Los Angeles-based singer, songwriter, guitar player, filmmaker, and author. He has written over a thousand songs and his first ever album reached best-seller status the first day it was released and reached No. 11 on Amazon's Top 100 list. In his early years, he and a friend performed their original folk rock songs on national TV on the 700 Club and in a CBS documentary. Their music was played on the radio, and they toured for several years. His 2021 film – based on a novel he wrote – made the finalized Oscar list for Best Picture, and five of his original songs were up for Best Song. His latest film has won 15 awards at film festivals and can be seen for free on Amazon. Some years ago, he also hosted a radio talk show.
“Sometimes writing songs, the words come first. I'll write some lyrics and then find the chords or … I'll come up with a really nice sounding chord sequence and then write the words.”
“I had the opportunity to be friends with Michael Jackson before he passed, and he had shared with me once that Billie Jean came… like, it just dropped on him, like, he was driving close to where I live on Ventura Boulevard in Encino in a car and the bassline to Billie Jean … just started going in his head.
And he said he kind of instinctively knew it was a bassline and a hook that would just kind of worldwide grab people.”
“I love how art and music can touch people's hearts, and I don't like to be preachy in my films or music or anything like that. If I do a spiritual subject matter, I always hope it comes off in an organic, very artistic way so that people don't feel like I'm shoving a message in there in a heavy-handed way, clobbering them with it.”
“We got a pretty big following where we would sell out auditoriums performing as like a folk duo our songs we wrote… And we wrote lots of songs together and we started getting a pretty big following where our music was on the radio and TV. And so, we had a pretty big regional following and were writing constantly.”
“Andy Warhol … used to say keep making art and let others worry about is it good or bad or are you living up to your previous work. He said just keep creating and while other people debate whether you've lost your touch or whether you're meeting your potential, he said, just keep making that art while they keep discussing that and just keep doing more work.”
“There's always someone better or selling more and that's why we got to just be really grateful that we have this great life where we can create because a lot of people would love to play guitar, or make music.
They haven't been blessed with that ability, so I try to always remind my creative friends we’re very lucky to even be able to do this.”
“Out of that tiredness I left my envelope full of all the cash we needed to drive and make it to California; I left it on a table at a truck stop and got about an hour down the road and panicked, like, we’re out of money.”
“You can build your own following, you can put your music online, you can put your films online… it used to be back in the day if you wanted to be in the arts and really play in the big leagues you kind of would go to New York or Los Angeles or whatever but I think it's a wonderful time in some ways in terms of artists being empowered to green light themselves.”
“It's really important for an artist to write from their heart and to stay true to their own voice. There's a tendency due to the competitive nature of things to try to imitate whatever is the hot thing … be an innovator, not an imitator, and be true to your own voice.”
“The Kingdom is Near”
“You, Champ, and Me”