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I write all my own songs. Everything I did on 'The X Factor' was basically original, except for some of the live shows. Everything I did was original, and I wrote it from the heart.
I used to produce this band, Dragons of Zynth. There's something about their live shows, which, to me, is ultimate. I mean, you feel like somebody could get hurt when you go see them live.
I sign up whatever live shows I get simply because every gig is a chance to reach out directly to the audience. When it comes to gigs, I try mixing personal picks with what the audience demands.
With Sleater-Kinney, we did a lot of improvisation in our live shows, and even our process of songwriting involved bringing in disparate parts and putting them together to form something cohesive.
Why should anybody see our faces? What have our clothes got to do with anything? So we got the masks and the overalls, and we set about developing the most insane live shows that anyone has ever seen.
For the live shows, I'm just getting my song together. I go back to my hotel room and I just listen to my song over and over again, figure out how to make it different and put my little Pia spin on it.
Anything you can do to get more people to come to your live shows is good, because that's where you can really do what you do. Everyone's on the same page, and you don't have to win strangers over as much.
Well, for the reasons I mention above, although I am not sure the live shows were really so brilliant - but nobody could hear much so perhaps it did not matter! It was certainly a very exciting time for us all.
We've always wanted to do it, something you could dance to, and deep down we always thought we could bring something to the table if we could do it, but the live shows always made us pull back and be a rock band.
It's important for me to put out things that I think are good - I want to be a fan of my own stuff. I also want my live shows to be really awesome, and dance is such an important element for me and my performances.
One reason I do the live shows - and the monthly speeches at public radio stations - is to remind myself that people hear the show, that it has an audience, that it exists in the world. It's so easy to forget that.
My only general rule was to steer away from things I played with the band over the past couple of tours. I was interested in re-shaping the Rising material for live shows, so people could hear the bare bones of that.
It was most exciting when people first came up on the stage and then when they came back for the encore. We wanted to make a show that kept on developing, that was interesting, so we tried to do that with our live shows.
Very early on, when I started doing these plays and live shows, I would travel from city to city, and there were a million shows out there... so I wanted to step out among it, and I started putting my name above the title.
I grew up in the '50s, in New York City, where television was born. There were 90 live shows every week, and they used a lot of kids. There were schools just for these kids. There was a whole world that doesn't exist anymore.
I'm very opinionated about movie musicals when they're adapted from live shows. You'll sit still for a three-minute song in a theater. But in movies, a glance from someone's eyes will tell you the whole story in a few seconds.
I always tell my audiences not to listen to such artists who play audio CDs at their concerts. Such shows shouldn't be called live shows. People like AR Rahman, Sunidhi Chauhan, and Arijit Singh are the ones who hold true concerts.
I didn't think of myself as a lead player, especially when we did live shows, because me and Keith used to switch around all the time. He'd take a lead, I'd play rhythm. Sometimes even within one song. It wasn't strict and regimented.
In the beginning, I was frightened to death of going solo. Especially when doing live shows, I was so used to my brothers being next to me. It felt like the crowd was just looking at me, waiting for me to either mess up or prove myself.
As an artist development platform, we've proven that all the work done behind the scenes at American Idol, along with surviving the rigors of the intense live shows, can properly prepare a winner for a real-world music career opportunity.
I'm honored when young people say they've gone to school on slide guitar with my records. But people get their influence from my live shows and records and YouTube, not me personally. I walk around with a hat on. People don't know it's me.
There's so much about Dolly Parton that every female artist should look to, whether it's reading her quotes or reading her interviews or going to one of her live shows. She's been such an amazing example to every female songwriter out there.
There are a lot of singers who cannot sing to save their lives. We have to accept it, but thank God there is such a thing as live shows. It's only when people are faced with live shows that the world gets to know how good or how bad they are.
Red House Painters were doing cover songs before our first record deal. I remember live shows where we did an AC/DC song; I think we did 'Send In The Clowns' by Judy Collins. We did 'The Star Spangled Banner,' which came out on our third record.
I feel like acting is sort of like that: You're getting so many 'no's all the time. It's just a bunch of no's and a couple of cool yes's. And especially with comedy, too, when you're up on stage, doing live shows, you get immediate yes's or no's.
I don't think that there's much that sets me apart from other musicians, but I think there are definitely things that set me apart from other kinds of artists. I feel that musicians do it their own way, write their own songs and put on a great live shows.
Well, it's been an interesting career. Since I last appeared on 'Top Of The Pops,' I've been doing about 150 live shows every year. The live shows have always been well received and they consistently worked, it's just the records that haven't been very good.
I'm ashamed to say it, but I watch YouTube videos of our live shows, wondering if it actually sounded the way it sounded when I was playing it, and the consistent thing I see is that you can feel the anxiety and the tension and it's over-aggressive a lot of the time.
It was always difficult for me to listen to my singing voice for the first 20 years or so. I mean, I really enjoyed singing, and I enjoyed doing live shows, but being in a recording studio and having to hear my voice played back to me would really drive me up the wall.
Once you start out, you are kind of finding out who you are, and then by the time you get to the second album or you've been touring a lot, doing live shows or whatever, the sound starts to shift slightly to something that is more the true essence of what the band really is.
If you do live shows long enough as a comedian, you can still hear that rhythm of laughing. It's ingrained in you, and it's not something you can really teach somebody. It comes from doing hours and hours and hours and years and decades on stage, performing in front of live crowds.
It's been a very strange trajectory because I struggled for so many years. I mean, I was doing these videos, I was doing these live shows, I had a lot of fans in New York, the press would write about me, but I couldn't get a paying job, and so my father and I were really like a team.
There are some commercial artists that have number one after number one, and you go to their show, and the show's one-note. Yeah, they're all hit songs. But there's no emotion, because they're the same kind of hit songs, because they're what works at radio. That kills live shows for me.
Growing up, when I was at live shows, I was always hoping someone would come out on stage and say, 'The guitarist is sick and couldn't make it... does anybody know how to play all the songs?' That was always my little dream. It was a massively inspiring thing to be in a space with live shows.
One of my favorite things about Tom Waits is not only his songs, but when he does do live shows, it's the theatrics involved. It's like Kabuki theater, really old-fashioned theatrics. Like, standing on top of a piece of plywood lying on some cinderblocks and clapping his hands, banging on a bucket.
I love the live shows when they're on and all singing great but I hate it when the judges say bad things about their singing. I feel sick because I feel it is mean because I've done the reality TV thing so I have such strong memories of what it feels like and I just imagine how bad and how nervous they must feel.
I think I'm better at live shows than I used to be because I'm way more comfortable with the uncomfortable pauses between songs. Now, rather than trying to talk or do a costume change, I'll use those moments for myself. I listen to what other people are playing, or just rest, or dance, even though I don't know how to.
It's a really nice way to cut your teeth, doing live shows. It's like going to the gym because you do have to think fast. You are constantly under the threat of people not laughing. Instead of getting hit, people could just not laugh, so you really are trying to mine quickly for the funniest thing you could say in that moment.