Sometimes, when the material is really good, you put expectations on yourself to make it the best possible show. You're not just serving up the regular hash and doing your job and going home.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
There's something in human nature, the trying-to-get-on-with-it quality of people, the struggle to maintain or keep the show going can be exhausting.
When you do a show five days a week and one night a week, the way I was doing, you use up so much music every day that pretty soon you find yourself hustling for material.
When I do an hour-and-a-half show, if I don't improvise 20 minutes worth of new material each night, I feel I've let myself down.
Every time you have to come up with a new body of work for a new show, you're aware that people are just ready to rip you apart, they're just waiting for you to fall or make the slightest trip up.
You have a new audience for every show. Even though you do the same thing all the time, you gotta keep it fresh for yourself, and you gotta keep it good and interesting and something you want to do. I'm anxious to have a really terrific act. Whatever it takes it takes.
My act is always a work in progress. I pray I have a bad day before a show.
I never know why shows succeed or don't succeed, which is why I look at it as, 'I'll do the best work that I can', and if the fans and people respond then I'm always really flattered and honored, and if they don't then I'll try and do something next time that they like better. But I have no idea what makes a hit show, I really don't.
I always show up to work and give it everything, and some things turn out better than others - and some things you can expect that it will come out better than others.
I'm not sure if I've learned anything from show business. Life in general has taught me if you're kind to people, everything gets easier. Being a decent person really smoothes the way for you and everyone else.
One of the things that's great about doing a show over and over again... is that you have to find ways to make it spontaneous, as though everything is happening for the first time... to continue to mine the material and find new things.