Jay DeMarcus Quotes

Go back to the very beginning, when we first started playing in local pubs. We used to play Chuck Berry covers. Every now and then, we'd slip in one of our own songs, and we found that we were getting away with it - nobody seemed to know these were original tracks.

I think doing more live stuff's made us feel a certain way about that particular point. I quite like small clubs. I don't really like playing in big clubs, and I think I'm really into the idea of a few people being together.

Being my own boss and working inside an industry that's not really an industry, I need to keep busy and keep working. The only way to make money in music - unless you're managing someone - is to tour, and even that depends on where you are at.

I just remember the early days of Tenacious D. There was no talk or thought about doing a TV show or a movie.

We always play clubs. It's not something that I feel above. Those are my favorite shows because they're intimate, they're tight, their sweaty, they're hot. You're close to the people. Those are my favorites.

The band I've played with for 10 or 12 years now, we've been all over, but we mostly play in LA.

The Band never really played big concert tours. We never sold millions and millions of albums.

Eventually, when I sell enough units, as they say in the record business, I will stop touring. I'll concentrate on what I like to do... stay in the studio.

One of the advantages of playing in a club is that even with bass and drums, the atmosphere remains intimate with the audience.

When we started out in the U.K., there were songs that we made, we put them on the Internet, and we immediately started touring the U.K. We borrowed our friend's mum's car, and drove ourselves around for, like, a year playing gigs in pubs and tiny little venues. In that respect, we're pretty grass roots as a band. We've done all that together.

It's very, very exciting for me to hear my songs on the radio and to play shows and have people know the words.

We played some of our first big shows at Wayne Firehouse and Manville Elks Lodge. New Jersey's always been our home away from home.

You make a little noise, and you can sell out your local hometown club. But then you drive an hour down the road to the next town, and there might be eight people there.

My dad was a real working musician in the late '70s and early '80s. He had a band that was signed to Elektra/Asylum and they would perform at like Madame Wong's and Whiskey A Go Go all the time.

When Dream Theater first started, we were touring in a van and playing clubs.

I made records for 20 years, I lived off it. But people would say I made so many mistakes, I did so many things you're not supposed to do. I had a band name nobody could say. I didn't play live. I never practiced, I never got better at my instrument.

I was doing sold-out shows before I got radio play.

My dream was always to hop up on stage in front of my fans every night and perform.

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

We were a band way before we ever did anything with Disney.

I just love being on stage and I love making music, and as far as - it's great for narcissism, because you have all those people screaming out your name.

If I was at the Comedy Cellar at midnight you yelled at the back of the room. But you, for television, play it to the camera because yes you're communicating to the people at home using the studio audience that's right in front of you as a guide for that.

I think more obvious to others, is that I'm most vulnerable on stage. Even though I know which songs I'm going to play, I try and keep it loose and base my stage time more on what the audience is requesting of me.

It was 2002, we all got guitars for Christmas and started playing in my garage that summer, rehearsed there and in a warehouse for a bit for about a year. We did our first gig in June 2003 and we played a few gigs in and around Sheffield for a bit then started doing gigs outside of Sheffield about this time last year, recording demos while all this was going on.

My love is new music, I tend to go and see a lot of bands, while [co-producer] Mark Cooper spends his time reading the press. It's often the new acts that strike a chord, because they aren't seen on other shows.