Quotes About Music

There's something about a wah pedal that really gets my gut going! People will probably say, 'He's just hiding behind the wah.' But that isn't the case. It's just that those frequencies really bring out a lot of aggression in my approach.

I'll have a chorus pedal or a flanger or an echo, that kind of thing. But as far as specific pedals, the one that's really been a mainstay is the TC Electronic MojoMojo.

People might get mad at my style or my delivery and say it's not country. But the country music that brought me to Nashville? Man, I will always have that on a pedestal.

As a kid, you put musicians on a pedestal - well, I did. The more you meet bands, and the more you hang around them, you can have normal conversations.

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.

I don't generally like things that are too pedestrian. But at the same time, and if I'm in the right mood, hey - I ain't gonna lie - I listen to Joni Mitchell. I listen to 'Blue,' I listen to Miles Davis.

If it wasn't for John Peel, there would be no Joy Division and no New Order. He was one of the few people to give bands that played alternative music a chance to get heard, and he continued to be a champion of cutting-edge music throughout his life.

When you're from a boring town, you have to find things to do. It's funny: I always knew I wanted to make music, so I was always kind of ahead of my peers. I had an MP3 player by the time I was in the fourth grade.

We were either listening to jazz or Robert Johnson, the old blues man, but not to our peers.

I've demanded respect for myself and my band and my peers, I've demanded full artistic control for my music, I advocate for artists and music education wherever I can. And I'm a nice guy.

People want to peg you as alternative R&B when they hear soul or see the color of your skin. It's comfortable when people see artists of color or artists that come from a different country to put that brand on us. It's just not as linear as that.

We've never been very good at servicing fans. I'm here to concentrate on music, not to be a pen pal to people who write to me.

I pick up my guitar and play. Something might come, and then the pen comes out. Then an edit, until something comes out that you're actually satisfied with.

Before I could even hold a pen I was singing.

You have moments of grief in life, and if you can put pen to paper and capture that, that's something wonderful. I can revisit actual songs about past deaths, and I know that emotion is as true now as it was then.

It seems like if they'd given Bob Dylan a pen and paper in the cradle that he would've come up with a great song. I'd love to write songs like that.

I've never been able to sit down with a pen and paper and kind of craft out a song, or really force anything out. It always has to come almost subconsciously.

When I do a film score, I am basically nothing more than a fancy pencil for hire. I don't own any of the music when I am - it belongs to the film company - and likewise, when I am done, even if I come up with something astounding that I may want to revisit... in the world of film composition, you can't do that.

Since I was a kid, I always wanted to figure out how to make a bass line that was a pendulum - like, gravity would control it, and then you could make it play different notes.

Most people are oriented to words. When the public hears a melody, unless you put words to It, it takes longer to penetrate. It's always been like that, but I don't know why.

Before moving to Pennsylvania in 1999, I played bass in a newsroom rock band in South Florida for several years.

I go to a lot of metal shows when we're home. I don't know why, but it takes me back to when I was 17 and going to the local metal shows in Pennsylvania. I go right back to that mentality.

I mean, the way I see it is, every penny I've ever made through music is free money.

It's not just about getting a song on the radio or appearing on television. It really is about helping people change their lives one day at a time.