Ed Kowalczyk Quotes

I'm glad I had a chance to see great music played up close and live. In a way, that's what I hope my show does. It's almost like an acoustic evening with Mick Foley.

I watch everybody every night, from sitting down to being on their feet at the end, and I feel a sense of reinvention, of caring, presenting these songs in their purest form.

Music is like a really sacred, awesome thing. That first 45 minutes to two hours that you're on stage spending time with music every night is always really great.

Each of our 900 shows so far was different - maybe that's what makes the fans come back to our gigs time and again. And that they're always part of the show. Phish concerts are a communal experience.

It's not that I have resisted songwriting, it's just not something I felt I have had to do. I've just not woken up and thought, I must do this. But I have often heard music that I have instantly felt 'I have to sing that song'.

I don't go to shows because I just want to listen to the music performed live. I want to get to know the person who's performing it. Or I want to, like, take away a sense that I had an experience that nobody else is going to have again, or a unique experience for that moment.

You know, I play in small, intimate venues; I'm not an arena performer.

There's nothing to compare to live music, there just isn't anything.

A song has a life of its own. It's an autonomous thing, separate from your own experience, almost. And the mere repetition of it means it's subject to change; it means approaching it differently, expressing different emotional aspects of it. It doesn't feel like wallowing.

I like to play small clubs.

Playing in arenas, that's very non-personal with the crowd.

One of the things I wanted to do with 'The Turn' was write a production of songs that could be stripped down to one or two instruments if you chose to do it.

Our live show is a definite experience, since it's an extension of my albums.

When you stand up acoustic in front of an audience, you really are a man without any clothes on. And that can be fun - it depends how much of an exhibitionist you are, I suppose. I quite enjoy it.

I'm looking forward to some more solo acoustic dates. That's a lot of fun for me, because I get to be alone with the song. And I get to hear every little nuance; if my instrument does something that I wasn't expecting, I get to chase that. Chase that down a little bit.

There are a handful of Soundgarden songs that work acoustically, but only a couple. It's not who we were.

I love the notion of a dude sitting there with an untuned guitar tapping his foot and just singing his passion out; that's what got me into music in the first place.

The show isn't about screens, and we don't have any video content or lasers or things blowing up. I want people to come to our show to listen. I want the show to be the music.

I get to play around with different ideas and beautiful melodies. I don't have to yell in a rock voice. I think you can get an emotional depth in the types of rooms we're playing that you can't find in larger rooms.

In terms of sound, it's nothing huge, but when it comes to passion, The Tallest Man on Earth can be spotted from miles away.

... I like the clubs because ... we have two or three acoustic guitars up there and we're not hard-core slamming or stomping through the music. We're singing it with intricate harmonies and really showing the craftsmanship.

The tragedy of music is that it begins with perfection.

Goddamn it, FEELING is what I like in art, not CRAFTINESS and the hiding of feelings.

Often times at a concert, I just close my eyes. Music is very transportive and visual for me like that.

There's the artist's intimacy and truthfulness to himself, but an equal intimacy to the Other [the one drawn]. Picasso drawings are like that... the Rembrandts are like that. The artist who most often did that was Van Gogh.