Greg Ginn Quotes

I would advise anyone starting out as a singer/songwriter to play live as much possible. You never know who might be in the audience.

A stadium tour would be amazing - that's definitely one of my goals. Just to keep putting out real, honest music that people can really relate to and connect with.

We want people to see us live before we continue on and call ourselves recording artists.

I think it's all about the people who listen to your music, and loving playing and writing. Once you've got those two, and they're your main two priorities, then radio and TV and all the other stuff that comes with it will come. But that's not the be-all end-all.

Now I get exposure first with people directly in the clubs. This is a unique situation for me.

If you had a successful TV show, people wanted to see you live. Promoters had had practice with pop groups, and 'Python' achieved a similar status. We also had lots of rock star fans - George Harrison, Pink Floyd, Robert Plant. Promoters saw that and liked it.

I enjoy touring. I enjoy recording the music, I enjoy dreaming it and I enjoy performing it. I also definitely enjoy selling it, because I like to eat.

When you make music, you're in really direct contact with your fans out there, so you hear all kinds of stories.

I've been here 21 years, and I literally did walk up and down Music Row trying to break into the business. I felt very free to go into any publishing company.

When I had my first gig, I was 18 in January in 2007. My first gig that I got paid, I was playing for 10 people in a 250 people capacity venue. The promoter wanted to book me because he liked my music. I played a couple of songs that made people dance. To me, that rush has always stayed the same.

I love nothing more than to perform my songs in front of a live audience. And whatever I'm doing is driven toward finding or writing songs and putting out hit songs that drive people coming to see me live. Because, at the end of the day, that's what I enjoy the most.

Being my own boss and working inside an industry that's not really an industry, I need to keep busy and keep working. The only way to make money in music - unless you're managing someone - is to tour, and even that depends on where you are at.

Bad Religion took a long time to develop into gold-record-status artists. Along the way we learned and applied our knowledge, and Atlantic helped us every step of the way, since 1993.

Trying to get my music performed live by bar bands was a self defeating experience. It really just distracted me from what I should've been doing all along, writing and recording.

This business is about working. It's really not about glamour. For me, the most glamorous thing about it is to b able to get on stage and perform my music for people. That's the privilege. And that's what all the work leads up to, and that's why it's worth it to me.

If I have an audience, I'd like to make music for my whole life. But it's not really up to me.

I really want to put the emphasis on creating music. I want to cut a record. I want to start going on tour.

I think we were probably playing live for about 12 months before we got a recording deal.

Music doesn't have to be fancy. I work hard and enjoy the fact that people want to come to my shows. That's simple, but I'm pretty blue-collar about it.

My biggest dream is to headline an arena tour.

I've been putting out records for so long, but I didn't want to tour because I didn't think anybody really cared.

I was at a slight disadvantage in that I had never played in bands or done any performances before, and that's just as important as writing, recording, and putting records out. It's been a lot of hard work, balanced with a lot of pinch-myself moments of touring in crazy parts of the world.

It's very, very exciting for me to hear my songs on the radio and to play shows and have people know the words.

I definitely like making my friends in the music industry.

Those first big concerts we played as 'Throwing Copper' started to really reach people worldwide - I think we played our first big arena show at the George Estate basketball arena down in Atlanta. I remember showing up and standing on stage and just being like, 'I can't believe this is going to be full of people. This is huge.'