Charles Kelley Quotes

I wrote 'Actor' all on the computer. I didn't touch any instruments until I was in the studio. So while I had all these ornate arrangements, I didn't have any songs.

As opposed to touring for three years and then going into the studio and writing an album, I think this record is representative of a lot of everyday people.

When you're playing in front of people, everything is external. It's all going from you out to an audience. When you're in a studio, it's very internalised, it's going from the air through you into this meticulously crafted, layered piece of work.

I really don't think records should be made in the manner where you sit and write, and when you're finished writing, you start recording. That just seems conventional and old-fashioned to me.

It was a very bizarre experience for me, to get the songs together, go in there, and try to deliver them as I would perhaps in a live setting. But I realized that I couldn't take on that coffeehouse style that I came from and go in there and burn it up.

Singing and playing live can be difficult. Like, in the studio, I would record either the music track first or the vocal first. I don't necessarily do them together.

When we recorded 'Iowa,' we jammed, we went through the songs, we played as a band and we recorded as a band.

A lot of my vocals were the first time I ever sang the song.

I think there's an attitude these days that you can go straight from a studio to the stage, and it isn't really like that. But playing live was the most important thing for me at the start because whenever I recorded something, it didn't sound right; I didn't like how my voice sounded. It was just raw.

When you play to an audience, you come away energized. It's the promo that really breaks an artist. Some lad sitting on a box trying to create a drum sound in a dry little studio. Everyone goes, 'Great - okay, now on with my day.' You go back to the bus, and you weep.

I sing all the time but I'd never gotten what it felt like to be in the recording studio, so it was definitely a learning process.

I'd say recording and playing on stage are two completely different things. Being up in front of all people is like jumping off a cliff into icy water. The recording process is a totally different energy.

I think on a stage in front of thousands of people is a wildly invigorating and amazing experience, and it requires a certain skill set; then being in the studio, and being curled up in the fetal position under the piano, that requires another skill set.

Studio work is very methodical, while live concerts must be very spontaneous.

I am sorry, but recording an album is just hard work; tedious, repetitive, and not very fun at all. Mixing is a bit better, but still pretty boring.

I get into a zone where I'm really in my own world when I make music.

I tend to think about so many different things on a recording. I'll be trying to tune into what the drummer's doing, trying to keep everyone playing the groove and other things like making sure the piano's in a nice pocket.

But I'd say recording and playing on stage are two completely different things. Being up there in front of all those people is like jumping off a cliff into icy water. The recording process is a totally different energy.

When I'm making a record, I'm trying to take people through different moods.

My first CD started as a studio project and I record everything with one other guy, so I didn't have a band. That's kind of how I like to do it, though. I like to create it with one other person, this guy, Tommy English, who produces everything. And then I go out on the road with a band who interprets it live.

We want to be able to make our own songs and write our own arrangements. We want to incorporate the live sound so we can be free onstage and in the studio recording. That way we can come up with original and creative stuff.

I don't really like to think too far ahead when it comes to the music.

The music comes alive when you actually perform it in front of a crowd.

It used to be enough for me to get on stage and sing. I kind of crave the performance part now. I write knowing it's going to happen, which I didn't do before.

It's always important for us to record, so if we're not performing live, that's what we're doing.