You don't necessarily need expensive gear or giant budgets to reach an audience.

The ukulele was the first of many instruments they had bought for me. They got me a guitar when I was eleven, which my son Morgan uses until this day. They paid for 3 years of guitar lessons; they bought me a bass fiddle, which I still play.

In the last 17 years of his working life, my father was finally rewarded with having landed a great job as first, a maintenance engineer, and then a senior locksmith with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Since my teen years I was interested in martial arts.

Now I know what it's like to be a rock star. No, I didn't sleep with 5 groupies at once. But I was interviewed about 45 times in 5 days in 3 cities.

You could make some great sounds with technology. That's what recording is all about. What happens in the studio is very magical, and should be, in my opinion.

The labels are not getting the returns they want from their PR. Plus, for every Taylor Swift there are a hundred thousand nobodies out there who are probably making better music. Self-releasing is the only way to go.