Recording - July 2013 - 57

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really cool, or different lyric ideas. I love
music, and if I’m ever feeling stumped, I listen
to a classic Beatles song or Dylan. Dylan’s
lyrics are insane. If you just Google certain
songs, like “Boots of Spanish Leather,” and
just sit down and read these lyrics, or different
Beatles songs, you’ll just feel completely
inspired, and you can’t help but write a song
because these lyrics are so amazing. Even just
listening to classic songs like “Somewhere
Over the Rainbow” or “Wonderful World,”
these are amazing songs that… Or even with
Christmas coming up, the biggest-selling song
of all time—it’s in The Guinness Books of
Records—is “White Christmas” by Irving
Berlin. What an amazing song. We don’t think
about it, but listen to the lyrics. Listen to the
chords and melodies. They are amazing songs.

right from the heart. It should always come
from that place. Anytime it’s sounding contrived where you’re trying to sound a certain
way, the listener doesn’t dig it. It needs to be
from the heart. And when I did that EP I was
really antiwar—anti-Iraq war—and just really
feeling like I needed to get this kind of like
revolutionary Bob Dylan-kind of side out of
me a little bit. So, yeah, I did that EP, but it
didn’t really get placed anywhere, I don’t
think. [he laughs]
So then you did “The Good Life,” and the single
got used in a Saturn commercial. Was that your
first placement in a commercial?
Well, my first placement was Grey’s Anatomy
for the season finale for “Momma’s Boy.” For

commercials, I’d say, yeah, Saturn was probably one of the first ones.
You never went through the, “I’m not a cool
artist if I license my stuff” phase?
You know, I don’t really think about that
stuff. I just feel blessed and lucky that I’m
making a living doing music. Because all my
cousins and different family members, they
love music, and they would love to be making
a living doing music. I just feel lucky and
blessed that I get to be creative and write
from the heart, and that people love it, and it
gets used in TV and film.
Make sure to read Part 2 of this interview in
next month’s TAXI Insider!

Do you ever find that your influences from the
Beatles and from listening to Irving Berlin
songs… How do you meld that stuff and still
stay so contemporary? We were talking about
this right before we came on stage. Tim said
being contemporary is important. But pulling
that retro stuff in, how do you do that? Does it
just get absorbed, and at some point it comes
out when it needs to? Or do you consciously
think about it?
I think it’s more of a subconscious thing, but
being current is extremely important in TV
and film. The major bands that are getting
placed in TV and film are the Black Keys,
Passion Pit, the Lumineers, MGMT—back a
few years ago—this more Silver Lake kind of
hip Indie stuff. If you are scratching your
head when I said Lumineers and Passion Pit,
you really need to go home and like start listening to some of these bands if you want to
have songs in TV and film. Because these
bands are what’s current, and you need to be
ahead of that, ahead of the trend, of course,
and not follow trends, because that’s not
good. But know what’s out there and incorporate some of those sounds. But be ahead of
it and know what’s gonna be the next thing,
but also grab classic elements that are like
the Beatles and Bob Dylan. Be your own
voice but also know what’s going on, because
I think if you’re going through this
completely clueless as to what’s going on in
music, it’s not a good thing.
You went through a period where you were
doing antiwar songs, which isn’t exactly like
commercial radio, “Let’s sign him to our label
right now” kind of stuff. How did you end up
where you are now, going from that stuff to this
stuff?
I think the number one thing for me is like
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Recording - July 2013

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