Mike Gordon Quotes

It didn't even occur to me that I'm the last person in the world who should play salsa or Brazilian music.

There's not an orchestra in the world that doesn't have weaknesses. None of us can play everything well. The repertoire is just too big.

I like hearing fiddles, steel guitar, acoustics up loud - really rock & roll stuff but with a country sound behind it. That's just who I am. I'm not trying to prove a point; I am just doing what I like. But I don't have any problems with any other artist coming in and doing their own thing.

There are more bad musicians than there is bad music.

I'm a producer first, and I know music, so I can jump on any song, whether it's pop or urban, without changing me. Whatever I do, I'm gonna make it classic.

I consider myself to be an inept pianist, a bad singer, and a merely competent songwriter. What I do, in my opinion, is by no means extraordinary.

I certainly hope my music is in no way, shape or form influenced by anything that would be known as a jam band. If it is, then I'm going to do something else.

See, I'm not a very good musician.

You're not going to hear me do a rap song, you're not going to hear me do a jazz song. We have to be true to our roots, do what we do, and try to do it a little better each time.

The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.

Anyone who composes and conducts at the same time is immediately suspect, because he must be faking one or the other.

I know I'm not musically talented.

You're always going to sound like yourself, but you can make really strong attempts to keep some similarities, but move away from what you did before for popularity's sake.

I've never understood people who play up the artifice of music.

I am not so complicated or intelligent a composer, nor am I very interested in becoming so. I am much more happy doing what I know I can do than what I am not sure I could do.

I wondered how people would take me being a country music singer. I thought about deviating from that and singing other things. But... it doesn't really make sense for me to try to be something that I'm not.

I don't know that my voice ever makes sense anywhere, necessarily. I would sing bluegrass music, and I don't fit in there; I would sing rock music, and I'm probably a little too hillbilly for that. And country, I'm too much rock n' roll for there sometimes.

As a piano player, if 10 is concert level, I'd put myself at a 5 or a 6, but in a completely different genre than classical or opera. In terms of classical and opera, playing accompaniment, I'd say I was a 3.

I've never seen Key think about how he was going to act on a song. He just is whoever he is that day.

Ultimately it's just music - whether I'm catering to the Bollywood audience or the indie audience. I just approach every type of music the way I am, and how my personality is.

I'm a songwriter, an artist, and a musician. I do not have to try to be that; I just am.

I don't want to be known for only making ratchet music.

My musical genius reached its apex thirty years ago when I played the triangle in Haydn's children's symphony, so I could not play unless you needed someone to make one sustained note!

I got a reputation for being 'eclectic' or some damn thing like that, but to me, the different kinds of music I play are all the same stuff - good time music - and it is the only stuff I can do.

I studied classical music for a long time, maybe 10 years, and I realized finally I was never going to have the hands to play that stuff.