Phil Lesh Quotes

'Even Flow' is the best to play live because of the long solos. It starts out slow and builds, and, depending on what the audience does, I can reflect that in the solo.

We would play, then they would play a set, then we would jam on the last song.

Comedy is a live art, and the only way to record a comedy rock album is to do it live. The audience and their laughter is just as much a part of the album sound as our music. No retakes, no room for error.

When I play live, I feel how the audience is going and follow and lead at the same time.

A certain rough-around-the-edges improvisational looseness - a sense of something coming together before your eyes, or not quite - may be one of the things that distinguishes performance art from theater.

A Kiss concert experience is like sex or anything else that's done with more that one person. It's the give and take that makes it so great. When the audience takes it to the next level, we can kick it up another notch.

When we played with the Rollins Band, we'd keep songs going until we felt like ending it.

I like it when I can sing half of a verse and throw the mike in some kid's face, and they sing it right back to me.

The only band I was really over-into was Cream. And the only thing I really liked about them was their live stuff 'cause they played two verses, then go off and jam for 20 minutes, come back and do a chorus and end. And I love the live jam stuff, the improvisation.

I love to play smaller crowds with the Rhythm Kings.

I like more of the club mentality, where we're playing, and if we feel like we want to play a cover, we'll switch to that.

Making music with other people feeds spontaneity, and lends ideas to your solo work.

I'm always making micro-adjustments onstage, listening to the audience, and what a crowd is like can be infectious.

One of the things about live music that's so incredibly important and can't be replaced and automated is the common focus of a room full of people having that human contact and being immersed in the sensory overload of a rock concert.

I do like playing music with other people.

Live theater is an amorphous art, constantly shifting and evolving with every performance.

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

If there was a wrong note, it didn't matter as long as it was rocking.

In bluegrass, there's a lot of joke-telling and a lot of banter between bandmates. It's like improv or watching the 'Carol Burnett Show.'

The band can't exist without the crowd, and the crowd wouldn't be there if it wasn't for the band, and it really is something magical that people need.

I'm trying all kinds of crazy stuff at house shows just for my own amusement and to see what the people are gonna do.

With the jam bands I've seen, it's about music, and it's about theory, and it's about making everyone feel better with music.

No matter what happens with EDM, I would like to go to New Orleans and just play with one of those small funk bands in an intimate venue. How cool would it be to work with a band with those huge horn lines and produce all of that great funk that makes you just want to party?

Every single performance of 'Fleabag,' I would learn so much from the audience reaction or how you could change it all the time, and I loved that sense that the performance is ever-growing and changing and could be affected by the audience.

I've always loved to play live.