Jay DeMarcus Quotes
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I've been on the road since I was 15, in one way or another - on a bus, in a 15-passenger van, pulling a U-haul - so I would be lying if I said sometimes the miles and the road didn't get long. But it's always rewarding, that hour and a half every night you get to stand up there and see it all pay off and feel the love from that crowd.
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I was raised in church, and we let our kids know who Jesus is.
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I draw inspiration from everywhere, whether it's country, R&B, gospel.
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Living country is more about your values and beliefs than cowboy hats or living on a farm.
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We write songs that hit different people at different ages where they live.
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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'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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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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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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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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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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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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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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That's what we all hope and dream to do, when we stand in front of the mirror with our Goody comb and sing into it, is to have a bunch of songs that have touched people so much that they want to hear 'em every night.
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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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Are there people's music that I don't like? Sure, there are.
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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, as long as people are doing their craft at a high level, I'm going to have respect for it and find something that appeals to me.
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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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I love making records. That's my favorite part of the whole process. And I love playing live, but certainly getting the music on a disc that's going to live forever and be there forever, just every little detail drives me crazy.
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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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So many people have stood behind me for so long.
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It was such a whirlwind for us for about three to four years there that, every time we turned around, we were pulled in 90 different directions, and I look back on that now, and they're such wonderful memories, but you kinda wish that you would've taken the time to savor them a little bit more.