Tobin Bell Quotes

I think anything I do will have an island feel, but I don't want it to be just that; I don't want to be put in a box.

People ask me how could I go from country to jazz. It's been a natural convergence for me.

I never thought that I would be creating my own 'cross-over' genre. What I did was very real and organic. I have worked in so many different styles so it all just came together.

Everybody was tellin' me that I had to do something different, and I kind of agreed that I did need to vary it a little bit. I still love some rock 'n' roll too.

What I do is I basically make records to please myself first and foremost, and so one of the most important things for me as a musician and a writer and a producer is to feel like there's always a sense of evolution and reinvention with each record.

I will stop nasal singing. I will change if the time comes. I am 100% sure about it. The day I feel people are loving some different kind of music, I will opt for it and change myself.

I can't make hard street music for the rest of my life. Your references change.

Variation does not mean evolution. If an artist varies his mode of expression this only means that he has changed his manner of thinking, and in changing, it might be for the better or it might be for the worse.

In the early '70s, I started to feel like Philadelphia soul was the black-sheep brother of rock and roll. I decided to try to get away from it.

As an artist, you have to express yourself. I make no excuses for my versatility. I grew up singing classical arias, but I love rock n' roll and jazz standards.

I love hip-hop and soul, but I desperately want to challenge it and see what I can bring to it.

I'm so happy people are seeing the eclectic side of me. I'm really honored to be able to push my voice into different sounds. Otherwise it all gets a bit samey same.

I think that creative work, music in particular, is a conveyor of inner emotional life. I don't feel one way all the time, so I don't want my music to feel the same way all the time.

What I do isn't black music; it's just my music.

A bit of a theory, more a corner of the eye noticing than an airtight argument: in the course of long artistic careers, women are more likely than men to change form and style, Proteus-like.

Every time I write a song my approach changes.

I'll keep evolving and put that into my songs.

In any art movement, the art has to move into a new phase - a filmmaker has a desire to make a film that is not like a previous film.

I'm quite an eclectic musician.

With The Fugees initially, and even with 'Miseducation', it was very hip-hop - always a singing over beats. I don't think people have really heard me sing out. So if I do record again, perhaps it will have an expanded context. Where people can hear a bit more.

I like to work with different musicians and producers to change the feels of every release.

When a lot of musicians change styles, their songwriting suffers because they want to be different.

But, on the other hand, if Schubert were alive today, he would find even richer fields to plow.

The music that I've made in the past has had strong contemporary country roots, but I think moving on in music, I will branch out from that a bit.

Jazz is not the format where I want to stay, but it really is a starting point for me.