Devin Townsend Quotes

Coming to Nashville has been so motivating and inspirational. Just watching people live and breathe their music and create something that they can feel from start to finish.

Over the years, I played with a couple of spectacular guitar players, and playing with them has made me play better than I knew how to play. I hope the same thing is true with acting.

I don't take breaks, man. In the past, I used to spend my free time getting in trouble, and now I spend it working on my music. If I'm not playing drums with my cover band, Chevy Metal, I'm working on songs for myself.

To me, music shouldn't be ego-driven. When you go out on stage and play songs, it is. But when you're sitting in a room, writing songs, it's a completely different process. It's a completely different place. It's a creative place, a musical place. It has nothing to do with who likes what.

For a producer, you want to be in L.A. You want to be close to the action, and in L.A. there are always singers, artists, songwriters, collaborators and other producers. It's easy to get access to all that, which gives you more opportunity to work records.

We influence singing but never really songwriting.

When I'm sick of myself, and when I don't know what to say as a solo artist, I can write a song for a movie. When I don't know where to turn musically, being in a band - Rilo Kiley or Jenny & Johnny - the collaborative nature is really exciting.

You'll find little schools of musicians experimenting with different ways of making music in Brooklyn, all through Manhattan, in Queens, in Jersey, you know? The city is still bubbling with creativity.

The first record we put out on Fueled by Ramon, 'The Papercut Chronicles,' we had no idea what the term 'producer' meant. It was just us writing songs, and we are trying to go back to that - singing in a room and vibing off each other.

I think the best thing an artist can do is not hang out with other artists. I really dislike hanging out with musicians, for the most part, except for a few select friends, because I don't like to talk about music all the time.

It's funny, when I'm not on the road or doing stuff with Bad Company - or whatever- I've always written songs galore... a lot of stuff people don't even hear.

I lived in an area where there were a lot of rock musicians, and we got together regularly in our studios.

The way I like to start a new project is to take a cover song and make a stab at it, ideally one that has nothing to do with the people in the room.

I'm fortunate enough to socialize with some of the greatest musicians around.

When I moved to Hollywood, I was expecting it to be this Mecca of extraordinarily talented musicians, and it was instead the era of Faster Pussycat and bands that had an appeal, but I couldn't do anything like that. There's nothing in my being that can do anything like that.

Seeing what kinds of songs work in other cities and other parts of the world was pretty eye-opening. I know it changed how I approached the second record big-time.

In New Orleans, people are still influenced by one another. You got these bands that play every week on Frenchmen Street, and on their breaks, they might go see the reggae band that's right next door. You might get the musicians from the reggae band to sit in with the brass musicians. Everyone is having fun.

In the first year in New York, I went to this amazing teacher named Jen Waldman. She does lots of different classes, but one of her classes was where you went and worked on a song. And suddenly I felt like an artist again, and because I had worked the whole song, when I went into the audition room, I could connect to something in the 16 bars.

I've learned a lot from Dave Stewart; he's a serial collaborator. He's co-written songs with more people than anybody I know - like the most incredible people too.

In Nashville, everybody just wants to write the best songs. So it's a very inviting songwriting community.

I don't sit there writing songs, thinking, 'This would be good for Rihanna.' I don't want to be pitching out like that.

Chicago's music scene is very inspiring. I like to think of it as a small community of friends who enjoy creating and inspiring each other.

We're always writing music no matter what. And we're not always acting - we have months off. But we never take a break from songwriting.

Being surrounded by creativity and talent is very enriching - not in terms of money but in terms of the soul and the spirit.

Talent is a feeling that you want to play.