Jeremy Denk Quotes

It's the coolest part about writing music. I don't know how other people work, but so much is derived from some amalgamation of all these different songs that I love. That's why they jump all over the place.

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.

Andy Chase and I were keyboard players originally, and we became guitarists later. But it's fun for us to focus more on the keyboard stuff sometimes.

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

They believed you can't mix rock, country, and rap, and that crossover is dead. I always knew it would work. And it will always work as long as you're really into it and like what you're doing.

We play melodic music, we play songs, we play all kinds of things and when you improvise you don't just shut out different languages, you use all the languages that you have.

I can make any type of music, so I wouldn't want to describe myself as having one type of sound. I think music is about keeping it diverse.

I see music as one language. If one musical form eats its own tail, it dies. So it needs to be a mongrel, it needs to be hybridised.

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.

I'm not loyal to one genre. I want to mix it up.

I pride myself on being the type of artist who can work half in the R&B world and half in the pop world.

I'm not going to choose between classical, Broadway or pop. I would love to stay where I am now - a mix of everything.

A lot of people relate me to the blues but I don't think it's a hindrance at this point. I've been doing it long enough that I can do different things and be accepted.

Whatever I write has to evolve around my taste in music at that moment, because that always changes.

My roots and Victor's are jazz, basically, but these two young fellows that we have with us come out of rock bands. And they're tremendously exciting players.

I like the idea of an eclectic approach, incorporating jazz with other forms and other genres of music.

I think my music has always been a mixture, depending on whom I'm working with - what band, what musicians, what producer.

I spent two years figuring out how I could turn it into something that would satisfy me as a musician but also make some kind of cross-cultural link. I feel that I kind of at least touched on the possibilities of cross-cultural music, but it is a lifetime's work, and I don't profess to be anything other than a novice at it.

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

I always loved bands who would try to change their sound radically album to album, experiment in one album and revert back in another.

Everybody in Lynyrd Skynyrd loves different styles of music, and our minds are very open when it comes to writing our songs and making the band true to what the band is, but also stepping out and doing something current.

I'm influenced by a lot of different genres of music. So I'm constantly trying to rework production and make things interesting in the live show and on records.

My whole life, I've always had one foot in the classical world and one foot in the rock, pop, and folk world.

I love singing my own stuff, but I also love being a guitar player. Doing both keeps things interesting.

Always try and play with as many people as possible, even if it's not your style of music, because you will learn a lot.