Nick Gehlfuss Quotes

I did the coffee house thing - we have coffee houses where people play, or we used to - and when I was 14, I started there. Just played all the time. Every weekend I had a show, or every Thursday. Open-mic nights, the whole thing.

I'd go to the farmers' market in Santa Barbara, and I'd put out my guitar case, and I'd test out these little ditty songs that I would write, and I would get a couple of avocados, a bag of pistachios, and, like, fifteen bucks. That was a lot of money for me.

When I was about 12, I had my first paying gig - 8 dollars to play rhythm guitar in a polka band. Pretty soon, I ended up playing in all the bars within driving distance of Abbott, Texas.

I played the guitar and thought that was what I was going to do as a career. I still record music that is played in my restaurants.

I'm constantly warning people that are involved in my life that I can go busk and make a living. I can make my rent in New York City in the subway, I promise, if I'm forced to.

So I came home and I had a resume and everything, but the only job experience I had was just playing in bars and clubs on my summers off. So, I was temping and stuff during the day and playing music at night.

Acting kind of pays my bills more than music does.

You know, I like playing music and playing guitar, and I like to draw, so I thought I would end up just probably barely making a living, or probably having to have some other job, but being involved in one of those things that I really like to do. But that didn't work out like that.

I didn't think we would ever make enough money to pay rent by playing music.

I had done a fair bit of traveling during the holidays in my school days with my guitar and discovered that I could live on it. Admittedly, I traveled with a sleeping bag but I could always find somewhere to lay my head.

I used to be a street singer in San Francisco.

You have to spend a lot more time on the road these days if you want to make a living with music.

I began singing in dive bars and really small clubs. I dragged my piano down the stairs, and I went down the street with my keyboard, and I would go to every different dive bar that I could get to agree to let me play. I'd call and pretend I was Lady Gaga's manager.

In a typical day, I would wake up about 8 A.M., pile all my stuff into my mom's minivan - my guitar, my amp, CDs to sell, a table and a rug - drive it down to the street, and unload it all. I'd wait until about 12, then play for two hours. You could only play in two-hour intervals, so then I would move it all somewhere else.

It's nice to see bands you could see at a bar finally get a chance.

I was on the train; I did play, but I also played in bars, in the streets, at birthday parties for people who discovered me on the train.

I'd been gigging since I was 14, doing little competitions and pubs and clubs and old people's homes.

I just wanted to eat, to survive. I started singing a cappella in bars. I saved up money to get my first guitar and started writing songs.

Basically, I'm just a guitar player that figured out I wasn't ever gonna be able to buy dinner with my guitar playing. So I got into songwriting, which is a little more profitable business.

Without busking, there is no Fantastic Negrito.

I did all my guitar playing at my house. And then finally, I was throwing hay and stuff working in Stockton and somebody offered - somehow they had heard me singing at the house and said: Hey, I'll hire you for our fraternity party or sorority party. And I said: Well, are they going to pay me? And he said: Yeah, we'll pay you 50 bucks.

I had a $1.50 from playing the ukulele after owning it seven minutes. I thought, "Hmmm, this has some possibilities."

I played guitar. I've always considered myself an actor, but I wasn't making a living as an actor. So I was in a couple of folk groups that managed to keep me in underwear and burritos.

Three weeks into being in Hollywood, I was playing with Slash through an ad in the paper.

A lot of people ask, 'How did you start the business, and how did you do it money-wise?' And the truth is that I had three jobs. A day job, an evening job, and then designing my collection as well. That's just how we did it.