Bob Weir Quotes

Music is a performance and needs the audience.

One of the fun things about playing live is watching the audience sing the songs back to us.

I'm a live performer and I love playing live.

There's nothing better about being a musician than live performing.

I like to see other bands, and I like to hear their songs, but I really like it when they engage the audience.

When I go to do a show, it's my time; it's all about me. You've come to see me. You haven't come to see me if you're in an armchair watching a video. It's very distracting.

I think a show is more of an interacting with fans than you just singing songs.

It doesn't matter as long as there's interaction between me and the audience. That's why they come.

I love storytelling and I love just relating directly to an audience. That's why we do theatre, it's because we love contact with the audience. We love the fact that the audience will change us. The way the audience responds makes us change our performance.

Musicians are there in front of you, and the spectators sense their tension, which is not the case when you're listening to a record. Your attention is more relaxed. The emotional aspect is more important in live music.

I use Twitter as a tool to get involved with people, to sell tickets to gigs where I can stand in a room and smell the audience - and I love that!

I can't imagine playing a boring gig. Like, a boring audience without reaction, I will play against them.

I'm a singer and performer in a hybrid show that's standup, music and audience participation.

American audiences are great. They get what I am doing, but as my band will tell you, nowhere tops the Irish audience. They are just brilliant. They are very open, but the Americans and Spanish come a close second.

I appreciate an audience that reacts to the music, even if they jump on stage and try to beat us up, I think that's a fantastic reaction. I think that they're really hearing something then.

That person who's going to a concert for a nostalgic reason, we're not really going to placate. We still play three or four hits every night. Now, we don't play them like the record. We try to find new ways to do it.

Most of my career has been about standing on a stage performing music to an audience, and once the show is over, they go home and I go on to the next show.

I don't use the big video screens that a lot of other artists use because personally, I think it's kind of a crutch. I think sometimes it's like watching television as opposed to really getting involved with what is happening onstage and the people in your section.

How does my music connect to an audience? That is just a complete mystery to me.

It's amazing when I do a gig how many people of different ages come up to me afterwards and chat to me about songs. The emotions I feel are what any person can relate to. Sometimes I'm just a narrator.

I love the intimacy of venues like the House of Blues. When everyone is packed in and so close to you, it makes you play differently. It's so much more fun to play because there's so much more high energy in a place like that.

But I always communicate with the audience. I never pretend like I'm just in my bedroom making a track. The whole point of doing a gig is, like, a feedback thing between you and the audience.

You can't force something like that. But we have encouraged our audience, because we avoid the confrontation of regular rock concerts: us up here, you down there. Instead, we're looking for interaction.

A concert is not a live rendition of our album. It's a theatrica! event.

The audience plays a huge part in how a piece will actually form. They really allow the performers to walk a tightrope in a way that never seems to happen in the privacy of your own four walls. I'm listening to the audience, and they're listening to me.