Cam Quotes

As an independent artist, you control the means of production, which is the ultimate form of empowerment.

My music has always been my solo project.

I mean there are tons of reasons. Well first of all. I write my own record. I don't take other people's materials. And I have a job which is being Willa Ford on top of getting back in the studio and writing and recording.

I've got more creative control when I do music.

I dropped out of NYU, moved out of my parent's house, got my own place, and survived on my own. I made music and worked my way from the bottom up.

The problem with not saving is it can often mean you're - a crisis away from, as we've seen in some cases, living in your car or losing your home or - having your lights shut off.

I got tired of depending on other people, and I had this strong desire to make music of my own. I decided to start writing my own tunes and just see what could happen.

My parents worked in the art world. They were really supportive of my music in that they allowed me to drop out of school and move out of our home, which not many parents would do.

I like being able to own things, to not have to depend on music to support myself. Music hadn't supported me since 2000. I mean, it really hasn't. I just do it because I love doing it.

When I booked 'This Is Us,' I had 81 cents in my bank account.

I've always appreciated people like Graham Parker or Loudon Wainwright III, who spend their entire lives writing songs and working their asses off just to have complete artistic freedom. They're just sharing their lives with you through their music. That's the same kind of work that I'm trying to do, in my own weird way.

In ceasing to subordinate creative power to any supreme value, modern art has brought home to us the presence of that creative power throughout the whole history of art.

I was never your average artist, happy to do whatever the record company told me.

I think have my own style; no one has ever tried playback singing before. I might release a punk rock song that perhaps other won't appreciate, but I like doing my own thing. I make music for my own satisfaction, not for money or fame.

I was working maybe four different jobs just to make ends meet. I was really broke. I could barely pay rent. I didn't have a car. I was riding my bike from one job to another and then to audition in between.

When I was doing something on someone else's dime, I was inclined to try to anticipate what they wanted. I knew that wasn't what an artist was supposed to do. In funding my own music, I found my voice.

Broadway needs to let go of any fear that it won't succeed and take a knee. There's this rhetoric about being grateful and happy that you're getting paid for your art. We are told to put our own stuff aside, but doesn't everyone have a job they should just shut up and do?

I still want to do features, but on my own terms.

When I was very young, I had to start to working to help my family, while my friends were studying. Since then, I have felt the urgency to escape from every dependency situation.

I was illustrating, and I was cleaning people's houses; I was doing whatever I could to take care of my kid as a single parent.

I always said as long as I had enough money to feed myself and have a place to eat then I'd be doing music.

I'm just really excited to get music out there that's not from the show, because it's cool to be able to break out and have my own stuff under my own name.

As drag queens and as comic people, we listen to our own artistic compass all the time.

We had bills to pay. My dad wasn't working, and it was tough for my mom. People were always raising the rent, so I had to work, too. Everybody in the house worked to pay the rent.

Part of the American dream is 'I can own my own business, I can control my destiny. I can have the opportunity to work for myself.'