Elias talks about the reservations he had playing his character in NXT

“There definitely were times that I had issues, but when I first started doing the Drifter in NXT, I remember I just wanted to sit in the back turnbuckle corner and strum the guitar. I thought that would have been the coolest thing; I wouldn’t have to sing or say anything I kind of thought that it would be mysterious and cool. One time I went to Largo, Florida and Terry Taylor came up to me and asked if I could sing a song tonight and I said, ‘OK, about what?’ He said that I should sing about the crowd. I came up with a song that night and the song kind of clicked right off the bat, so I evolved it from there. I started asking, at the time, ‘Who wants to walk with The Drifter?’ I would then tell a little story; it all really started at NXT, even though the NXT audience didn’t really get to see that side of me too much; the live events crowd definitely did see that.”

source: E & C’s Pod of Awesomeness