Page McConnell Quotes

I worked out the keyboard parts on the progressive rock classic 'The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway' and somehow managed to play it all on acoustic guitar.

I can play songs that I hear from a movie and just play it a few times on the keyboard. I will hit all the notes on the keyboard until I find the right key, and then I will play the rest of the song.

In college I had a weekend gig at a restaurant, a solo thing that was the best practice I could have ever had. That's where I learned to coordinate my singing and my piano playing.

My place in Scotland is in the middle of nowhere, so you've just got a keyboard, guitar, a little drum machine and you know if you can work stuff out like that, if you can hammer out songs that sound good just with those three things and a voice, you're on your way.

The first song I learnt to play was Leaving on a Jet Plane.'

After I left Texas and went to California, I had a hard time getting anyone to play anything that I was writing, so I had to end up playing them myself. And that's how I ended up just being a saxophone player.

I am just trying to do a song the best possible way I can.

I can think of only two or three songs out of hundreds I've recorded that I performed as originally written. I like to become intimate with the material and change it to suit me.

I learned a lot from hanging out with Emmylou Harris. One of the biggest pointers she gave me was that if you don't know the words, drop the consonants: that way, you'll hide the sound.

I'd love to write a song that someone else sings that can actually sing really well.

We felt like, first and foremost, we were songwriters.

I'm always trying to emulate guitar. Especially when I'm playing the trombone, that's what I think about. Like, I listen to guitar players every day: Warren Haynes, Lenny Kravitz, Prince, different people. And I'm always trying to find out a way how I can get my trombone to sound like that.

There's nothing better than live music, I think.

I can sit down at the piano and make you think I know how to play the piano because I know, like, the beginnings of four songs.

'Big Love' was originally an ensemble song, but it's done now as a single guitar piece.

For me, whenever I choose a song to sing, it's about the lyric first.

My center is not really my singing so much as my guitar playing.

It's a different process for me, but it's really cool to hear someone else singing the song that you wrote.

I always like to write the songs, and they get turned loose into the world, and who knows what happens to them. That's the joy of being a songwriter. You get to hear what other people do, interpretation-wise.

Usually, the song will tell me who it belongs to. It seems clear to me who would do a good job with it, who it suits.

Because somebody plays guitar, why does it mean they need a singer? Because people already have this image of things? No, I'll put my music together, then think about whether I need to embellish it with a singer.

Pretty much my whole life, I've been a performer and have loved singing and writing songs in my room for my own ears.

If there were a song from 'West Side Story' that I would do, it would be 'Something's Coming,' but in a sense that put it in the right key for me and then do that one.

Paul Sinha is a very good piano player and singer.

I don't write duets - I write songs for my voice.