Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I got a lot more interested in songs that could hold up completely on their own, with just a guitar and voice. For some people that's easy to do, but I find it's really difficult.
Small Faces were really a soul band as far as we were concerned. That's what we listened to; that's what we played, you know? We were pretty much based on Booker T. and the M.G.'s.
It's not like I'm narrating stories with music behind them. It's all kind of one thing. You hope you can provoke a specific emotional reaction, but in ways that aren't quite plain.
I've certainly collaborated with others for their songs and it's fun. To me, it's exciting to write from a place that doesn't have to be so true to my life and is more just storytelling.
I've written quite a few things, but I've put it on hold for now to see how everything fits together. Then I'll approach it and write specifically to see how the pieces fit in the puzzle.
I just like a great song. I just wanted to be this true reflection of what is in my heart and it ended up becoming my life which was kind of surreal, but I do enjoy writing for other people.
I was never really a Mod. I thought I was more of a beatnik with the brown corduroy jacket, blue jeans, etc. I loved the music Mods liked, and I loved the clothes, but I didn't have any money to spend on them.
When I began writing songs, there was a pretty direct line between what was happening in my life and what I wrote about. So my first album was really all about my failed attempts to make a particular relationship work.
Mostly, the people in "the room" are paid lobbyists representing interests that could afford to pay them. No wonder policy isn't being made that helps smaller, independent musicians or those unaffiliated with a larger entity.
The thing is that honestly we haven't had an audience. And we have a chance to have an audience now. Which is great because I think we've sort of evolved as a band to the point where I think we might actually be interesting to go see.
When I was writing some of songs for the record in Galapagos it was the feeling of being there I wanted to evoke more than anything. I remember hearing all the parts of the songs in my mind when I was walking around over the lava fields.
I really want to try to protect as much as I can, to safeguard peoples' first experience with a record. Because I want you to get the whole thing as one integrated piece, because it's not like I'm narrating stories with music behind them.
It may be a product of me being raised in episcopal church, but I have a love for ritual and theater and the significance of doing the exact same thing over and over. So I really love knowing every little thing I'm going to do during a show.
The Small Faces are thought to be a one-hit wonder in America because we only had 'Itchycoo Park.' Then the Faces just had 'Stay with Me.' So both bands could be considered one-hit wonders in America, even though we had several huge hits in England.
One of our very favorite shows of 2008 was our Slowtrain instore. We drove straight from San Francisco, pulled up to the back of the store, dragged our entire setup inside and played our new album, Rook, start-to-finish - and they let us get away with it.
I grew up not really listening to guitar players. Especially when I was studying music, I was just interested in piano players and arrangers and composers; I came to playing in a band from the perspective of someone who never expected to play guitar in a band.
I sing to my wife; it helps me. She was my muse. I've written so many songs about her, to her, with references to her, and still do. She's a big part of my life. We were together for 33 years. It actually does me good - she's with me all that time in that way.
I started to understand what the song could be about. The ache of nostalgia even for things we don't like, the commitment to keep moving despite that ache. It made me think of how I relate to my privilege - as a white person, as someone who grew up upper middle class.
As a consumer of culture, I like a wide range of emotions to be touched in art. It's funny but on the other side of it, I do feel that people that are trying to sell culture would like to see a narrower range of expression from their content-makers. Easier to sell I guess.
You feel the camaraderie that you're all driving around in vans, you know, engaged in musical enterprise. It's pretty much the same for everybody except for the 40 minutes that you're on the stage. Other than that, I do feel like we're off on our own path. It's sort of exciting.
Our band doesn't like pressure or timelines. We like to be in a casual environment where everyone is happy with their surroundings. It's not like being in Brooklyn - if you're somewhere beautiful like upstate, you can walk outside to take a moment. It's a big part of our functioning.
I loved rock and roll when that came in, Bill Haley, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, all those great records. So I begged my mom and dad for a guitar, which eventually they did get me for Christmas, but it went out of tune very quickly, and it hurt my fingers.
I'm kind of a purist and I actually just want to be a good player, with that said though... I probably should get a little more involved in that as that's what people are doing and making great songs out of their computer so it's kind of like, at what point does purist become arrogance?
