Shawn Colvin Quotes

I'd say it's harder to play with an acoustic guitar strapped over your shoulder for a few hundred people than it is to play in front of thousands with an entire bombastic band behind you.

When I write, I'm sort of old-fashioned in the sense that I like to write something that I feel I could just perform alone, obviously, because I do that a lot in concert.

My nails are my rhythm section when I'm writing a song all alone. Some day, I may cut an album, just me and my nails.

One of the things I wanted to do with 'The Turn' was write a production of songs that could be stripped down to one or two instruments if you chose to do it.

To stand up on a stage alone with an acoustic guitar requires bravery bordering on heroism. Bordering on insanity.

With every record, with each band, I just try to make a song good. I'm not so much focusing on my technique. There are a million better drummers than me. I try to adapt to the songwriter; I try to adapt to the situation and retain my sort of melodic power. My goal is for the band to be good.

I just do what I gotta do and try to show people I can write some funny lyrics and play piano, and hopefully that'll make them dig further. I really believe in my form. That's why I haven't done a lot of telly, and I'm not a regular on any panel shows, and I'm not in a sitcom or all those things.

I'd say it's harder to play with an acoustic guitar strapped over your shoulder for a few hundred people than it is to play in front of thousands with an entire bombastic band behind you. After all these years, I still get nervous in front of people. I can't help it.

When you know you have a good song, when you're onstage, even if it's just a weird, basic energy, you know your song is good.

In real life, I am not a lonely person; I have lots of good friends and am active socially. But there are certain aspects of my life when I have felt very alone, utterly alone, and one of them is when I am performing on my own.

There is nothing like the buzz of singing one of your songs during a show and hearing your fans singing with you.

With songs, it doesn't matter what song it is; every time I go out and perform it, it's like the first time I'm performing it, the first time I wrote it. If it's not, then I'm not going to do it that night.

For me, it's always just about playing the song and recording it and giving it what it needs as a song.

You see, when I go on stage I perform with just a guitar and you have to have very strong material to hold an audience from getting bored or restless. One strong way of doing that is the story because everybody will listen to a story.

I'm not going to play gigs as Jamie xx. I'm just going to DJ. I'm not comfortable performing my songs on a stage. It's not something I think I'm particularly good at.

At first it was kind of hard, because I had become used to just my phone screen in front of me. But sharing your songs with an audience is incredible.

Before I ever did a stage concert, I'd done hundreds of living-room concerts, which helped a lot.

As a song-writer I have always written with one instrument - either guitar or piano - because I believe that if a song is strong enough to be performed completely stripped down then it is a good one to go on and record.

I think a lot of our songs are good.

Whenever I sing a song, I just want it to reach out to the audience.

At one stage, I wanted to be a folk singer.

I feel like if it's a good song on a guitar, it's a good song no matter what.

The fact is, for the first 10 years I toured as a solo artist, I wasn't playing any of the songs I didn't write or sing.

Audiences are not interested in watching singers who stand stiffly and sing for three hours.

I'm very much of that old-school mentality of believing that if it works with an acoustic guitar and a vocal, then it should work within any format - and especially when most of my live work is just guitar and vocals, so it really does have to work with only that.