Brian Bowen Smith
Q: You’re in Evansville, Indiana, now. Do you ever get confused about which city you’re in?
A: Yes! They usually write where we are on the set list, because I’ve made the mistake of saying the wrong state before. I was like, "Hello, Ohio!" And they just kind of looked at me like my head was on fire. [Laughs.]
Q: And how do you keep your energy up on stage?
A: I eat a lot of protein and eat pretty clean. Junk food drags you down. I try not to have anything less than two hours before I go on stage, because I don’t want to be up there all bloated. I basically have a grilled-chicken salad after the show, and that fills me up.
Q: You have a trainer with you on the road, right?
A: Yeah, I wanted to get in better shape and wanted to keep it going for the wedding. We do a lot of circuit training, lunges, and crunches. And every morning we walk for 30 minutes.
Q: Your parents were private eyes who ran an agency from home. It sounds like a TV show!
A: It does. But to us [back then], it was just my parents’ job. I did surveillance a lot, which sounds exciting, but it never was. If there was no babysitter, I’d have to go, and my brother and I would just lie in the backseat and color for 15 hours while my mom watched the house.
Q: Did you know what your parents were doing, exactly?
A: In a way, I had such a normal life. But in another way, I saw things most kids don’t see. Our dinner conversations weren’t about school and homework; they were about child custody cases or divorce. When I was a teenager, my parents took in victims of domestic abuse, which was definitely eye-opening. I had to share my room with a woman and her kids who had been abused.
