Quotes About Artistry

I love Tim Minchin, Bill Bailey, and Hans Teeuwen, and I'm trying to synthesise elements of theatre into my show a little bit more.

I don't want to run around and look at a shot through a monitor. That doesn't improve what I'm trying to do. I figure, once I've done my job, it's none of my business.

Somebody said I sound like an old lady, and I was really insulted by that. I'm trying to sound like Skip James and Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye.

I don't play the tuba.

I can produce any instrument, any sound that I can imagine; it may be percussive to the audience, but in my mind it may be a piano, a melody, or a tuba, or a harp, or a harmonica. My mission is to allow people to hear the dance in its purity and up against any other type of sound or music.

I don't like to sing things that just sound like they're going straight down the tubes, and they're circling the drain, and there's no hope. It doesn't feel good in any way to sing.

When I record in a studio. I know that on Tuesday at 3 o'clock I've got to go be creative.

Sheryl Crow. I loved her 'Tuesday Night Music Club.' She expressed her own point of view, and she wasn't trying to be like anyone else, and I loved that. That's been the thinking of all my favorite artists.

A good theme - like the 'Pink Panther' or 'Baby Elephant Walk' - can work all the way through the picture, which is what I did with them. So, for me, a good melody is not just a pretty tune.

Keep it in tune with the times, but don't write with the specific purpose of trying to create a hit. If you're doing it strictly to make money, you're crazy. There are easier ways to make money.

I had the title poet, and maybe I was one for a while. Also, the title singer was kindly accorded me, even though I could barely carry a tune.

I don't know any jazz stuff. I don't know how to jam in that way. So jamming, for me, is writing a tune.

If I write a tune and people think it's nice, then that's fine by me, but I hate having to compete and promote the thing. I really don't like promotion.

'Enlightened Rogues' we made like the earlier ones: whatever tune came up, whatever direction it went in, that's the way it went. That's what we'll always do. I think if we ever stop doin' that, we ought to quit.

A lot of people don't realize that guitar playing is very much like singing or playing any of the glissando-type instruments - you have to do it in tune.

I get the lyrics of a tune and interpret them my way.

No one has any respect for someone who can play a million notes per minute but can't put together a decent tune that someone can sing to or feel some sort of emotion from.

It's fine to keep releasing tune after tune if you can keep up with that pace but I can't. I'm not the guy that will have the hot tune every month. That's not me!

Right after something happens to me, the first thing I'll do is go write when those feelings are really, really fresh. I'll hum a tune into my phone sometimes.

Feed the musician, and he's out of tune.

Songs like the Buck Owens tune, for example, are very simple and straightforward, and recording it really gave me a chance to get into and get a sense of Buck's personality, a feel for that whole Bakersfield sound.

Instead of thinking that's a nice tune, you start thinking is it the right pace, is it the right tempo? That is the death nell for artists.

Dancing for the length of time that I did, it centered me in such a way to be really in tune with my body, and I just feel like I'm physically able to do things because of my ballet background. Without ballet, I don't think I'd look graceful at all on screen.

Everybody I've ever seen live sings out of tune, even the greatest singers in the world. And of course if you make a single nowadays, they'll autotune it anyway.