Tones and I Quotes

It's really hard to make a living as a musician. It's almost impossible.

Every time I get up and sing for people, I get such a high. I just want to do it again and again.

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

No matter how much money I make, no matter how many hit songs. I still perform like a street performer.

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.

Ask any guitar player - it's hard to feed yourself when you're picking for a living.

Playing live and making a living from music was always the only goal.

Well, the first Australian tour I literally just took busking to the stage.

I'm grateful to my audience, that there are people who will buy a ticket and come and see us play and who essentially support me and this life of music.

I feel that energy up there on stage. The band, the crew and our road family - the look in their eyes - they're so happy to be back doing what we love to do.

I just love being on stage and I love making music, and as far as - it's great for narcissism, because you have all those people screaming out your name.

Ok so there's no TV shows, no movies going on fine, but I love going on stage and performing stand up so my situation is a little better than someone who's strictly just an actor or actress.

What I love about the theater is that you know who you're acting for: your audience. And the thing I find really hard in film is, you don't. The audience is invisible. And we're sitting there, hoping there's other people out there.

The essence of show business is, if you see a tight-rope walker go across a tight rope, everybody claps. But, if you see him wobble, everybody gasps.

This is what I love to do. I love to perform for people that get it or just want something interesting.

I guess because theater's so ephemeral and it's gone. You make this nightly contract with the audience and you redraw that contract for the next night, whereas film and television, it's forever. I suppose it's always about adopting personas, never about being yourself. I think they call it a "shy man's revenge."

Actually touring solo is a little more difficult. It's more demanding than being under the "wing" of the band, no pun intended. It's more intimidating to sing in front of smaller crowds. The buck stops with me.

When you're on stage with an audience, the director's nowhere to be seen. He's onto the next job.

I feel like you've gotta be able to get up every night in front of a live audience. Whether it's 10 people or 50 people or a hundred people, whether you're in a rock band or doing the comedy circuit.

I've been playing live gigs since I was 13. I really don't know how to do anything else, and please God strike me down.

There might be two or three songs I'm trying out. I've been singing these songs (on the new album) in the studio, but I haven't really done them live. It's intimate to sing them in a studio. Now, I've got to be on a stage and be in front of a lot of people.

Performing onstage is all about reacting in a grand way. You're playing an arena of seventeen or eighteen thousand people and it's your job to make sure the person at the back feels as cool as the person all the way in the front. Being on stage is a bit of a façade. You get to walk out there and be the coolest version of yourself that you could possibly have imagined and then you come off stage and you're just like everyone else.

Whenever I'm onstage, I try my best not to think that I'm performing. It's simply another part of my day.

I've always felt kind of safe on stage, protected. I've talked to other performers about this and they feel the same things, particularly in the live arena. I never get nervous going on stage to do a play. Doing film or television I'll have more butterflies.

I get really nervous right before I go on stage. But once I'm performing, I always love it. It's like being in a different world.