I don't really have that much control over where I play. I put out parameters and I accept what I can. If it's really low, or I had a bad experience at a place then I usually don't play there again.

Of course the headspace for the young musician is whatever the guy who is paying you says, is right, but that's all.

We have a society that wants somebody to come out of college with a degree that will make them a slave for whatever discipline they're in.

Sometimes I feel like a one man crusade against the devaluation of music in America and culture in the arts.

I had been composing just for myself, and people would say I played so orchestrally, and wondered if I thought about having someone write a piece for me for an orchestra. And I thought, I don't want someone else to write that. You know I finally had made an overhead chart of my drums and what pitches the cymbals and toms were tuned to, and what have you. And I started to compose just with what I had for my solo drumming.

There's nothing that can prepare you for fame and for the music business at any point in history.

I don't think I can play the game and sell myself.