Jay DeMarcus Quotes
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You can't manufacture the feeling of being in a small crowd and connecting on every single level to the very last person in the very last row in the back. I think when you evolve into a headlining act and things get bigger, the intimacy and some of that energy gets lost a little bit.
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We were just hoping 'Prayin' for Daylight' wasn't a complete flop. Selling a million records wasn't even in our wildest thoughts.
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I think the 360 deals are what stands out to me, first and foremost. I never would have dreamed that record labels would be taking a piece of touring, merchandise, and everything else. The world has changed so dramatically from when we first started.
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I guess, somewhere along the line, when we first came out, somebody thought it was a crime to be young and not wear a cowboy hat and sing country music.
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We write songs that hit different people at different ages where they live.
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I'm surprised at the loyalty of the country music fan. People that started out with us at 'Prayin' for Daylight' still come to multiple shows a year.
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When you first start out in the music business and hope that you have a couple hits, the ultimate payoff is to be standing in front of all those people who are singing it back to you at the top of their lungs. And you know by the way they're singing it back that it's affected their life in some way. That's the ultimate reward as an artist for me.
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We live in the Bible Belt. I was born and raised in church. That's something that was really, really important to me, to build that foundation with our kids so they at least went to church.
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Are there people's music that I don't like? Sure, there are.
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Christian music was such a huge foundation for me, even as a kid, and I grew to love Christian music not only because of the musicianship, which I thought was extraordinary, but because of the message in it. It was such a huge building block of who I was and who I would become.
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It's always a wonderful time to be able to settle down by the fire, enjoy the Christmas tree and the decorations, and just spend time with the ones you love and surround yourself with the people that you don't get to see enough throughout the year.
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I draw inspiration from everywhere, whether it's country, R&B, gospel.
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It's no secret that anybody who knows the music business knows that the numbers are substantially different in Christian music than they are in country music.
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I grew up in the church and loved contemporary Christian music. I go back to the early days of when it first started with the likes of Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith. Those people that really pioneered are heroes of mine.
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It's hard to get to the point where you feel motivated and energized to go back in and create new music when you feel like you've just drained yourself by pouring everything you have into the previous project. It would be nice sometimes to take a longer break in between projects.
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I think the thing that keeps us motivated is challenging ourselves to see if we can be better than we've been before and seeing if we can stumble upon a magic that wasn't there before - whether it's a song, a performance, or a track that lights us up the way the first few records did.
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We've always prided ourselves on the fact that we're a band that the whole family can enjoy together.
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When you get new people around you, the excitement is new because they have different take on your music. They play it in a different way, and that's always exciting to be around. It elevates everybody onstage.
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You start to compete with yourself when your catalog gets bigger and bigger... I mean, everybody wants the next 'Bless the Broken Road,' but you don't write those every day, so it's difficult.
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The lines have definitely blurred between country and pop music.
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My mom was a singer, and my dad had been playing in bands with my mom's brother. My dad married my mom, and so I was sorta surrounded by music from the get-go. Born right into it.
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Typically, every 14 to 16 months, we're putting a new album out. To be honest, I wish it was slower.
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We were so influenced not only by country music but by the rock bands of the '80s. Our focus was to bring in something different. Country music already had a George Strait and Alabama. We wanted to put some pop music in our show.
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We spent night after night out there learning the art of entertaining a crowd.