The thing about being an artist is that you evolve so quickly, you grow, you learn, you change, you find yourself hating work that you made months prior. That's the hard part about making an album, but every couple days I fall asleep listening to my album front to back and I lay there feeling so proud of what I did.
Every time you come out with an album or a song, you want to feel like you're growing a bit in what you are and giving people something that they can feel.
I feel it's my job to continue being a student of music if I want to continue being an artist and a producer of other artists. You have to keep filling your mind with other music. You have to be ahead of the curve.
When I talk about music in Memphis, it's a place you can go if you are a beginning artist or anywhere in your career, and you can incubate.
And I wound up in New Orleans for all those years and it was a great place, really a catalyst creatively.
I haven't had a perfect career. I've put some albums out that, looking back, I'm not super proud of, but there's also a lot of stuff that I am very proud of.
I've grown and changed, and I'm still making television and movies that I feel really proud of.
If you're a pop singer, you don't need to evolve. You just get a set together, have some hit songs and play them over and over.
The only reason you make a movie is not to make or set out to do a good or a bad movie, it's just to see what you learn for the next one.
I'm hoping to reach a point when I can play all kinds of roles with equal ease.
The directing is something that is incredibly satisfying to me and challenging to me because it's asking me to draw on everything I've been able to absorb over all these years of acting and having all this set experience.
I got a chance to work with Miles Davis, and that changed everything for me, 'cause Miles really encouraged all his musicians to reach beyond what they know, go into unknown territory and explore. It's made a difference to me and the decisions that I've made over the years about how to approach a project in this music.
I'm probably tougher on myself than I used to be. I'll revise my lyrics more. Part of that is working with the right people and producers who will say, 'How can you make that better?' Allowing yourself to collaborate with people will push you toward transcendence.
An artist has to look at the future, to see what we can do better.
You're only as good as your body of work, and everybody has issues, whether it's Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorsese. I'm not comparing myself to those guys, but you learn more from the misses than the hits.
I'm really proud of 'Bright Lights' because I was still in the mind frame of my first album when I was putting it together, but next time I want to display something different. I don't want to be as young, immature and all about boys!
The main thing for all of us was having a ballad, a slower song. Finally, they get to hear more of a vulnerable side to us! We didn't really have that in 'Reflection,' and that's something we all fought for.
When I first moved from photography to filmmaking, I was worried about how big I had to become. I was one person, or maybe me and an assistant, and I had these small cameras, and maybe a flash.
I have a soft spot for 'Wind of Change' because it was my first one, and it was a departure from Humble Pie - very much so. It showed me the spectrum of what I could do.
If I focus solely on developing new material, then I can get a new 45 minute to an hour in about six months. Then I'll work on it and work on it and can make it killer within another six months or so.
Portugal. The Man, to me, doesn't have any real ties. We try to change things up with every album, really progress, and let things happen.
I think when you get past your second album, it all becomes something of a routine. So you have to struggle against that, find a way of making what you do sound fresh and new each time.
It took me five years to learn how to sing.
I always look for something that I haven't necessarily done yet because I like to expand my body of work.
Musically, I'm always gonna take it a little farther, and Lord willing, people are gonna get that and understand that: that there's not really one genre I'm trying to be in, but just as a producer, as a writer, as an artist, that I'm planning on going farther.
