Stevie Jackson Quotes

I've finally figured out how to make a Rodney Crowell record, and that's let it be, leave the mistakes.

It's a weird thing when you make records. You try to hear it before you make it, so you walk into the studio with this idea of what you expect to happen, and that usually changes. That usually turns into something else, and that's a good thing.

Good music comes out of people playing together, knowing what they want to do and going for it. You have to sweat over it and bug it to death. You can't do it by pushing buttons and watching a TV screen.

I'd much rather do one or two takes of one thing and then see how it goes.

My job is not babysitting people; my job is focusing on making the best band I possibly can.

I don't work out a lead section and practice it for a day and then lay it down. I don't do that. The first time I do something I think is expressive or really cool, that's what's actually on the recording.

Usually, in the studio, on this sort of thing... you just go out and have a play over it, and see what comes, and it's usually - mostly - the first take that's the best one, and you find yourself repeating yourself thereafter.

With Fincher, you can take chances and try things. And what happens is that any pretension and preparation you've done, all the square, intellectual work, you can't keep that up for 40 takes. It breaks down, and new things start popping up. This, for me, is the most exciting thing about film-making.

I love working with actors who will just go, 'Oh O.K., let's try it and see where it goes,' and 'Let's see what we can discover.'

Rick Rubin said, well, I don't know that we will sell records. He said, I would like you to go with me and sit in my living room with a guitar and two microphones and just sing to your heart's content everything you ever wanted to record. I said, that sounds good to me. So I did that. And day after day, three weeks, I sang for him.

I like little collaborations where the other thing happens, where it's half-baked or it's improvised, and let's develop it together. "What do you want to wear? Do you have an idea?" All that's fun to do, and I like that, but it doesn't take anything away.

When I recorded for Columbia, I could usually do anything in one take...I would invariably want to use the first take because that would be the one that was spontaneous and fresh.

When you work with an actor and then you discover new things that are better, I think you gotta be free to be able to go with the new things that you're finding. I think that's very important. I have a strong idea when I go to shoot a movie but I also love to discover things when I'm on set as well.

The Band is sounding real good. We've been doing some dates together and they've been going well.

I've got my own studio, so I sit in my studio writing and if I get a great take, that's the take.

When I do the roles, when I'm in the room and auditioning, I'll ask the director if they're cool with me adding stuff, or just improvising while we're doing it. And I would say, like, 90 percent of the time, they say, 'Absolutely.'

Getting used to the studio and everything was fun, we freaked about alot. I was working very hard then.

I want to keep a thread between the studio and the stage, and I want to flow more easily from one to the other.

So the actual riffing came out of us just sitting there and doing it the way I think some people think we really did it, which is all spontaneously, and it really was.

The spirit of jazz is the spirit of openness.

I like people that can strap on a guitar and don't sweat the fact that you have to come up with a song in an hour. I want to work with someone who won't feel like they have to play along with Jason Molina. I want them to just have the confidence.

I don't like the actors to work together beforehand. I trust my intuition, and I like when the actors are the same.

And as I've gotten deeper into the process of making films and television and such, I think I have more trust in the fact that you really never know what you're going to find after the twenty-fifth take.

When you have the cast, the sets, the lights, an opera takes on its own life. I'm not one of those directors who marches in with a set of plans.

I always try to stick to the script because I want to respect the writers, and I want to respect the director. But if the director and my fellow actors are okay with me playing with it a little bit, then I definitely want to play with it.