Joe Bonamassa Quotes

When we were younger and first starting out in Australia, we found that we sold more records by word of mouth because we were playing the bars, clubs, and small places and building a following. And as we got bigger, we still relied a lot on word of mouth.

Everything that you do in this entertainment business, you build a fan base.

If you are the record label who owns Lady Gaga, and you have a new artist coming up, you can say, 'Let's have the artist play just before Gaga.' Now you've exposed the huge Gaga audience to the new artist. It's similar to showing a trailer before a movie. The hit creates a hit.

We want people to see us live before we continue on and call ourselves recording artists.

You have to keep the business side together as well as the creative side. We have constantly surprised people and stayed with bands until they have grown on people.

A real foolproof way to do it is play your stuff by hook or by crook and build up a grass roots following.

My priority doesn't lie with the whole website and Facebook and such; I'm still walking down the road in a pair of real shoes. You need to just play as much as you can. Get in front of people, as I've always said. It doesn't matter if it's ten people at an open mic or opening a show for someone. Play all the time.

If you're a singer, you do concerts, and you get that interaction with fans and see what cities in what part of the world come out to see you. When you're on television, you're removed from that.

The marketing is just as important as the music, almost.

Every label thinks, when they sign someone, 'This is the perfect pedigree to sign. They're cute, they can sing, they can dance, et cetera.' And they say to the public, 'Here, this is what you're gonna like.' But you might say, 'No, I don't like that!' You'll probably say 'no' many more times than you'll say 'yes!'

I want a long-lasting career. I want to build up a fan base that will come to my shows and love me no matter if I have a song on the radio or not.

The best thing I can do is stay on the road and build a grass-roots following. I'm constantly about building my brand.

It's very, very exciting for me to hear my songs on the radio and to play shows and have people know the words.

When you play to an audience, you come away energized. It's the promo that really breaks an artist. Some lad sitting on a box trying to create a drum sound in a dry little studio. Everyone goes, 'Great - okay, now on with my day.' You go back to the bus, and you weep.

The way I do that is to keep coming up with good songs and when I do a concert, I make sure I give a good performance. It's not rocket science.

We'll go out and we'll be playing in front of 15,000 people and say, 'Hey, we're going to do three new songs from something we just recorded' and 5,000 people get up and go get a hot dog and a beer and they don't come back until they hear the opening strings of 'The Joker' or 'Fly Like an Eagle.'

When we play live show we tend to find there's a whole portion that's a considerably younger demographic. That's quite gratifying. They primarily seem to be into 'The Hurting' which I guess makes sense.

You know people love a show when they keep coming back.

At Coachella, I want to start separating how I do a big festival set from how I do a club set.

There are certain artists that get into the little circle in hip-hop, and everybody is talking about them, and they are buzzing. But they can't go out and sell out tours, perform in front of 3,000 people a night, and things like that. We did things backwards; with Visionary, we got all the fans first.

Performing is something that has really grown on me and become an important part of my life, which I didn't used to feel. I didn't used to want to really perform live a lot. It's been an interesting adjustment.

I think I've nurtured the following that I have to the point where I can consistently do a certain type of numbers when I put a project out.

When I started out playing live, it was different. I felt good about it. Nobody knew who I was. I just opened for so-and-so. Now, I'm playing to people who are coming out to see the band. There's too much attention on the band and me.

Part of the mission of Nash Icon is taking away some of the day-to-day, hand-to-hand combat that you have to do to continue the mainstream country-radio relationship.

If I were to give advice to someone that just started a band and how to get someone's attention, you've gotta have a central hub. For us, it was Columbus, Ohio.