Phil Elverum Quotes

I'm in the studio for hours in that tiny little box, and really, the performing part is what I'm most excited about.

Performing is a profound experience, at least for me.

A lot of writers don't know what it feels like to get on stage. They don't understand the weight that songs can carry. I got a chance to play all these shows. I got a chance to define myself through music, so when it comes to helping other people figure out what they should say, I've been through it.

When you perform live, it's a different trip - it's different energy. I just felt a conflict between both of the trips. I was trying to evaluate what it meant for me to be a singer/songwriter and what that whole thing all meant.

Theater for me is terrifying but much more rewarding, because you know what they're seeing. Film is all little bits and pieces. And you can do an amazing job, but if the camera isn't getting it, it doesn't work. And then other times when you feel you really weren't present, and then you see it and somehow it works. So there's a mystery, there's a strange collaboration that takes place with everybody.

I do feel most at home playing live, but the feeling of getting into the studio to see the new songs take shape was really incredible.

It's a unique thing to stand in front of a crowd and sing your songs.

Performing is the easiest part of what I do, and songwriting is the hardest.

On 'Heartbreaker,' I had to sing those songs. I drank the way I did those songs. I ate the way I did those songs. I communicated the way I did those songs. With 'Gold,' I was trying to prove something to myself. I wanted to invent a modern classic.

But I love singing live. Nothing beats the feeling of going out on stage and going, 'I can really sing.'

I have no reason to sit home and write songs all day without going out and playing for the folks. And I have no reason to go play for the folks unless I'm writing new songs so they can sort of feed off one another. And I just try to do the best I can.

You leave part of yourself on every stage you're on. How could you not live in the air somehow?

Music is a very big part of my preparation as an actor.

The main objective in any song, the songs that I write, has always been that it reflect the way I feel, that it touch me when I'm finished with it, that it moves me, that it can take me along with it and involve me in what its saying.

Performing is a profound experience, at least for me. It's not as if I sit down and play 'Fire and Rain' by myself, just to hear it again. But to offer it up... the energy that it somehow summons live takes me right back, and I do get a reconnection to the emotions.

Writing for other artists helped me figure out that magic you have to capture to make everyone connect with a song.

I think that those moments before a performer plays are the moments when the potential for something to be created may - or may not - arrive.

When I wrote 'Let Her Go,' it's not like I was doing anything different. I was just writing a song as I would any other day of the year; it just so happened that this one resonated with people.

It used to be enough for me to get on stage and sing. I kind of crave the performance part now. I write knowing it's going to happen, which I didn't do before.

Some people can sit down and write a song, but they can't go on stage like I can.

It makes me sad when I see artists who come alive when they go onstage, because, gee, I really come alive when I'm home.

Very rarely I create things and feel like I don't want to recreate them in a live setting. It's a completely different world, but at the same time that's where I've always come from. Enjoying that give-and-take from a live audience, there's a large part of me that's looking forward to it, and creating that relationship again.

The live show allows me to transcend myself, because it's not about me anymore. The writing process is very much about me but then the live show is not. They feel really different.

There's a side to being in a band that some people embrace and some don't: the fact that you're performing and you care about how it comes across.

It's a little bit odd. The first time you do the play, you kind of throw yourself into it, trying to get the most out of all the individual moments. Then, a few hours later, you're still there, wondering what you could possibly do differently than what you just did a couple hours ago.