My Dad is my hero. He's 85 now and he is in great health. He is handsome and strong. He has an incredible moral and ethical backbone. I couldn't have been luckier with my parents.

I like to jump some rope and swing kettle bells to get my blood pumping. It makes my voice sound better, and it clears my head.

Golf is good, it means I get some fresh air and exercise, take my mind off work and see some of the landscape of the place I'm visiting.

My mom and I were super tight. I think she really wanted me to be an artist, you know? She used to like to tell people she wanted to be Beethoven's mother. That was her thing. She wanted to be the mother of this person.

My dad was the district attorney of New Orleans for about 30 years. And when he opened his campaign headquarters back in the early '70s, when I was 5 years old, my mother wanted me to play the national anthem. And they got an upright piano on the back of a flatbed truck and I played it.

The whole 'American Idol' way of looking at things is the antithesis of what I grew up with. There are a whole lot of kids wanting to be famous now, whereas if I'd even mentioned that word to one of my teachers, I would have got into a whole load of trouble.

[When asked how he's keeping his 12-year marriage to wife Jill fresh] Hookers, drugs. We're playing the field right now.