Andrew Bird Quotes
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My mom had this romantic notion of her children playing classical music. The idea is you learn it when you're still learning language. It's using the same part of the brain.
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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 idea of writing songs because you're depressed and you need to communicate it somehow, that isn't really true for me.
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I've always found that whatever you say about indie rock, it is the most inclusive genre or title for anything. It doesn't pin you down too much, like other labels would. It's just newer, it has less baggage. I'm happy to be in that category.
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The way I work, I'm not a confessional singer-songwriter.
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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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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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Playing the violin and singing and whistling are just three different ways of making sound.
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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 first notes I still play when I start a sound check are classical. Those are my roots.
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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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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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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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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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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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There is something comforting about going into a practice room, putting your sheet music on a stand and playing Bach over and over again.
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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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Honestly, I didn't have the patience for biology or history in an academic sense, but I always liked the kind of big questions.
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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.