Fred: This is all I ever wanted to do in life from the time I was 5 years old. I like to think that I've grown a little bit as a person, but at the same time the 5-year-old in me still feels that love and excitement. I still play with that excitement.
Fred: I have to watch what I do because sometimes I ask so much of an audience, that I can wear them out. It's a balance of trying to keep the audience engaged, but not exhausted. If it's a good set, there is a nice ebb and flow to it and you're just kind of riding a wave.
"When you first embarked on this journey, your parents never said, 'Are you sure about this?' or 'What the hell are you thinking?'"
JTG: My dad was like, "You know, you should have gone into finance in college." I went into music at LSU. I wanted to score film and TV music. I had that idea coming out of high school. That's kind of where I wanted to focus my direction. I got into LSU Music School by writing a quintet piece for violas, two violins, and a cello. I wrote this little piece, they liked it, and I got into the music school. I spent two years there and then I dropped it because I got into punk rock music. That's where that kind of right turn at Albuquerque happened. My dad was not happy about it. He thought I should go into something like finance. And I remember him always saying, "You should have studied to be a banker or a financial guy." But you can't go into hindsight and question it now, 40 years later. I'm happy with the path I took. Fred: With Cowboy Mouth, I discovered that if you take the path that's well-worn, the path that other people have taken and succeeded with, that's the surest way we're going fail.
When we do things that are different, when we do things that are unexpected, when we do things that are very different from the norm, that's usually when we succeed. When I was a child, I always liked coloring outside the lines. My sister said, "No, you have to color inside the lines." I said, "Yeah, but I like coloring outside the lines." It's just the way I am. |
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