This is not the story of a child prodigy who was full of charisma and natural musical talent. Nor did my parents always believe I was going to be a huge star. What they did teach me was that I could do anything I put my mind to. This would stay with me.
I was about five years old when I first realized the power of music and how important it would be in my life. I came from a big family and we traveled a lot, so we would always be singing in the car. My parents were huge Elvis fans, especially my mother, so we were constantly listening to him. I listened to a lot of Motown music and John Lennon while growing up. During grammar school, while other kids were listening to rock music, I was listening to Michael Jackson. This made me feel out of place even as a young child. I thought rock music was too macho and for some reason, I related to Michael Jackson a lot more than I did heavy metal. I really felt the pain in music and became addicted to that feeling. It made me feel alive. I knew I loved singing and wanted to be a singer, but I didn’t have any idea where to actually begin.
The pain of being a human being set in during junior high school. Other kids I knew started to smoke and experiment with drugs. I needed to do something to express how I felt. I had too much respect for my parents to become a drug addict, and I didn’t want to disappoint them, so that wasn’t an option. It was then that I saw a picture of my sister’s boyfriend, who has now become my brother. He was playing guitar, and he had this look of pain on his face. For some reason, I felt close to him. I related to him. Here was someone that I knew, that could teach me how to play.
It was Christmas time and every year my parents would be really confused as to what to buy me because I felt selfish asking for anything. So they jumped at the chance to buy me a guitar when I finally asked. My brother immediately started to teach me. The first thing he taught me was that I should concentrate on writing songs and not think about playing fast. I listened. Within six months, I was working on songs. I barely knew how to play.
Over the next few years, I would write songs and play with different people. I wasn’t sure if I should be singing or not, but I was just as afraid of someone else singing my songs as I was of singing them myself. So I just started to do it. Again, I wasn’t naturally good at it, but I was singing during a time in high school when a lot of other people were screaming. So again, I felt out of place because our band didn’t really rock, but I did feel different and I thought that was important.
Towards the end of high school, I started to play in the band that would eventually become OURS. We played nonstop for about five to six years. We came so close a few times to doing something good, but we couldn’t keep it together. At this point it felt like we were playing for the wrong reasons. The music started to feel self-serving and so did the shows. So I took a break. I traveled during this time and listened to so much music. I needed to fall in love with music again. I needed to write songs that made people feel better, rather then just complaining in them.
In late 1996 I started to play again. I wanted to put a band together with people who were committed and loyal to the music. I also needed to feel like I was in a band with people who felt like I did. So I spent some time and taught my best friend how to play guitar so he could be in OURS. That’s when Race joined the band. He was the one person that encouraged me at that time. He told me I should be playing again. We put a band together and started to practice. I had a recording contract sent to my manager after three or four shows. Even though I had been playing for years and really wanted to sign this deal, I felt that I wasn’t ready. I wanted to be in a band with history. I didn’t want to sign a contract and then hire a bunch of people to come in and play on my record. A few months later, I would sign a deal with DreamWorks Records and ask them for a year to develop. During this time I wrote so many songs and learned to play every instrument and every part that was being played in the songs.
Just over a year after I signed, I went into the studio with Steve Lillywhite to start recording Distorted Lullabies. I’m not sure any of us knew we would continue working on the record for the next three years, but I had a feeling. I needed to live this record in order to make it. Anything else would have felt unnatural. So when Steve and I were finished, I continued to work on it. While working on the record I was slowly hand-picking the rest of the band. I needed to find a drummer that could play in a lot of different ways while still not being too much, and still have his or her own style. That was when I met Kirke. He had played in different kinds of bands, different from what we wanted to do, but he really seemed connected to our music and the direction we all wanted to go in. He was also committed to getting it right regardless of what the solution might be. This mentality and focus was so important to me.
I started to put keyboard and piano parts on the recordings, and I realized that this was part of what was missing the whole time. Now I needed to find someone to play.
Anthony was another friend of mine who grew up listening to our music. He was playing guitar and singing at the time, but he told me he would love to give the keyboards a shot. So we both jumped at the chance.
We had a few different bass players that we tried during this time. We started to realize that Race had a natural feel for playing bass, so we switched him. Then we had to find a guitar player. I had been daydreaming for years about playing with Dave again, who was the guitar player I played with in high school and for a while after that. It felt like he was our only possible candidate. Dave and I learned about music together while growing up. We had been through so much together. He was also the only person I knew who wrote songs I felt like I could sing. Now that we were going to tour and see through the vision, it didn’t feel right doing it without him. It feels like we have all learned how to play music just to be in this band.
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