I started playing ball when I was a kid. My dad was a pro ball player and he passed on his knowledge to me.

And you know my dad would show me some things sometimes but the best things that I got to do were to actually see really good players play up close. That gives you an idea of fingering and technique and what not.

My dad was a football player - a soccer player - for Manchester United and I loved playing football but I also happened to be the guy in class who was pretty good at sight reading. My teacher gave me scripts and I was very comfortable.

My dad taught me to play bass. He's a bass player he still plays in a band in Michigan to this day. He taught me to play bass when I was about 6. I used to just go to band practice with him and whoever didn't show up for rehearsal that day I would take their spot.

My dad had a commercial film company so he had a videotape player before anyone. So he got Mel Brooks movies or Citizen Kane or some classic old movies. And every summer the revival house in Evanston would show the great films from the '50s and '60s and '70s.

I've always been into guitars... we want to put keyboards on but keyboard players don't look cool onstage they just keep their heads down. There has never been a cool keyboard player apart from Elton John.

A female piano player is always pretty cool to me.

The worst thing I could be thinking is how could I be a cool bass player.

I was asked to do a test commercial shoot for an Apple product which didn't mean much to me at the time. Some music player that holds all your songs. Sounded cool to me and I never gave up an opportunity to work especially with the possibility of it turning into a national commercial. Coolest job I did in that time.

I was in a really crummy pop-punk band. I think we did a whole bunch of Blink-182 covers and we were on the fringe of losers and jocks. So we invited all the cool kids to come watch us play in our bass player's brother's bedroom. And it was terrible but everyone thought we were so cool.