The point is to almost be child-minded, like you're discovering music for the first time, every time you play.
— Gerald Clayton
I think I knew I was going to be a musician for the rest of my life kind of early. When I was in third grade, I was playing in a talent show, and my dad wrote a two- or three-minute boogie-woogie piece. I played it, everybody loved it, and I was like, 'Wow, this is great.'
A lot of kids have parents who say, 'Music is hard; maybe you should come up with a Plan B.' Whenever I hear that kind of 'advice,' I think it's bad parenting. I was lucky to have a parent who assured me it was a possibility to pursue music.
Some people say that if you do anything other than a straight-ahead groove, that it's not jazz. But that kind of labeling is wrong. Music is what it is; if it sounds good, it sounds good.
When somebody uses a word as a genre distinction, all it really does is trigger certain experiences, or music, that somebody's been exposed to. But that's an individual thing; there's no sort of universal understanding of what jazz is.
I've been boogie-boarding, off and on, since I was a kid. But I started being devoted to the cause of getting up every morning to surf, when I'm in Los Angeles, about a decade or so ago.
I think the main focus as a musician should be to play the music you love to play, and the rest is going to come naturally.
I'm really open-minded, musically. The credo I ascribe to is, 'Take care of the music, and let the rest take care of itself.' Growing up, I was a sponge and soaked up everything I was exposed to.
