{"id":2447475,"date":"2019-08-12T16:00:59","date_gmt":"2019-08-12T22:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=870645"},"modified":"2019-08-12T16:00:59","modified_gmt":"2019-08-12T22:00:59","slug":"david-crosby-answers-your-questions-about-learning-to-play-guitar-living-with-diabetes-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/music-news\/david-crosby-answers-your-questions-about-learning-to-play-guitar-living-with-diabetes-and-more\/","title":{"rendered":"David Crosby Answers Your Questions About Learning to Play Guitar, Living With Diabetes and More"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

David Crosby<\/a> has spent the past few weeks promoting his excellent new documentary David Crosby: Remember My Name<\/em><\/a>, touring the country with his solo band and trying to talk Roger McGuinn into a Byrds reunion via Twitter.<\/a> He also found the time to sit down for another Ask Croz<\/a> session where he answered your questions. Check out the below for his responses about learning to play guitar, living with diabetes trying to make it in the industry and more.<\/p>\n

If you have your own questions for Croz, tweet them out with the hashtag #AskCroz or send an e-mail to askcroz@rollingtone.com<\/a>. Just please stick to genuine life advice questions.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a 63-year-old grandmother who is very worried about the future of our country in light of the current administration. How can I stay hopeful?
<\/strong>\u2014 Patti, via the internet<\/strong><\/p>\n

Take a handful of sleeping pills every 15 minutes. The country is in a lot of trouble. Our democracy is in a lot of trouble. The President is like an infant, a really nasty infant. I think you\u2019re right to be worried. I think we\u2019re in a lot of trouble. Our situation in the world is in a lot of trouble.<\/p>\n

The worst of it is not the damage that this is doing to our democracy or our traditions. It\u2019s that by denying global warming, he\u2019s causing us to do harm to every human being on the planet. That\u2019s what\u2019s known as bad karma. That\u2019s not a good thing. We should be the leaders in fighting global warming. We should be leading that fight. And their denial because they don\u2019t even understand it, let alone their denial because it\u2019s not profitable for them personally, is a sin. It\u2019s really a bad thing.<\/p>\n

I am inspired by human beings though. When a human being is really good, they can make me have hope. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez inspires me. Mayor Pete [Buttigieg] does too. Every time I hear the guy talk I get hopeful. Human beings can make it better. The situation as it stands now is because of things that are broken, not because of things that work.<\/p>\n

I do know my grandchildren are pissed. They feel like they\u2019re being handed a broken world and a broken democracy. And we\u2019re saying, \u201cYou kids are going to have to fix this,\u201d which is a crap way to hand them their life. They know that and they are pissed off at us because we should have dealt with this already.<\/p>\n

Any tips for a 64-year-old learning to play guitar? I started \u00adlessons 10 months ago and never dreamed it would be so hard. Any advice or avenues of learning would be greatly appreciated!<\/strong>
\u2014Debbi, via the internet<\/strong><\/p>\n

First of all, you have to get callouses because it hurts. After you get them, the way to do it if you really want to be good is you have to put in 10,000 hours. I don\u2019t know if you\u2019ve heard about the 10,000 hour thing, but there is no shortcut to learning to play the guitar, not well. If you have hopes of playing the guitar well, you\u2019re going to have to play it a lot for a long time. That\u2019s how you get good. That\u2019s the only way to get good.<\/p>\n

You can\u2019t go to school for it. Nobody can teach it to you. Lessons don\u2019t do it. Practice doesn\u2019t do it. What does it, if you want to know the secret code, you have to smoke a joint. Then you play until your fingers hurt because you get hung up. Then you can do it. But you have to get hung up for a long time. 64 isn\u2019t too old. I learned new stuff in my late 50s and early 60s. You can learn. We aren\u2019t dead. We\u2019re just creepy looking.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a 17-year-old, and it\u2019s my dream to work in the show-business industry as a musician or film director. Should I pick a profession that is a bit easier to get into? I\u2019m very lost.
\u2014Hannah, Nowra, Australia<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh golly. Well, Hannah, I would love to tell you some nice convenient lies. But you\u2019re right. Show business is hard and it\u2019s gotten a lot harder. Streaming has made it immensely much harder for anyone to get started in show business because you can\u2019t make any money off records. Period. They pay you roughly as if you worked for a month and you got a nickel. The only money you can make until you\u2019re a gigantic star is live performing, selling tickets, asses on seats as we say. That makes it very tough.<\/p>\n

