Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
My favorite songs of all time are songs that take you on a journey and give you pleasurable moments you weren't expecting.
There's this poet named Walter Benton, I really like his stuff. He always uses landscapes as a metaphor for the female body.
The music scene in Michigan is really folky and bluegrass, but my parents played a lot of disco. They really liked to dance.
I find inspiration from a lot of different texts and really old stories and folk tales - things I feel like no one else is reading.
Allowing yourself to suck is the hard part of writing music. If you allow yourself to suck, you will probably write something better.
Maybe it's just me being lazy but I just don't like describing my music or style or anything, I just like letting people interpret it.
I don't really know what emotions are going to come out in songs when I'm writing them until I step back and listen to them as a whole.
We're always trying to make advancements in the arts and technology, so it's somewhat inevitable that we're going to make holograms of people.
No, I don't think songwriting is emotionally challenging - I feel like it's almost a way to sort through your emotions and put them out there.
A big piece of my heart is definitely in Michigan and will always be in Michigan. Growing up there is definitely a big part of who I am as a person.
There's really not much conscious thought involved when I record. I just kind of record what feels good. I'm not trying to make it sound like anything.
Dreams are pretty unexplainable. Have you ever tried to explain a dream to someone, and they're like 'Yeah, that sounds not as exciting as you think it is?'
I'm influenced by a lot of different genres of music. So I'm constantly trying to rework production and make things interesting in the live show and on records.
A lot of people think I'm a chick. It happens the most at airports. The flight attendants will always say, 'Have a nice flight, Ms. Borns.' It must be the hair.
My parents bought this baby grand piano, which was in my living room, that I owe a lot to. I would just play it and write on it for hours. It was my favorite toy.
If you've never been to Michigan, everyone thinks it's completely rural. It's a destination state. You don't really drive through; you're going there for a reason.
My music diet growing up was lots of sugar. Lots of retro-pop sugar. Motown, disco. A lot of English rock, like the Turtles, the Zombies, Bowie and stuff like that.
There's beautiful things about tour - you're seeing the world, spreading music and I'm able to call that what I do. But it's about living lightly and abandoning things.
There's a book called 'The Baron in the Trees.' A friend got that for me because I was kind of a tree-dwelling nomad for a bit. I kind of associate myself with the book.
I guess music is just something I've kind of always done. I never really thought too much about it, it was just another way to create, and I did it as a pretty young lad.
That's the worst and best thing about being in the studio, feeling completely lost and not knowing how to put the final touch on something. But once you find it, there's nothing like that feeling.
I really like small, intimate shows, but there's nothing like playing at a festival. It's a completely different experience. Everyone is just a little more primal; they can get away with more things.
A magic show and a concert are very similar in the way I like keeping things a mystery and not doing them the same way every time. The listener and the audience never know what's going to happen next.
I grew up a huge Roy Orbison fan. He had such a crazy range. And I grew up listening to old jazz, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone. I remember trying to imitate female jazz singers because I had a higher range.
I guess that's always the mystery of music. It's like why does this song make me feel so grey or why does it make me feel sad or happy or nostalgic and so I'm most fascinated by breaking that down in my music.
I'm very particular about everything. That goes along with the artwork, and how it's laid out, and every lyric. So it's pretty much all in my hands, which is crazy to be touring and doing that at the same time.
As far as playing instruments, it just feels good to have it under your hands. Cause sometimes those instruments have minor imperfections. Sometimes because they're so old, they're always out of tune a little bit.
I always like surprising people and doing things at a young age and, I don't know, trying to do them at a higher caliber than what you'd normally think. I'm not saying I'm a virtuoso, but I always challenge myself.
I was pretty young when my folks were playing those kinds of records, '70s rock and psychedelic stuff. So I just remember those songs being synonymous with my childhood, and I was always trying to imitate them on piano.
I feel very short-attention span for like accomplishment. It's like 'oh that felt really good' and then it's kind of like an immediate emptiness of I need to make something else - I don't like to dwell on things too long.
David Bowie is kind of the pioneer of glam rock. Not just for music, but just his overall, how he incorporates fashion and other arts into music. And he does a really amazing job about being fearless and that kind of stuff.
I feel like I'm never playing the same sized venues within two or three shows. It keeps me and the band fit in a way. It keeps us on our toes just because you don't get used to one size and one energy. It's good to switch it up.
I remember seeing an interview from the Bee Gees and they were like, 'The biggest competition to the Bee Gees is the Bee Gees.' They just kept trying to top themselves and write better songs, and I'm just always trying to do that.
I don't really know much about the fashion world. I have a few stylist friends that help me find stuff. So they know all about the vintage fashion world; I just kind of describe to them what I want and they find a lot of it for me.
Most of the time, it's pretending I'm somebody else to get into a different head space. A lot of times, it's just, 'Who do I want to be onstage tonight? Is it going to be Marc Bolan, or is it going to be Grace Jones, or Roy Orbison?'
I had a band when I was in middle school, but I was the drummer. I kind of thought if I was going to be in a band, I'd be the drummer. I'm innately drawn to rhythm. But we didn't have any shows. We just jammed in our parents' basement.
It's very easy in the studio to get overzealous with your vocal takes, thinking, 'Oh yeah, I can do it over and over. I can sing at the top of my range for this whole song.' But when you're doing it every night on the road, it's pretty intense.
People have said on blogs - which is kind of where I decide where to describe my style, from other people telling me - so I don't know, people say it's like, "electro-pop with glam and old rock influences." Or it's "indie pop" or whatever that means.
I did a lot of magic shows growing up. My dad is a graphic designer so he helped me brand myself and create a logo. So I was just rollin' with the magician crowd for a while. But I was really young, 10 to 13, doing table magic and balloon animals at this Italian restaurant.
Half the time, when I first run onstage, I can't look directly at the audience just because of self-consciousness. It's human nature. Sometimes you feel like the man, and sometimes you don't. But sometimes that self-conscious energy is good for the show, it draws people in more.
When I was growing up, there were a few musicians who would have regular gigs at restaurants, and I always thought it was so cool and unexpected how they would spontaneously perform. Being the ambitious kid that I was, I got into it and really studied it. I was so inspired by it.
Hopefully I inspire people just to lose themselves a little bit. That's what I enjoy doing on stage: challenging myself with a new territory, like performing differently, moving differently, singing differently, just let people know that it's okay just to do something that they've never done before.
My first CD started as a studio project and I record everything with one other guy, so I didn't have a band. That's kind of how I like to do it, though. I like to create it with one other person, this guy, Tommy English, who produces everything. And then I go out on the road with a band who interprets it live.
I bought a Three Dog Night album when I was pretty young, and I remember listening to all those songs. That's just greatly crafted songwriting, and the songs have such great harmonies. I remember marveling over those and trying to figure them out on piano. That was my early education - figuring out records, older records, as a kid.
I really like intimate venues because it feels like everyone in the audience is in on all our inside jokes. We could say things and people will catch them. That couldn't happen at a festival because nobody would catch it. I also like that in a smaller space people can be talking to each other and listening to the music; they don't have to be watching you the whole time.