Quotes About Performance

I guess my sense of humour leans more towards irony and tongue-in-cheek performance.

At the end of the day, they're happy if you do the obvious songs towards the end of the set and you've got to try and make yourself happy by doing certain songs at the front end of the set.

If you're writing a piece for the Boston Pops, the balance is towards one end. If you're writing a piece for a chamber music society, then it's towards another point. I won't make a final answer on that. I think it changes with every piece.

But I've gravitated more towards the drum set.

I think at the end of a show, you have to walk out with a message. That's my hardest struggle right now; that's what I'm working towards.

I don't ascribe to the idea of the ivory tower composer who sits alone in a room composing his masterpieces and then comes down from Mount Sinai with the tablets. It doesn't work like that. The job of a composer is putting something down on a piece of paper that will inspire the person who's playing.

You know what my earliest memories are? Going from one burlesque town to another. My father was in burlesque.

The advice I have for new artists is this - write great songs and play them live as often as possible. Get residencies all over town and crush it.

You look at driving down the road, night after night, tryin' to make a town, getting $25 - that's hard times. It's our duty to make it good times for the fans that pay their money to see us perform each and every night.

I want to entertain my audience. I know when then come and see me play, if I don't do 'Swing Town,' 'Jet Airliner,' 'Take the Money and Run,' 'True Fine Love,' 'Fly Like an Eagle,' 'The Joker,' blah blah blah - if I don't do all those songs, they'll be extremely disappointed. I love to do them.

If PJ Harvey ever came to town I'd definitely go try to go see her.

I started selling out comedy clubs before I got to town with no advertising. I was selling out theaters just on the rumor that I was going to be there.

Rihanna can sell just as many tickets in Cape Town as she can in Detroit.

Gosh, I'd like to direct Our Town on stage.

I directed a piece of theater in Italy. We took nine fables from the town and we created a play.

If you can go out with your live show and turn people on to that, where you have that fan base that's religious and they're going to come see you when you're in that town, once your radio success is gone and you're not a mainstream guy anymore you can still go out and play your shows.

My mother, Minuetta Kessler, was a concert pianist and composer who performed at Carnegie Hall and Town Hall.

I enjoy gigging in industrial towns. It seems to be where I go down the best. Somewhere where they have a history of manufacturing, they're my favourite places to play.

When we first started touring, we were going to these towns we'd never otherwise go to, never otherwise see, and that's sort of why we like being in a band. But we started playing these bigger rooms and not even seeing the towns.

It's always so nerve-wracking being up there on stage. It's even harder playing in your hometown - and I have a couple of home towns - but, you're playing for all the people you knew in high school, so it causes no small degree of panic in my mind.

Standup keeps me grounded and keeps me in touch. I get to go from small towns to big cities, across Canada and the U.S., and you're out there and talking to people. You get a sense of what they respond to.

My interest in his new toy, the Theremin, isn't very big. It simply does not fit into my way of playing music. I do not want to fiddle around with my hands in the air.

I want to toy around with producing a Broadway show.

As a painfully shy kid, my fun time was locking myself away and watching movie after movie after movie. Watching a good performance, to me, was like getting a new toy.