I get asked this question all the time and I say, \u201cDon\u2019t do it unless you can\u2019t stand it, unless you really can\u2019t help it. If you are compelled to sing or write or play, then I guess do it. It would be good for your heart, but understand its an insanely difficult thing to make a living at now.\u201d I think its headed for a thing like what you saw in the middle ages. There\u2019s going to be sponsors\/patrons who make it possible for art to be created. \u201cYou\u2019re really talented, I\u2019m going to pay for you to make me a record.\u201d That\u2019s probably going to happen.<\/p>\n

But I can\u2019t lie to you and say its easy. I\u2019ll tell you this: I do it because its the most fun I know how to have. When I\u2019m singing, and I never sing anything exactly the same, it\u2019s kind of like having my own rocket ship. I can go anywhere with it. It\u2019s worth it. I love it. If that\u2019s you, go ahead and do it. But don\u2019t have an illusion that it\u2019s going to be easy. It isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Hi Dave. Long time fan. I just got diagnosed with diabetes and I have trouble with what to eat. What do you eat daily? Need help.<\/strong>
Tim Moore, Michigan<\/strong><\/p>\n

I can explain it to you. I am diabetic. I have been for about 40 years. I will explain the whole thing to you. Now, people do these complex diets where you can only eat the third grape and other nonsense. But you eat it, you burn it. What you don\u2019t burn, you wear. It\u2019s that simple.<\/p>\n

Now when you start out [in life], you\u2019re burning like crazy since you\u2019re young and you\u2019re just starting out and you\u2019re also building a new body. It takes lots of juice. So then you get old and you\u2019re not burning anywhere near as much, but you\u2019re still eating the same amount, which means you get fat. Simple. So you have to cut down on what you eat.<\/p>\n

My doctor said to me, \u201cCrosby, you have to do better.\u201d I said, \u201cI\u2019m trying doc.\u201d He said, \u201cEat less food!\u201d I said, \u201cOh, thanks Doc, that clears it right up for me.\u201d He said, \u201cI\u2019m not kidding!\u201d Well it turns out the grumpy old guy was right. You eventually get full when you eat, but your stomach doesn\u2019t tell you for another 20 minutes. There\u2019s a delay before its tells you that you\u2019re full. You kept eating because it tasted good, but you didn\u2019t need that food. You just ate food you\u2019re going to wear.<\/p>\n

What I did was cut my portions in half. In America, they give you too much food in a portion in a restaurant. It\u2019s food for two people. I cut it in half and I only eat that. I went from 240 to 180 and I\u2019ve stayed there for three years. I haven\u2019t been more than three pounds on either side of 180 for three years, so I think I did the right thing.<\/p>\n

With Diabetes, your goal is to have a hemoglobin a1C of under 7. I\u2019ve been there for three years. The weight thing is central critical to diabetes. That\u2019s why people are going type 2 diabetic all over the country now. It\u2019s just because they are eating crap food largely because all of the packaged foods, all of them, every cereal they make, is full of high fructose corn syrup. Bad. The worst kind of sugar. And they put it in all the packaged foods, all of the bread. It\u2019s bad for you. It\u2019s crap. But they also are just feeding you too much food. The portions are too big. The Western Europeans have got it right. You shouldn\u2019t be eating more than what you can fit in your hand.<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Crosby has spent the past few weeks promoting his excellent new documentary David Crosby: Remember My Name, touring the country with his solo band and trying to talk Roger McGuinn into a Byrds reunion via Twitter. He also found the time to sit down for another Ask Croz session where he answered your questions. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2447475","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-26 03:39:49","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2447475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2447475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2447475\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2447475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2447475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2447475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}