An award-winning pop singer-songwriter, who has released seven albums and two EPs. Singles from his most recent album Surrender (2023) have accumulated over five million streams across all platforms and charted on Top 40 radio in both the U.S. and South Africa. He has new singles that will probably come out this spring. He has performed as an actor and singer in touring companies of Broadway musicals as well as in made-for-TV movies, voice overs and commercials. He has opened for and collaborated with a wide range of artists including Pat Benatar, John Oates, Rosanne Cash, Les Paul, and many more. This interview was recorded live, on-location in Anaheim, California, at the NAMM Show.
“I was at a point in my life where I decided there were just a stack of things that I needed to let go of. And I actively did it and was able to write about it and put it into the song.”
“Songwriting is that. Songwriting is like a release. It's great self-therapy if you know how to utilize it. And you have to write a lot of songs to get to that place, I think, where you're so open and comfortable. Not just with yourself, but also with others.”
“I think it doesn't matter … what's going on in the world because there's always so much going on inside. All of us. And I think, either way, you have to look there. You have to, if you want to write, you have to go deep. And it took me a long time to get to that place. I used to, when I was younger, I wrote much more in a protective way, I think, of myself and my private life, my personal life, what was going on inside of me… I used to be much more, looking for metaphors rather than really saying things very clearly and outwardly.”
“I'm really starting to collaborate again, a lot more with Everett Bradley is one of the collaborators I'm working with. He's a current member of Bon Jovi.”
“My favorite thing about collaboration is finding people that are opposites of me and that think differently than I do because they will push me to do something that I may not be so comfortable with or feel scared of. So, I’m a big believer in running towards what scares you.”
“I look for situations where I'm going to be surrounded by other creatives and find people that are different than me or smarter than me… I want to learn. I want to grow. I want to change.”
“I'm not one of those people that is hunting an award. I don't find that interesting. I want to spend my time being creative.”
“Literally the last week I've been in nine different time zones. I was in Germany. I played Hamburg, played Berlin, flew back to New York, and then flew to L.A. two days ago.”
“If you can engage an audience, you create communication. It's just like talking. If you don't do that, if you don't engage the audience, there's going to be a barrier between you and them.”
“I don't really care so much about streaming numbers. I don't know how important they are because I think there's so much passive listening now; people just press Play and I don't even know how closely most people pay attention. They listen to music at work, or they listen to music in the car.”
“Surrender”
“Love is a Verb”