Quotes from Brian Fallon

Going out and trying new stuff on an audience is a scary thing.

I would love to learn how to paint motorcycles and stuff like that. I really, really am fascinated by that.

I like building houses, working as a carpenter, painting. You work with your hands to the best of your ability, and at the end of the day, you go home with some satisfaction: 'I built that!'

I'm from New Jersey, the Shore, and Asbury Park and all that goes with that. I wouldn't want to mess around with that. I like New Jersey. There are nice people here.

When you set out to carry on a tradition as deep rooted as folk music is, you've got to have your story together. You've got to study and have a foundation. Jeffrey Foucault has that foundation, and you can hear it in his voice, and feel it in his music. He's got an understanding that you don't hear that often.

I don't want to be a lead player. I don't want to shred and play fast licks. I just want to be the best rhythm section ever.

I don't go to rock bars. Why would I go to rock bars? I can do that every night; it's boring.

It's a beautiful thing, to start over.

We come from that school where we don't believe we're different from you, and it's insulting to me on some kind of weird level that musicians are put on a pedestal.

That's how I would describe myself, persistent.

Major labels have always been around our band since the beginning, and we just waited. We knew we had to do some things, and we needed to grow as a band before we made that step. We needed to do it our way and not do it how it works for other people.

Tom Waits is someone who has really struck me, ever since I was a kid. He's really a big deal for me.

I never got a chance to do Tom Waits or PJ Harvey kind of stuff in the Gaslight Anthem.

It's always Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Tom Waits for me - the big three.

We want to be big... we want to be a big band, but we don't want to be your best friends.

I do find that I tend to write about big questions. Why are we here? What are we doing? How do we relate to each other?

You pay your bills and you take care of your family, or you're not a man.

A lot of people get writer's block, and I think you just have to show up for work, sit down, and be like, 'I'm here.' You have to stay confident and positive that you're going to write something.

When you finish a record, I look at it like a photograph. It's already taken. You got it the way you wanted it to be. You edit it, make sure the light and contrast are right, then you just put it away, and that's your photograph. Then you don't really think about it anymore.

Everyone always says, 'We don't want to be pigeonholed.' But sometimes, your pigeonhole is a great place to be.

I did the coffee house thing - we have coffee houses where people play, or we used to - and when I was 14, I started there. Just played all the time. Every weekend I had a show, or every Thursday. Open-mic nights, the whole thing.

I don't like it when people spout about the popular opinion just to make it louder.

There's never going to be a new Beatles because we don't consume things in that way anymore.

Fans look up to us, and that's creepy.