an assistant in a computer lab was the worst job I ever had. It was boring. That was when I was in college.