Ryan Adams Quotes

I'm very proud of my records, but my most natural creative tendencies have been in live performing. There's a beautiful element to recording and making records, but I've always felt a little shy with it.

I don't miss television. It's too much hurry up and sit around, wait till they do this and do that, and get the lighting just right. I'd much rather go out on a stage anywhere and just play and sing for an hour.

Being in a band was so fun and exciting, but I was just kind of focusing more on performance and wasn't really writing the songs - I didn't really think I had a voice.

The music comes alive when you actually perform it in front of a crowd.

I'm trying to think about stuff like that: How can a show not be just a whining guy with a guitar.

I've always enjoyed playing. If all it meant were to just stand there and play my axe and sing, I could have gone on forever.

I also think something that makes the whole live performance fun for me is that I love my music.

I think that it's crucial. I think that playing live, if you want to be an artist - that's what artists do.

When I'm singing my songs on stage, I feel like I'm doing a rock show, even though I don't think all my music is particularly straight up rock.

I really loved being able to perform my songs and sing them myself.

I like bringing keyboards and stuff on stage.

I started performing in college, but I wasn't writing a lot.

Out of drag, I'm a white guy with a guitar, which isn't special. There are a million white guys with guitars. But being a drag queen with a guitar is a lot more commanding.

There is definitely an art to the dance that is being in a band.

When I'm on a stage, it's just me, singing a song with words that I wrote and I believe in. And if I don't believe in them anymore, I'll stop singing that song.

I would say, you can never do enough gigs and you can never do enough songs. Make sure that every opportunity you can, play a show and every opportunity you can, write a song.

Playing a song changes a song. Every night a song becomes something else on stage.

Unfortunately for humanity, I've gotten into the habit of providing my own closing music for shows by singing a song and playing the ukulele.

I call it 'new forms'. When you're starting out, they ask you to do four or five minute sets, but once you're a headliner, you do like 90 minutes. I try to think of different things to divvy up the show, like doing drawings, playing music... I gotta carry the show, that's the problem.

I don't think I'd be able to flat-out write a pop song and make it satisfying to me. I'm ready to make a consistent sound in whatever way I can.

When I'm singing a song on stage, I hate hypocrites. If you don't put yourself in that lyric and emote and be what that lyric says that you are, then you're just going through the motions and you're being hypocritical. I just take that same approach with acting. I just take the dialogue and I emote it and become that. I use the same technic.

I think I'm better at live shows than I used to be because I'm way more comfortable with the uncomfortable pauses between songs.

Almost all the shows I've been connected with have been extremely well cast. They're playing the show, not just doing the songs.

If you perform on a stage or you sing a song, it's like you sing your song, and then the words go into the air, and then they go into somebody's body through their ears, so it's kind of like penetrating somebody. It's kind of like having sex with somebody - but, obviously, from a great distance.

I think that selling rights is a bad move commercially, not just morally. It cheapens the songs. When people come to my concerts, they often hold up candles when we do "Let It Be." I don't think they'd do that anymore if the song suddenly became part of an Oldsmobile ad.