Band Preparation Quotes

I went along and basically learned a few of the songs they were doing at the time, which were quite a few of the songs we ended up doing on our first album.

All those experiences were a chance to learn more about music. Playing with the Valley band is like such a "live" band. I mean, really, in many ways Bright Eyes is really a studio project. We form bands to tour, but it really is - you know, we take the songs and we figure out how to decorate them and it's all in the studio, we build the songs that way. Whereas Mystic Valley Band was the exact opposite, where everybody knows what they are gonna be playing on the song and there's sort of a general stylistic approach, and then it's just plug in and play.

The music kind of takes care of itself because we've done all that as preproduction in the practice room. So by the time it gets onstage, each song has about one hundred hours of way too much mothering gone into it. So when you see us play live, that is the product of ninety days of practice, over a year of writing, listening to demos on the weekends after practice.

I want the new band to work together for a while, and when we're ready we'll invite every major record company to see us.

I always meditate before every show. I say a prayer with my crew and my band to get in the mode, and I also stretch because it's a very athletic show. We've got to entertain; it's what we do.

I picked all the tunes before I went to Memphis, and the band was all set. Willie Mitchell is an arranger like I am, and he let me do what I had to do.

We always work at least a month to six weeks before we go on the road, usually for something like eight to 12 hours a night. It took six weeks to do it this time. We just play virtually everything we know.

We haven't played that many of them because all our gear was over here waiting for us when we could get here. So we didn't get to rehearse any of the new stuff, so we have planned to play 3 or 4 new ones.