Quotes from Aaron Dessner

Big Red Machine is really a community effort: I guess it involves almost 30 musicians. It does come out of our friendship, but it's really something that is deeply collaborative.

I always want to have time to experiment, and have transitional things, and have these weird non-songs, but usually the stuff I'm working on comes down to this weird deadline, where it just never happens, and it's kind of a bummer.

If I'm not working on music, I'm probably torturing my infant daughter, Ingrid, with kisses or running or playing soccer in the park.

I had been living with my family in France as COVID was starting to spiral out of control in Europe. I said to my wife that maybe they should come back to the States with me because I was worried about getting separated.

The great thing about being on tour is that... the band plays at night and other than that we have a lot of free time.

One of the negative sides of a really intense arc as a touring band is there are big gaps in your memory because you're so exhausted.

After years of touring you experience music festivals that are mostly the same - where you copy and paste the same experience into a muddy field in California or a muddy field in England.

Our writing, especially during 'Boxer' - the recording process was the writing process, which is not the way I would advise anyone else to do it.

There have definitely been phases of the National, many years ago, where we did party, and various people, in their own way, fell off the wagon.

There are so many books out about Abraham Lincoln out now because it's the bicentennial of his birth. I've known a lot about the Civil War, but I'm just getting more into it.

I grew up fly fishing when I was a kid. The feeling of it is fun. I went fly-fishing on Lake Delaware once, and I caught a record brook trout.

I thought I was going to play soccer in college.

I guess I like minor chords better than major ones, in general.

I tried hard not to think about the scope or scale of making a record that would be heard by millions and millions of people. I did a pretty good job of tuning that out.

Seven' is this kind of nostalgic, emotional folk song.

The song 'Hymnostic' is kind of a gospel song, and that song is really fun to sing with as many people as possible. And anyone can sing it, you know?

From the very beginning, we just sort of made things up together. That's one of the great things about having a twin brother; you have a sort of feedback loop, where you can bounce things off of each other.

Sometimes my brother and I - we're twins, and sometimes we joke that we're like a two-headed monster. We can be hard to deal with because we don't break ranks; we stick together.

We wanted to create an opportunity for people to share anything, on their own terms, revenue and all. Get away from the commerce side of music, which can be exciting and necessary but ultimately dilutes the creative impulse. The further and further you go down that path is sometimes the further you are from the reason why you started making music.

Just because you listen to The National, Spotify might tell you that you want to listen to The Lumineers' music. Well, maybe you don't.

I'm probably more obsessed with football that I am with music.

I think for me to be involved in a festival, there has to be a strong element of songwriting and musicianship.

Die Like a Rich Boy' has, for me, some of the strongest lyrical content I've heard in many years; an epic love song laced with dark imagery and acerbic social criticism.

David Longstreth is one of the great guitar heroes of our generation.