Ronnie Hawkins Quotes

I play guitar and I love the Beatles and melodic music.

I don't want an angry song with no silver lining ending up on my album. Then I'd have to play, or feel obliged to play, that song every night in repetition as a mantra of anger.

I don't know any songs. People have asked me to play a song, and I say, "I don't know anything."

The only way I was allowed to play was by convincing bands to let me do a few songs while they set up. That went on for years.

It's the singer not the song that makes the music move along.

I'll write for a while and then I'll find an appropriate song and in a weird way the music will keep me in the mood. I find music to define the mood of the movie, the rhythm the movie is going to play in.

Besides, going on tour and playing songs and arranging things, going to practice, it's all I know to be productive.

There's always people who came 600 miles to hear the song you didn't play.

A lot of songs I sang to crowds to get their reaction. That's how I knew they'd hit.

I play drums and guitar. My best instrument is definitely drums, so I'm featured a lot on the album drumming. It's pretty futuristic as well.

People want you to play the songs they know. I try not to reflect too much, and I don't really like to focus too much on myself.

When you play the bars, you pay your dues. It does matter that you know those things [songs]. And the great thing for me, too, is that I draw on that stuff as influences. It's also stuff that you put in the tank that you pull from to make records.

Like many musicians, it's my roots in music, playing cover songs. I've done probably a lot more covers than the average person who does what I do, but I'm very proud of it, and I do feel like I really bring a lot artistically to these covers.

I used to play for 200 people and now I'm selling out places that hold 16,000 people. It's a big change, and it's so cool to see people out there screaming the words to songs that I wrote. It just really reassures me that what I'm doing is working, and it really boosts my confidence, as far as on stage as a performer and a writer.

A bad song, the three best singers in the world cannot save it, and that's the bottom line.

To get up on stage with a band is fantastic. To play songs to an audience is mindblowing.

I bought my first bass because I wanted to be in a Band, and heard that it was the easiest instrument to play. A friend told me that it was the sexiest instrument.

No, I don't, like, play an instrument or anything.I'm just...well, you saw me at the beginning there. I was the guy that fell down and died.

Songs like "Spirit Carries On" really gets the audience moved and on the same page. It's challenging and all so much fun to play.

I would play all the parts of the song, show them the way it went together. Then I'd basically break down an arrangement - I wouldn't plan endings or beginnings - so they knew everything that was going on. I had the lyrics on a prompter so that I could remember everything I'd written, and I was able to just get into the groove and play with them. I think "Peace Trail" is one of the exceptions, where it's a later take. It just happened really quickly.

I'm interested in feedback and learning what people want. It's a tricky thing for me when I do a set list. You get bored doing the same songs. Let's say we do one ballad in two hours, and it's "Wild Horses." If you say, I'm tired of that, let's try something less well known, and then you're out there stumbling through this song you just relearned at sound check, and you realize people probably want "Wild Horses" instead of this. You do need to do some songs that aren't so well known. The question is how many? I'm open to people posting their requests.

I wrote my first song when I was seven and that was kind of country. Now I'm just like 'No! Why did I play country?'

I always believe that every song tells a story, so the last thing I want to do is edit out like the meat of the story. I would pick songs based off a), whether I felt like I could do anything with them, and b) whether I felt like I could keep the story intact. And then you sit in with one of the piano players and one of the vocal coaches and kind of work out your arrangements that way.

I just want to play guitar and be in a band. Same as I always did.