Ronnie Dunn Quotes

It wasn't just about flashing lights and pinball machines blowing up and things like that. It was about using encores, bringing back the good songs and using techniques that I knew about from rock performance.

As rewarding as a good film role can be, there is just nothing like getting up on a stage and taking an audience for a ride.

I've always thought my soundtracks do pretty good, because they're basically professional equivalents of a mix tape I'd make for you at home.

Art is all about the experience. I could say I don't really relate to opera, but then you watch Placido Domingo, and you go, 'Blimey, look at that.'

One thing all the way through the show to me is boring. I don't care how great the artist is. I find that if my audience is very young, and they want to hear very young songs, my show will be dominated by that. But there'll be some ballads here and there and some swing tunes.

I'm usually pretty good in front of a live audience. I usually like that.

Not everybody likes or understands a drum solo, so I like to bring in effects and sounds to keep their interest.

That's one of the good things about music. You get to do it live, where you can touch the people and interact with them.

It's new and different every night. The charge you get from a good audience is like nothing else.

Theatre, when it is at its best, takes a lot of beating - the live experience and the shared collective experience of live storytelling is really special when it is good. Particularly here in New York because the audiences are amazing, very vocal and very engaged, and that makes theatre very exciting.

Playing live is such a total visceral experience, and really, as a musician, you're trained from the beginning to be a live performer.

I still get thrilled by the energy that is a live performance, the fear and the panic and the electricity that happens on the night. I think jolting myself every once in a while with that fear is a good thing for me.

You have to think about why you're asking an audience to come to the theater. It's not that they should come because it's good for them, because it's the vegetables that they should eat and the culture shot that they should get... It's about experience and building community and catalyzing dialogue and bringing people together.

Performing is a profound experience, at least for me.

It's a different thing playing in a smaller venue where you can actually see people's faces and reactions. It's so much more intimate. You walk away with a more personal experience.

I think that theater is a unique way to communicate with people as they gather together with other people they may not even know. It creates a sense of shared community for the time of the performance that hopefully carries over into other aspects of the audience's life because they have shared this experience together.

When I'm on stage, the songs that we've chosen to play from the back catalog are things that still resonate with me, and matter to me. And the songs that I couldn't be a part of, we don't play anymore.

If I'm doing a concert, and I'm having a problem with the audience... I just play a Bob Marley song, and I'm good for the rest of the night.

My shows are always a mix of songs from all my albums with some rocking covers thrown in for fun.

Intimacy comes from being yourself on the stage and making the audience feel, without trying, that you're sittin' down there with 'em, playing, and that can happen in a big hall, if you have a good audience that want to listen.

It's very intense to be in front of a live audience. It's just an amazing experience. It's dangerous. Everything out there is heightened. The bad stuff is extra-worse. The silences are extra-silent. The good stuff is amazing. It's electric when you walk out there. For 90 minutes, you're on this other planet.

As much as only playing clubs can become tedious, performing in huge venues can also become off-putting. To go from one to the other feels great. And sometimes playing clubs can be even more stressful, because you really have to think about what you're going to tell the audience between songs.

When I'm playing with my band, I designate different parts to feel different things. The bass pounds in your chest when you go to a concert. It almost replaces your heartbeat. Then the drums you feel on the floor.

With so many ways to communicate at our disposal, we must not forget the transformative power of a live music experience and genuine human exchange.

If you do enough rap shows, you get a pretty good sense of an audience. You start to develop this sense of what a feeling of a room or a group is.