Quotes from Samuel Ervin Beam

I don't sit and write records from start to finish. I write all the time, and when it's time to record you just look and see what songs you've got that could work together as a group thematically.

We all have holes inside. We need love.

I learned early on that you do yourself a disservice trying to replicate the record onstage every night. As a player, and for the audience I think, it's a mistake.

A lot of the big-budget movies, craft-wise, are amazing, but have a boring story. And the indies have their idiosyncrasies.

At art school you realize that in order to stay engaged you have to ignore the critics, good and bad.

I like writing in an illustrative, descriptive way. I prefer describing to rather than explaining. One, I rarely have anything to say. It's much more interesting for me to discover some meaning that you didn't know that you could create.

Music is definitely cheaper and more immediate. But part of the draw of film to me is the multidisciplinary aspect. I always enjoyed film writing.

Like anyone who records music or writes a song, I thought, 'Wouldn't that be cool if someday I were able to do this for a living?' But it was such a fluke, and it really all took me by surprise and I just held on for dear life. I really wasn't prepared. I really went into it naively with no experience.

You can treat musicians like actors - you give them a roadmap but don't tell them what to do, and let their personal style or interpretation speak in the piece. And in both film and music, you create a space where people feel safe to do their best. You treat songs like scripts that can be interpreted a lot of different ways.

A thing can be too pretty and perfect, so if you kick some dirt on it, then it feels like you wore it around a bit.

You cannot predict public taste. That's why I always just trusted mine.

I like good melodies and a great song.

It's nice to play new songs, but it's nerve-wracking.

My folks had a lot of Motown records, so that was a kind of an early inspiration. I grew up on the radio really.

I change things each time we go into making a record, like the personnel playing on it, the types of music.

I listen to everything: noise, classical, jazz. I like lots of different types of food. There's no way you could get me to eat the same meal everyday, so why would I do the same with music?

I have a short attention span.

I didn't really intend on having a music career. It just kind of happened.

I don't want to single anyone out. I'll just say that there are a lot of not good band names out there.

I certainly don't want to make the same record twice. That's no fun.

You can't predict what people are going to like. You have to stay true to your enthusiasm and obsessions.

You have high school photos and stuff, but to have a recording of your voice and your work from 20 years ago, it's a kick in the head to hear how you've changed and what you were interested in at the time and how it's either changed or stayed the same.

I liked 'The Omen.'

All my songs usually borrow from my own life but pull from fantasy or other people's stories that you hear, or something you read. It's fun as a writer to pull from all those different places, and to connect them. But also, I don't have an interesting enough life to strictly pull from that.