Pastoral Resources

We lived, ate, and breathed pop songs.

We've written something like 900 songs in all.

I just think it's a blessing that I was able to have the gift of words and to be able to put them into music. I was given a great gift all the way around. I didn't ever have to really go out and look for songs, you know.

I write in all keys. I've always written in all keys. I've probably written a lot of songs in A.

There were times I used to go to parties when I was, you know, like 15-, 16-years-old, and I'd always bring my guitar, and all my friends would be like, sing one of the Smokey songs. And everything I sang was his music, and I could sound just like him.

People want to listen to a message, word from Jah. This could be passed through me or anybody. I am not a leader. Messenger. The words of the songs, not the person, is what attracts people.

In my songs, the sex is all subliminal. It's subliminal, spiritual.

If you listen to a lot of the songs that are popular now, there's very little melody in there. People love the beat. But to musicians, it's melody, because we understand how elusive it is and how hard it is to hold.

You hear it in your brain. Whatever makes sense. Some songs work well as quartet songs, sometimes they don't.

We played it as long as we could play it on that CD and I think it might be 50 minutes, maybe. What you have to do is play a couple of songs and then get off the stage because everything that trails it sounds stupid.

There's a certain kind of motion and pacing that our music has, and this just doesn't have that. We just kind of rushed to the conclusion of most of the songs. I just would've preferred to done them over.

I keep a lighter in my back pocket all the time. I'm not a smoker, I just really like certain songs.

I love when people get songs wrong. I love when people take something from a song that's totally not what I intended!

But I'm just having fun playing and giving Botox injections to the older songs.

I don't think I've ever laid out a batch of songs that pick myself apart the way that these do.

I didn't want my last chapter to be the guy who sits at the piano and sings love songs.

I can't wait to front my band with these new songs and play for fans, but I've decided to keep my day job too.

People take songs so literally.

It's funny; Luther and I have written many songs together, but we've never written songs in the same room.

So it was just a case of getting a bunch of songs that I had been writing for years but hadn't recorded together, and the result was My Own Best Enemy.