Jay DeMarcus Quotes

Some of my songs I don't do on tour because they don't work well live.

I've always had a bazillion songs in my archive, but I want to play people stuff they know. Now that I have two albums' worth of material, that gives me freedom to compose a set that's more well-balanced and build a show rather than just a recital of some songs.

After playing so many songs in churches for eight or nine years, I've learned what songs people react to. Then I just had fun with the arrangements. That's how this album came together.

Well, you can't throw heavy, analytical, thought-provoking songs at people 24/7. It's been my experience over the last 20 years that on a rare occasion, in a live setting, if you can slow people down to listen to two good ballads, then you're doing pretty good. Then throw a tempo at 'em. Then have fun.

It took us two years to get our first real gig. That was a big dream. We ended up booking a lot of our own gigs and putting on a lot of our own shows. We were trying to get our actual music across, trying to make a connection there.

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.

Sometimes you try a song and people don't respond, or you tell a story and you just hear crickets. But when you play thousands of shows, you start to refine stuff.

It's not a bad problem to have because a lot of classic acts are known for one or two songs and in their show they basically hold those songs off until the end and you sit through an hour or so of lesser known material but in our case most of the songs are well known.

Set lists are tough because you come up with this structure of how the songs are going to go from one to the next, but at the same time, you have to be spontaneous and take requests and change the set list at the drop of a hat.

Fortunately any of the songs we've recorded can be extremely fulfilling to perform depending on the variety of circumstances that surround any given show.

We would play songs live on stage, and then we'd watch their reaction we were receiving immediately, if people were dancing and singing along. If they weren't, then we'd go into the dressing rooms of the different NBA teams that we were playing in their arenas, and we'd change the songs right there.

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.

We played it as long as we could play it on that CD and I think it might be 50 minutes, maybe. What you have to do is play a couple of songs and then get off the stage because everything that trails it sounds stupid.

In television, there's this weird sense of isolation from your audience; you kind of get this feeling that you write the show for you and your wife and your friends and the other people who work on the show. It's our little show, and then it goes out into the world, and somebody watches it.

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

Our songs were not written to be listened to in headphones or on the radio. They were written to be played. All of the little infinite detail that went into the arrangements and giving ourselves lots of breathing room in terms of playing what we wanted to play and using up any ideas that we had - all of those were conceived to be performed.

It always disappoints me when I go to a concert and they don't play my favorite song, or at least one of their biggest hits.

I added and deleted according to the audiences' response to different gestures, and chose songs to build an act that would constantly stimulate my audience.

So I usually call the songs when I get on the stage, according to what the crowd feels like to me. I can jump from 50 years ago to right up to now, and people will be familiar with the songs. And since we never do them the same way, it's a new experience.

In a play, you can adjust your performance to audience reaction, but in a film, it's like you're trapped in a bad dream watching yourself act, and you're in the audience.

If you're going to a show that we're providing support for, or a large festival, you're obviously going to see a condensed version. We have to shave off some fat from the show, so we have to stick to the so-called 'bangers.'

I've always been obsessed with being on stage and putting shows together.

It's weird being a DJ and you have a playlist of your own songs that you could hold it down for an hour.

It's easy to get people to sing along to cover songs, but when it's your song, it's the coolest.

The crowd really controls how I am onstage. One show, it might be a lot of young people, super-high-energy dancing. I mirror that. Other shows, it's much more calm.