How do you maintain your relationship and family life when you're on the road?
"It's very tough. There's talk so much about how women are forced to try to find balance in their professional life and their family life, and the truth is, it's not said enough about men: Men have the same issue. I know I do. I'm really lucky that my wife and I have decided to try and support each other in that way, and as we speak, I'm [working], but I fly back Sunday, and right now my wife is making a movie.
I'll fly back, and for the three weeks that she's making a movie, I'm the babysitter, I'm Mr. Mom or whatever you call it [laughs]. So it allows us both to be fulfilled within our professional lives, but at the same time, we feel like we haven't lost control of the balance. At the end of the day, what defines us is the fact that we are parents, that we're brothers and sisters and mom and dads and sons and daughters—not what we do.
I wish it wasn’t a struggle, but it is a struggle to find a balance. I'll never find it perfectly, but I will do my damnedest to find it as best I can."
Why did you want to share your story with this movie?
"What I do can't be done alone, obviously, and to me the most interesting part of this whole story is that it isn't done alone: You see so many of these concert documentaries, and they're really fluff pieces where you basically interview the people they're paying, and they tell you how amazing the artist is and how wonderful and beautiful and how much they've given to charity. I didn't want a fluff piece.
To me, it was done to capture me mid-performance, in my element, at my best – but not to tell that story solely. It takes so many people: It takes an army; it takes a village to bring together a tour like this, to make it move from city to city.
The sacrifices that are made by the musicians and crew are incredible. And for me, it was this wonderful opportunity to tell the story and share the story of the unsung heroes in this business."
Were there any stories in particular that stuck out to you and you knew had to be included in the movie?
"My one crew manager: Throughout the tour we knew things at home weren't as good as they could've been, and we never pressed him on it, but you're on the road; you talk. And I didn't know until I got the DVD and I watched the first edited version, and they're interviewing him, and he said that he called his wife, and she told him that she couldn't do it anymore and she couldn't do it alone, and he said that she thought that she was kidding; she said that she wasn't. And she left.
This happened while we were out on this tour, show No. 148. And they're divorced. They'd been together, 15 years. And it shook me. Because I hadn't been there. Even though I was there and I was his friend, I hadn't been aware of what he was going through, and this is one of the sacrifices of being on the road: It's hard."
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