So I got interested in singing and I have always used my voice. Not professionally as much, but around the living room, the campfire, that kind of thing.
I was introduced to country music around a campfire on a farm.
You get guys around a campfire, and they start telling their stories. That's the fellowship that they want to be in.
I think one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don't encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, loyal and faithful and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around a campfire but are lousy in politics.
I think of myself... as a troubadour, a village storyteller, the guy in the shadows of the campfire.
I try to give the music more of a campfire feel as opposed to a library atmosphere. I like when you can hear people hanging out in the songs and doing a little shuffling. It creates a feeling of participation.
I start with the story, almost in the old campfire sense, and the story leads to both the characters, which actors should best be cast in this story, and the language. The choice of words, more than anything else, creates the feeling that the story gives off.
I have mostly been terrified of listening to scary stories around a campfire. We camp a lot as a family, and at night my dad would try and tell us scary stories. This made eating s'mores difficult. The story would start with something like... 'and the old man who lived in these woods...' I would then run back into the camper terrified.
As social animals, we need to exchange juicy tales about someone - to connect with one another. For millions of years our forebears must have sat around the campfire, whispering about everyone they knew.
I'm a Hollywood kid, and I know that there are only so many stories. Only so many tales around the campfire that we have to tell. Then we have to regurgitate them. Our grandparents' movies were all remakes of silent films - we forget that, but it's true.