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I cut myself off from the mainstream of jazz. It stood me in good stead later on, as a musician.

I've been around jazz and jazz musicians most of my life.

I was a kid living in New Jersey, who - I'd wanted to make movies since I was a little kid, so that came before music for me. But I started playing drums just as a hobby, and I wasn't even really into jazz that much.

I was totally into jazz in my teens.

I didn't plan on rock-n-roll. I wanted to learn jazz; I got to know some people doing rock-n-roll with jazz, and I thought I could make some money playing music.

I wasn't in a lot of rock and roll bands. I was in jug bands and things when I was in school.

Oh, I was a real Nirvana kid. I got into jazz because I listened to a lot of metal, Megadeth and that, and those guys play really fast and are virtuosos. I wanted to learn more about it, and I discovered that a lot of jazz guys played really fast, too.

So I went into jazz and performed in jazz clubs all over the country.

Actually, a lot of my influences were horn players. I really liked Eric Dolphy, John Coltrane and Miles Davis - people like that. My dad had a lot of those records. So when I started playing jazz primarily, it wasn't jazz guitar that I was listening to.

I was exposed to jazz early on.