I certainly think there are things that impressed me as a child about the church. The smells and the sounds and the pagaentry of it remained with me. The aesthetic I really love. I think a lot of my sense of melody comes from singing those hymns and doing the renaissance music and stuff.
Being like stranded without a label in the middle of tour was very strange. On the other hand it made us move instantly. I mean, I didn't wallow. I was like, "Alright, who can we email? Let's just start putting stuff out." I felt like we were playing really well and it was at least worth a shot.
I felt like the last record was a real step forward for us. I was very pleased to see some people saying the same things - that it was a real departure, that it was much more individual, that it sort of a power of its own. I really did feel those things very strongly, it's our most realized record.
My love for American music and American movies is from an early age. I was 10 or 11 when I heard Fats Domino and Little Richard and Buddy Holly. And the movies, my dad used to take my brother and I to the movies every Friday. It was incredible: we got to see just about every movie that came out for a period of years.
I see what those people are doing with computers and it's just the new way of doing things and I don't look down on them for it, it's kind of funny that there are a lot of people - and I don't even care, this isn't me being like "well I do this" - but there are definitely people who are like: "Yeah I played all that."
In fact I wonder if I should bend my own rules a little and for the sake of writing a good song it doesn't have to been so autobiographical, but that's a stupid rule to live by as some of my favourite artists' songs, they have a song that you think is about their life [which] probably even isn't, but it's a great song.
I still get stage fright every time. I also feel very, very sleepy about a minute before we go on. Like I feel like I'm going to fall asleep. I can't explain it. It's sort of like, "Where's the energy going to come from to play this show?" Then all of a sudden you step up and there it is, it's like it's waiting for you.
The nice thing about being a band that nobody knows about is that you can do whatever you want, you know? Without catching hell for it. That's sort of how we felt about the re-recording, too. I thought, "Well, you know a few people noticed this record the first time around but not so many will really protest if we do it again."
Lenelle Moïse's poems render the abstract - policy, disaster, history, diaspora - specific. Her words make the political not just personal, but corporeal: the beautiful system of the human body as canvas and subject, perfect in all its attendant complications and complexity, and still ruled, undeniably, by a warm, beating heart.
I was pillaging a lot of music that had nothing to do with guitar playing, using a lot of strange tunings and voicings and chord structures that aren't really that natural to the guitar; I ended up developing a harmonic palette that's not particularly natural to the guitar because I was always trying to make my guitar sound like something else.
The only problem with Shearwater as a name for a band is that people sort of think that it's this amalgamated word like Pushmonkey or something. Doesn't have an actual...you know, like Clearwater or Stillwater, they don't realize that it actually is a thing. It seemed like such a beautiful word, I was so suprised that no body had named their band that.
I'm inspired by struggles. I've been through several really big ones in my life and I'm reminded of how God pulled me out of these certain situations and how my life was affected by that, so of course I don't like the hard times at all and I know it sounds really cliché to say 'hang in there' but it's a true thing, if you're actually believing in what our creator can do.
I do like the old versions of our songs - there are good things in them, but I think that the good things that happen in the new ones kind of outweigh that. The murkiness of the first version of the record was not really what we'd intended. It has sort of a dream-like quality, but I feel like that has been preserved in other ways in the newer versions, as well as the bonus disc.
I feel like we've kind of gone through a transformation in the past year. I don't know what happened but we've somehow gelled in a way that we never have before. The live show has become much more powerful and interesting to me. I really feel like we're learning to negotiate the dynamics of it and keep it interesting. It feels like we're becoming much more comfortable and in tune with one another.
I enjoy making music alone, and I like keeping my options open for how I release my own songs. But everybody in Grizzly Bear is full of ideas. So it's kind of boring to come to the band with a complete song and be like: "Here's what I want you to do." With this record, we wanted to make everything feel like everyone - music that we could never do on our own. That's a real gift, and it's one of the best things about being in a band like this.
When you make a record, you probably are not going to hit exactly what you were aiming for. You also have to let go at a certain point, and just trust it. I remember feeling we had fallen short, or that it had fallen short. At the same time it was great to see a good critical reaction to it, and to hear people were enjoying it, which made me think, "Well, maybe it's a good thing I didn't get exactly what I wanted." Now we're testing that theory.