Quotes About Performance

I don't really practice 'cause I already know the songs. It's kind of: if I do good, I do good, and if I mess up, I mess up.

After 15 years of singing the same 12 to 15 songs every night, it can become monotonous.

I am compared to other classical musicians, but most of them perform songs from other people, and most of those composers belong to another era.

When we played with the Rollins Band, we'd keep songs going until we felt like ending it.

I'm not really a songwriter - I'm an interpreter. So in a sense I am an actress first and foremost. I act out the songs, and I lead with my heart.

I dropped the 'Bundy' with my country music because I wanted it to be two separate things: There's me as a songwriter and a country singer, and there's me as a Broadway performer.

Someone like Katy Perry - I like her writing because I listen to music as a songwriter. I like a lot of her songs - like, 'Firework' is a song that I think I could write.

I'm more of an artist and a songwriter than I am a DJ. That word seems a little bit - well, it doesn't really describe what I do.

What I want is credibility I got as a songwriter and actor and doing 'Blood Brothers' on Broadway with my brother Shaun.

I feel like, as an artist and a songwriter, I have to reach certain audiences and give people a little bit of everything.

I'm not a big songwriter guy. People who are really good singer-songwriters usually left me kind of cold.

The first year I moved to Nashville, I started playing these songwriter nights with people like Nickel Creek, Duncan Sheik, and even Ryan Adams... That was the first place I really started playing music, and I had to really step up my game. Really quick. Or get kicked off the stage.

I've grown in a lot of ways - as a musician, as performer, as a songwriter.

I think of myself as an interpretative singer and a songwriter.

As a songwriter, I've got a lot of facets, so to speak. When you come to a live show, you get a better sense of that, because you'll see me performing a piano ballad and some acoustic songs and some not acoustic songs, all in the same set.

No. 1, I'm a songwriter, and I don't really get out and tour.

You know, there's still a lot of great songwriters out there who hand in songs. And there's a lot of brilliant singers and performers out there who sing other people's words. I enjoy doing both.

I would love to play with Rufus Wainwright. He's one of my favorite songwriters.

Bands can become absolutely huge and actually be pretty terrible musicians, and bands can be the most amazing songwriters and musicians in the world and never play for more than 10 people. With that in mind, getting successful doesn't mean anything.

Most of our artists are songwriters, so the songs are still central to all this. If you don't have great songs, it doesn't matter the marketing or how many times you are on TV; you can only polish it so much.

I'm getting bored performing the same songs over and over. Songwriting comes and goes.

With Sleater-Kinney, we did a lot of improvisation in our live shows, and even our process of songwriting involved bringing in disparate parts and putting them together to form something cohesive.

But if you want to be a songwriter-based musician, whether you play punk or rock or country or jazz, whatever, you have to work on your songwriting and you have to work on being able to play in front of people, I think. That performance is how you create the groundwork for a lasting career.

The foundation for me is the songwriting and the craft. All I want is for people to hear the music. Just put me in front of an audience.