Q: Explain your musical style.
A: That is the challenge. It’s definitely a singer-songwriter base, but there is a lot of hip-hop and rhythmic influences. I asked myself, “if Paul Simon and Kanye West made a record together, what would it sound like?”
Q: How did you get started in music?
A: I started very late in life. No one in my family was musical. I was a soccer player when I was growing up. That’s what I was known for. Everyone in my hometown was shocked when I started playing music. When I was a sophomore in college, I began stealing my roommate’s guitar and writing songs with the few chords I knew.
Q: How does your faith impact your songwriting?
A: It impacts literally everything I do. When I was in college, I (strived) to understand what it meant that God was the source of love and grace in my life. It so impacted me that that was what started me picking up the guitar and playing songs. I think it’s kind of the thread through everything I do.
Q: What are you focusing on now? Is there a new album in the works?
A: Yeah. This is a different record. I kind of started it locked in a bedroom by myself; I really got away from people and influences and just had fun and really started to push the boundaries on what I can do and what people expected from me. There were 60 songs. I took the winners of that and brought (them) back to some friends, some people and producers to start developing those ideas. I really feel like we have some of the best material because of it.
Q: When can we expect the new album?
A: Hopefully by this summer we’ll have a record out, if we can get our act together. It’s always a challenge because I am a perfectionist so I want to give something a second look forever. But it’s time. I’ve been gone the right amount of time; people are excited after my last record. For this year, for me, a lot of my goals have to do with my own artistic journey. I want people to hear my record; I want it to be successful. You know we try to write big radio songs, but a lot of it is just being proud of every aspect of this record. When you lay your head down at night, is it something you believe in and love? If you’re not the biggest fan of your songs, then there’s usually a problem. And with this record, I am; I am just such a fan of it.
Q: What is something specific we can look forward to with the new album?
A: Each album there is a song that kind of anticipates the next record; “Ships in the Night” was definitely the model I really wanted to chase down even more. There’s the most swagger on this album than any (of the) other ones before.
Q: What are some of your fondest music memories?
A: Every time you put out a record, you put your heart out there as well, and you hope people receive it well. The night we released the last album, I opened iTunes and it was streaming No. 1 on the album charts. I just remember thinking, “this is a dream.” I never thought this would happen. The last record was a lot of fun. We drew a line in the sand, and I said “I want to make the kind of record I love, with all the hip-hop influences and all that, and I don’t know if people are going to like it or not.” The song “Ships in the Night” – early people within the record label didn’t necessarily understand that song. I felt so strongly about it; I really believed in this song. Then we come to find out that it’s one of the most successful songs on the album. It felt good to see that.
Q: Do you have a favorite crowd to play for? Are you currently on tour?
A: I’m just playing a couple shows. I enjoy playing shows so much, and it’s grown to be a bigger and bigger part of what I do. On one of the first major tours, we opened for John Mayer, and I grew to love someone who took the live shows so seriously. You start working in that capacity and thinking about how you are going to play songs live. Over the years, our shows have gotten more and more unique.
I do enjoy playing college shows because they are intimate. You get to join a culture. Some of the biggest shows I ever played were at colleges.
