I am an incorrigible coffee geek. I make espresso.
Chris Thile
It's like wine and food, or coffee and a pastry - coffee's awesome and a chocolate croissant is awesome, and together, they're transcendent. To me, music is the same way. Chris Stapleton is transcendent. Julien Baker is transcendent. Together, they're going to be euphoria.
A cocktail and an oyster is an awfully good thing after a park, especially one close to water.
I play the mandolin, which people don't often expect great things from. But it has it's charms, and it's my voice. I feel like I had as little choice in the matter as I do my speaking and singing voice.
I don't feel that things need make their appeal exclusively to one demographic. I don't feel that there is truly great art that only appeals to people in a certain age range.
Like a sporting event, live events are the one thing you can't have anytime you want them.
My folks were and are devoted public radio fans, who started listening to 'A Prairie Home Companion' in the 1980s; Garrison and Co. were the permanent headliners of their weekends.
For me, music always leads. Lyrics are only about how they sing. It is wonderful if they read well, too. In the very best scenario, sometimes a lyric will pop out with a melody, simultaneously. That's a lovely thing, but you can't rely on that.
There is a certain immortality in the change that another person effects on another person.
I've always taken a lot of joy in my work, but it's also been very results-oriented. It's kind of like, making the thing, and taking a lot of joy in that, as opposed to allowing myself to be transported by the work of my fellow musicians.
I'm always going to need to play in front of people.
Music should never be a dictatorship. It should be a symbiotic relationship between the musician and the audience.
I was introduced to classical music by my grandparents - my parents were mostly into folk and jazz. Even as a young man, I was literally unaware of the distinctions between any of that, and I still think it's pointless.
No one wants to hear me doing my best Garrison Keillor... I think that he's inimitable; he's one in a billion.
I'm slow by nature; even if I write something fast, I'll let it sit for a month and hem and haw over it.
The more you look at great art of any kind, you'll see that there's this thread running through all of it.
Coffee is pretty big in my life. It shows up in my lyrics a bunch, the same way the ocean does. It's a constant force.
The great musics of the world are great for very similar structural reasons: good melody, good harmony, and a balance of feminine and masculine energy.
It's very hard to make grand, romantic gestures on a mandolin, and there are times, particularly when playing Bach, that you long for just a little more sustain. But for better or worse it's my voice, and the trade-off comes with increased intimacy. It's like you're beckoning the audience closer: 'C'mere, I've got something to tell ya.'
The great thing about jamming is that you come in with zero preconceptions. Someone might want to play something that suggests something else to you, and the next thing you know you're on a 20-minute adventure.
Hats off to musicians who just want a pure escape. I have a lot of fondness for pure escapism. I don't feel like it's irresponsible, I think sometimes you really need to take a breather.
There's a lot of steps between there not being music and there being music. Composition is one part of that, but if no one performs it... It's like if a tree falls in the forest and no one's there to hear it, does it make a sound?
For one, the whole concept of 'Live From Here' - writing a song every week - was like composition bootcamp.
The world's music is at our fingertips, so if we like music, we kind of owe it to ourselves to check in with all of that.
Really the greatest music I've ever heard I've hated the first time I heard it. It's been abrasive at first; it's been something that challenged me in a way that I wasn't fully comfortable with.
I think there's probably really wonderful music that has been lost due to the lack of preservation methods way back in the day.
Generally speaking, I think one has to take reviews with a grain of salt, unless you know who the person is and what their qualifications are.
The goal of serious musicians is to play outside of yourself. That's most likely with people who suggest things that are outside your musical experience.
I'm a musician, and I feel like musicians owe it to themselves and owe it to music to concern themselves with as much of music as interests them. Even if you decide that you're never going to compose, you will be a better performer if you concern yourself with the craft of composition.
I would love to be one of those fellows who combine formal and folk music approaches.
I'm really not handy. I'm not good at things like changing a light bulb. If something is broken, the chances of me being able to fix it are slim to none.
For years, my actual listening activity has been governed by what I perceived to be good for me as a musician, almost like the way an athlete trains for a given sporting task. I'd listen to something if I felt it would improve my sense of harmony or counterpoint, or whatever I was working on.
The power of live music is vast. Live music is a wonderful way to spend some time.
It seems like if they'd given Bob Dylan a pen and paper in the cradle that he would've come up with a great song. I'd love to write songs like that.
I'm always excited about music, but having spent so much time in its pursuit - well, my musical life is complicated.
New York will make you feel small. I think that's good. At least, it's good for me.
Great music is the only genre that actually matters, and the members of that club are far more similar to each other than they are to any genre they might be commonly associated with.
Presenting the American songbook as a living, breathing entity that's expanding all the time is very important.
I think, until I was 16, classical music had just seemed like a little bit of a rhythmic wasteland for me. Coming from bluegrass, where one conducts oneself rhythmically, it seemed like such a different approach, and at that point the difference that I was noticing was a real turn off to me.
The constructive criticism that I take very seriously is from people I know and respect, and they don't have to be musicians. But I do have to know where they're coming from.
My life conforms to music, not the other way around.
I was two years old when I saw the mandolin for the first time, and I just loved it. I just loved the sound of it, the shape of it even, and the way it looks. And I still love it, which is a testament to something.
I obviously love music very, very much.
We love music, and when it's good we flip. And we want to get to the core of why it's good.
My favorite bar in New York City is called Milk and Honey, a great cocktail bar.
I can't listen to music while I'm doing something else. Well, unless I'm working out. But I, like, fall off the treadmill all the time if I'm listening to something that I like too much.
Musicians and non-musicians alike are priding themselves on the width and breadth of their musical interests, which I think is to be encouraged.
Growing up in a bluegrass or acoustic-oriented world, the musicians become so focused on performance, as far as playing. We tend to overanalyze the notes, so you're always trying to sharpen everything up.
Tradition matters. To me it's not a limiting force; it's a springboard.
I certainly love the bluegrass ensemble, I think it's a powerful tool, but I don't think it's more than a tool.
