Andrew Bird Quotes
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The problem is, when you're working with orchestras, you only get the orchestra for about two hours before the performance to pull it all together, and that doesn't sound like a real collaboration.
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Melodies are just honest. They can only be what they are. Words have the capacity for deception. They're all full of subtext, and some of them are cliche and overused and vernacular. They're tricky. All I can say is, words are tricky.
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My head is full of shifting patterns and polyrhythmic stuff; but I want to use all acoustic instruments and create this kind of tapestry of interlocking lulling parts.
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A day off after a show with no agenda in a foreign city is about the most fertile creative situation I can imagine. Just walking with nothing to do, killing time and hearing the sights and sounds of an unfamiliar place.
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There was a fascinating handmade poster scene in Chicago in the '90s, and I became friends with many of the artists; the posters were often more impressive than the bands.
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Well, my main instrument is violin, but I think of myself as a songwriter who happens to play violin.
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The fact that I wasn't expected to read music at all and was absorbing everything by ear... it had a huge affect on the kind of musician that I became.
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I write a lot more when I'm happy, because you're hopeful, you're motivated.
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You travel with the hope that something unexpected will happen. It has to do with enjoying being lost and figuring it out and the satisfaction. I always get a little disappointed when I know too well where I'm going, or when I've lived in a place so long that there's no chance I could possibly get lost.
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I guess I'm attracted to more archaic words because they can be imbued with more meaning, because their definition is elusive.
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The first notes I still play when I start a sound check are classical. Those are my roots.
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Playing the violin and singing and whistling are just three different ways of making sound.
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I mean, you still can't jump offstage and go read a book. But I'm getting better at it. It is something you can manage. You can still give everything you have to the audience onstage, and have something for yourself.
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I've always been fascinated and stared at maps for hours as a kid. I've especially been most intrigued by the uninhabited or lonelier places on the planet. Like Greenland, for instance, or just recently flying over Alaska and a chain of icy, mountainous islands, uninhabited.
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Usually bands with violins - it's this little, poorly amplified looking kind of futile on stage, and that's not the way that my music is put together.
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No, it's not dissatisfaction that inspires me to tinker with my songs, it's just restlessness.
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The way I work, I'm not a confessional singer-songwriter.
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Maybe it's just, I've always been to the less traveled places, in any topic, whether it's history, I always like to just choose the most obscure topic. And I don't know why I have that impulse. I can't really explain it but I've been doing that since I was a little kid.
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A good espresso to me is a little bit salty; you just become used to a good taste. Anytime I go into a new place and they don't clean their machine properly or the water temperature isn't right, it tastes awful.