I used to be disgusted; now I try to be amused.
We're all just animals. That's all we are, and everything else is just an elaborate justification of our instincts. That's where music comes from. And romantic poetry. And bad novels.
Happiness isn't a fortune in a cookie. It's deeper, wider, funnier, and more transporting than that.
Life for me is about movement.
My ultimate vocation in life is to be an irritant.
I get very frustrated by this term 'genre exercise.' I mean, what exactly is that? Genre is not really relevant when you are writing a song; hopefully you are doing it to explore something, to create something, and I don't agree that any of my albums are genre exercises.
Songs are more powerful than books.
The Internet is overrated. It's much smaller an innovation than people think it is. I don't think it's changed the way anybody makes music.
Well, T Bone's had a remarkable career as a producer since the time that we first worked together. He was dividing his time between recording and producing when we first met, and touring. We toured together and we were great friends.
There's no such thing as an original sin.
It's what I do. I don't deserve any awards for this, it's just music. It's just writing songs. You sit down, you write a song, you record it. You tour and play the songs live, dress them up a bit differently, or dress them down.
And over the last ten years, after my work with the Brodsky Quartet, I had the opportunity to write arrangements for chamber group, chamber orchestra, jazz orchestra, symphony orchestra even.
And I don't feel any form of music is beyond me in the sense of that I don't understand it or I don't have some love for some part of it.
And obviously, when I started out, I had a little bit more curiosity than some, and went seeking out the original artists, or in some cases searching up country music.
But there are things in Il Sogno that the methods of The Delivery Man could never achieve.
I find humming is very useful.
I found with this record I had to really be strong-willed, because in the past I've tended to tinker and add a thing or take a thing away, and nearly always been wrong.
I know that when I make a record like The Delivery Man as a contrast to even Il Sogno, this is going to reach a wider audience, because it communicates in that very direct way.
I'd been to Memphis before, but we stayed out of Memphis early on in the late 70s for obvious reasons. People were very sensitive about Elvis Presley, and my stage name obviously would be provocative to some people in that area at that time.
I've been lucky to listen to lots of different types of music.
