Domino Kirke Quotes

If you look at a lot of the songs I've been involved in, there's always been this retro vibe. I started getting worried that I wasn't moving forward very much, nor was I even in tune with the music today. I almost scoffed at it.

Sometimes you're trapped in writing songs and you don't have enough distance from what you do anymore and you need the talent and the years of other people to come and jump in.

Everyone has their own journey, and for me, going from singing background to writing songs has truly opened doors for me and has also helped me find myself as an artist in terms of what I want to say and the style of music I want to have.

After years of doing composition, the risk is always that you might start to repeat and be cliche. Every time, I try find a way to be reborn again as an artist. Its not easy to reinvent yourself every time, as it takes a lot of creative energy, but I am happy to do it.

The first album is the prelude to the full story of Luke James. It establishes me as an artist you can look forward to.

I never imagined I'd be a solo artist. And now I couldn't imagine being part of a group.

I'm having fun just being a musician as well as an artist at this point.

Now I'm fortunate to have a good band in CA, and play many solo gigs as well. My point is that I stopped playing in bands and played solo for four years, to get back into the groove and pulse of writing and singing and who I am on stage.

I loved singing rock-and-roll, jazz, anything on radio, anything commercial. I was able to do anything, but I didn't know what direction to go in.

I really think I've found me finally in the music. You know, I had put an album out before, 'Embrace Me,' and it's been seven years since that. So I was discovering who I was. And I still am discovering, but I think now I know a little bit more of who I am. So that's what's pushing me.

I was determined to create my own identity. My first hits, in fact, were straight-up rhythm and blues. My voice was compared to Aretha Franklin's - though, for my money, no one compares to Aretha.

In the '90s, I think I rediscovered my guitar. The Jam was obviously very guitar-based, but in the Style Council I just got really disillusioned with playing the guitar. The further it went on, the less and less I played, to a point where I couldn't pick it up any more.

I was a cover artist for years. I didn't start writing songs until I was in my mid-twenties. I wrote them with John Leventhal, and they were pretty bad. I was in my late twenties when I wrote the first song with him that made any sense to me about what I was rooted in and what spoke for me as an artist. That was 'Diamond in the Rough.'

In the three years that nobody heard music from me, I made more music than I've ever made.

Every day, the approach to life changes. And that's what music is all about to me.

It took me three albums to get the confidence and to find out what I could do that made me different from other people. And the first record, really, was a process of trying.

I'm kind of still learning my voice and learning my style.

Yeah, I put out some goofy stuff. I had no idea who I was as an artist at all before 'Posse on Broadway.'

I've been trying to... Having been an English literary graduate, I've been trying to avoid the idea of doing art ever since. I think the idea of art kills creativity.

I've watched too many artists in my life forget how good the things they used to do were.

Actually, after 'All Love Lost' I was so drained creatively that I didn't have any clue where I wanted to go. So I just started from scratch.

I'll always be remembered for 'Frampton Comes Alive!,' but I've got so much other work that I've done since that, that I feel it's almost like after 'Frampton Comes Alive!' ran its course, my career - I'll say it - 'Petered' out.

I never left music, I just left the music scene.

With pretty much everything that I've done, in terms of going from being a songwriter and producer for other artists to doing my stuff, all the songs that I've kept to myself have always been me writing about my life.

Every now and then, as a composer and producer, it's important to write music for yourself.