You never get away from that thing in your hometown that it has over you. You don't outgrow where you come from.
Brian Fallon
I like building houses, working as a carpenter, painting. You work with your hands to the best of your ability, and at the end of the day, you go home with some satisfaction: 'I built that!'
When I first started fingerpicking, the first thing I learned was 'Don't Think Twice It's Alright' from Bob Dylan.
Shoes are everything. You can tell more about a man from his shoes than his handshake, because they tell where you're going.
I don't mean it egotistically, but I've been given the chance to be in front of people and sing, and I feel that it's part of my job and my duty - especially where I'm from - to speak the language of the people I'm around and speak for them.
I went to the Louvre in Paris, and I saw all the paintings and the Mona Lisa. You don't really see something like that every day. I was looking at it, and everything else in the room just shut out. Like, Leonardo Da Vinci painted this thing - this is unreal that he touched that. It had this crazy effect on me.
You can't staple me to the Brooklyn hipster. I don't buy skinny jeans and $50 T-shirts. I wear the same clothes I've always worn, from Target.
It's always Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Tom Waits for me - the big three.
With 'Get Hurt,' we wanted to see where else we could go with the band. We thought it was time to change things up a bit. The song itself is similar to the feeling of a wreck you see coming, but long past the point you can avoid it.
There can be a wrong time - it's happened to countless bands where they release their first record on a major label and never learned what they maybe should have learned on an indie.
My friend Danny Clinch, who's a photographer, gave me a big, signed, numbered print of a photo he took of Eddie Vedder in Seattle. It's hung in my writing room where I have posters of writers that inspire me. They're all pointing at me. Tom Waits is like, 'Don't sell out!'
Songs are like anything else - they dictate to you which ones go together and which ones don't.
I spend my money on cars. That's why I have a Challenger. It's a muscle car, like a Mustang. It's big and rumbly.
I think Green Day's 'American Idiot' is probably the best comeback or mid-career record that any band has done.
There's no way I'm going to write for other people.
I don't envy anybody else's career because I feel they've earned where they're at and worked hard. I wouldn't mind Jack White's gig, though. He does it all!
You pay your bills and you take care of your family, or you're not a man.
Every time I look at the Eiffel Tower, it completely blows my mind.
I think some people don't even know what they're talking about, and they just start talking with an opinion, not even asking questions.
When you write a lot of songs, sometimes you don't have a place for them, and you need an outlet for them.
Tom Waits is someone who has really struck me, ever since I was a kid. He's really a big deal for me.
It's all about knowing your audience. When I buy a record by a band and it sounds completely different, I'm just like, 'Why didn't you change your band name?'
I'm on the phone with this guy, and he says to me, 'People compare you to Bruce Springsteen. I don't think you've written a song as good as 'Dancing in the Dark' or 'I'm on Fire.'' And all I could think was, 'Me neither!'
We want to be big... we want to be a big band, but we don't want to be your best friends.
I don't go to rock bars. Why would I go to rock bars? I can do that every night; it's boring.
Gaslight has a specific way of playing and recording that's sort of become the way now.
Going out and trying new stuff on an audience is a scary thing.
As I've gotten older, I've realized the element that sounds like The Gaslight Anthem that's mine is always going to be me. The other three-fourths of it is going to be the other guys. I can't stop doing what I do naturally, whether I'm in The Gaslight Anthem or my own thing.
I don't like it when people spout about the popular opinion just to make it louder.
I do find that I tend to write about big questions. Why are we here? What are we doing? How do we relate to each other?
I've never read 'The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe,' but his later works are about whether God is real.
I had a five-year plan to get to 500-seat venues and tour by ourselves and fill a room everywhere we go. I figured we could make a living off that. As long as you buy nothing stupid, you'll be OK.
I'm a pretty private person.
Sometimes I get the bug to live in London for a year, or something like that, and maybe I will. But New Jersey's home.
Gaslight Anthem's thing is its power. It's just like boom and explosions and loud, and play with everything you got.
At the end of the day, you can't reinvent yourself past a point, because you are you, and there are things that are inherently you that are always going to be there.
When you're older, you realize a little bit more hard truths. You are who you are. And the people that like you, they like you for being you.
When you finish a record, I look at it like a photograph. It's already taken. You got it the way you wanted it to be. You edit it, make sure the light and contrast are right, then you just put it away, and that's your photograph. Then you don't really think about it anymore.
For me, there's no point in being an artist and putting yourself out there if you're not going to really put yourself out there.
One day, I was just fingering around on the keys of a Fender Rhodes piano, and I came up with this little riff, and all of a sudden, it morphed into a song. It had never been touched by a guitar, which was very weird for us. 'Under the Ground' is the first song I have ever written that had nothing to do with the guitar.
There are two things that matter when you're making music. First, that you're doing what you love, even if it's crazy and other people tell you it's crazy. The second thing is the only people you really need to worry about are the people who love your music, not the people who speak badly about it.
When you set out to carry on a tradition as deep rooted as folk music is, you've got to have your story together. You've got to study and have a foundation. Jeffrey Foucault has that foundation, and you can hear it in his voice, and feel it in his music. He's got an understanding that you don't hear that often.
I've always said it's easier for bands to make a hard stance - like, we don't do commercials or whatever, blah blah blah - when you've sold billions of records. It's super-easy to be righteous when you're rich.
There's never going to be a new Beatles because we don't consume things in that way anymore.
You're always trying to make each record more autobiographical than the last one.
I'm one of those people who, even if I'm invited somewhere, I still kinda feel like I'm not supposed to be there.
I must've been about 7 or 8 when I realized I wanted to perform in some way.
I learn tons of John Frusciante's licks from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I'm never going to play like the Chili Peppers, but I might use that if I've got a dub beat or reggae thing mixed with a soul thing.
Why blow money on a tour bus when you could get your mom a nice dress?
You get a realisation at some point in your career that whatever it is you do, you can no longer continue to do it. You just realise you can't put out the same records forever.
