Quotes About Artistry

I really like the thing I did with Martina McBride. I had that song sitting around for a long time.

Sometimes it takes time to get into what ideas actually mean to you. Even when you're not writing a song, it's like that.

I felt that, in retrospect, there was a time in the late Seventies, after I had a string of hits and successes, as a performer and a recording artist, that I wasn't saying anything.

I can't really write unless I'm full of inspiration. And even then I can't write unless I have some alone time.

I play piano all the time. I'm always at my piano, playing music.

Any time a writer thinks he has all the answers to how someone should talk or react or end a scene, it's a spontaneity-killer.

I wanted to play rock and roll when I started playing. Nobody at that time ever thought about songwriting. You sang songs, that's all. You sang other people's songs. That's all there were.

I was signed to a record label at the same time as my friend Elliot Murphy, who makes great records to this day.

I'm a synthesist. I'm always making music. And I make a lot of different kinds of music all the time. Some of it gets finished and some of it doesn't.

My love of words, alcohol, and stage antics basically cemented me as a rapper, but it wasn't a career that I wanted to do. It was just, "I like to do all these things at one time."

I've always loved writing. Doing that at the same time as playing music can be tiring.

It takes me a lot of time, and it's almost frustrating for the guys sometimes because they're waiting for a new song. And I - it's just so important for me to get the perfect, exact, right song.

The first time I sang with David Daniels... I had never performed with a countertenor before. That first time was magic, it was so beautiful. And he's such a great artist.

We all draw a little and compose a little, and none of us have any idea of time or money.

If thou would'st have me sing and play As once I play'd and sung, First take this time-worn lute away, And bring one freshly strung.

Every time I finish a record, it's sort of feels like, "I can't believe that I'm hanging out and having a conversation, and people are gonna listen to this." It's an odd thing, but it's really cool.

This quality becomes important at a time when almost everyone is a poet. And as I said, we live in an age where almost everybody is a poet, but scarcely anyone can write a poem.

My view of myself as an artist expanded because of the time I spent at Cal Arts.

I sing all the time but I'd never gotten what it felt like to be in the recording studio, so it was definitely a learning process.

I reckon that growing up, listening to so much different music, I think over time I just kind of sucked it all in and it probably comes back out through my music.

Every time I write a song it feels like it could be the last one I do, or it always feels like a fluke.

I've been writing a lot of country music again. I've written some bluegrass material. I'm having a good time doing that.

You can't quite believe what you are hearing - and it's not necessarily something that you can listen to all the time because it's too intense - but it changes the way you go about making music.

What I want to happen is to be really creative, and to play something new in the improvisations, every time.